34 Rosebud

Rosebud by Becky Brown

The block can remind us of the Confederacy's famous spy

Rose Greenhow

On August 23rd, 1861 Union troops arrested 48-year-old Rose O'Neal Greenhow, Washington hostess, socialite and widow of a State Department employee. Born in Maryland, she was daughter of a planter murdered by one of his slaves when Rose was three. As young women she and sister Ellen went to live with Aunt Maria Hill who ran a polite boarding house known as the Old Brick Capitol.

Rose

The girls made good marriages. Ellen wed James Madison Cutts, nephew of Dolley Madison. Their daughter Adele grew up to marry Senator Stephen A. Douglas. Rose's husband Robert Greenhow introduced her to Washington society and taught her the value of diplomacy, observation and conversation. Well-connected and passionate about the Confederate cause, she charmed many Union politicians.

In her autobiography Rose described her July activities in Union Washington.

... the 'grand army' was in motion, and I learned from a reliable source (having received a copy of the order to M'Dowell) that the order for a forward movement had gone forth. .... Officers and orderlies on horse were seen flying from place to place; the tramp of armed men was heard on every side - martial music filled the air; in short, a mighty host was marshalling, with all the 'pomp and circumstance of glorious war.' 'On to Richmond!' was the war-cry. The heroes girded on their armour with the enthusiasm of the Crusaders of old, and vowed to flesh their maiden swords in the blood of Beauregard or Lee. And many a knight, inspired by beauty's smiles, swore to lay at the feet of her he loved best the head of Jeff Davis at least."

At midnight Rose sent a woman messenger to General Beauregard at Manassas with a note about Union plans twined into her hair. Confederate commanders were grateful for the intelligence, replying:

"Let them come: we are ready for them. We rely upon you for precise information. Be particular as to description and destination of forces, quantity of artillery, &c."

A reconstructed letter from Rose,

written on mourning stationery, using a code.

After her arrest it was assembled from bits of paper

in her grate. National Archives.

Illustration from Harper's Weekly

The Confederacy won the first battle of Manassas and many credit (or blame) Rose Greenhow. Never one to hide her Confederate loyalties, Rose was soon placed under house arrest. Although forbidden to leave her home she continued to pass information.

The Old Capitol Prison

Capitol building turned boarding house turned jail

She was then imprisoned with her youngest daughter Rose in the same building she'd spent her adolescence. The Old Capitol Boarding House was now the Old Capitol Prison. (Today the site is the Supreme Court building in Washington.)

Rose and daughter in prison by Matthew Brady

Held for almost two years without being charged or tried, she managed to spy from prison. In May, 1863 she was exiled to Richmond, where she was welcomed as a hero.

President Jefferson Davis appointed her an unofficial ambassador to Europe a few months later. There she met with England's Prime Minister and France's Emperor, hoping in vain to persuade them to recognize the Confederate States of America.  She published her autobiography in London.

Portrait from her autobiography

In 1864 Rose returned to America with her publishing profits in gold coins tied around her neck. The blockade running ship carrying her into Wilmington, North Carolina ran aground in the Cape Fear River. Rose was launched in a lifeboat that capsized. Weighted down by dispatches for Jefferson Davis and her fortune, she drowned on October 1, 1864.

Rose's last moments depicted in an early 20th-century book.

Rosebud (#1273 in BlockBase) was given that name by the Ladies' Art Company about 1900.

Cutting an 8" Finished Block

A Cut 4 dark squares and 6 light squares 2-1/8". Cut each in half diagonally.

You need 8 dark triangles and 13 light triangles.

B Cut 2 dark squares 4-7/8". Cut each in half diagonally. 

You need 4 triangles.

C Cut 2 pink or red  squares 3-5/8". Cut each in half diagonally.

You need 4 triangles.

Read Rose Greenhow's memoir My Imprisonment and the First Year of Abolitionist Rule at Washington by clicking here and downloading a copy from the University of North Carolina's Documents of the American South.

http://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/greenhow/menu.html

See the National Archives records where the items confiscated at her arrest have been stored.
http://www.archives.gov/research/arc/topics/civil-war/greenhow.html

Read more about her fascinating life story here

http://www.lib.unc.edu/ncc//ref/nchistory/oct2005/index.html

And see an interesting facebook page here:

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=192241244133701

16 White House

White House by Becky Brown

The White House block can remind us of Washington City, the U.S. capitol perched on the Virginia state line. As the Lincolns settled into the President's House during the first weeks of the War, Washingtonians were choosing sides and leaving the city.

The White House

Photograph attributed to 1860-1880

Elizabeth Lindsay Lomax lived near the White House on G Street. A widow in her sixties, she was born in Virginia and married to a Virginian, an Army officer who'd died twenty years earlier leaving her to raise their large family.

Painting by A. Meyer from the Library of Congress

The unfinished capitol dome loomed

over the city in the first years of the War.

Trinity Episcopal Church

Early 1860s

Elizabeth's diary gives a vivid account of living in the nation's capitol in the week after Fort Sumter. Her youngest son, 25-year-old Lindsay, was in the U.S. Army, a graduate of West Point. He and his friend Jeb Magruder spent time at Elizabeth's house that week. 

April 16, 1861

Rained all night.

Reported again last evening that Virginia has seceded, but it is not believed.

Events crowd so fast that I cannot relate them in my diary.

April 18

Virginia has seceded!! Heaven help us.

April 19

Visitors all day long.

Many people are leaving the city. Great excitement and unrest.

April 20

Mary Buckler and Julia went to Alexandria [Virginia] this morning to see Emily Page, and found difficulty in returning home, crowds everywhere and soldiers on guard and everything in a disturbed state.

The Jefferson Davis house in Washington,

 abandoned by the family in 1861.

An artist's depiction of Massachusetts troops in

Baltimore attacked by Confederate sympathizers.

April riots in Baltimore and Washington

 frightened residents into leaving the cities.

April 21

This has been a frightfully exciting day. Riots here and in Baltimore, many persons shot, also a heartrending day for Lindsay and for me. …This evening Lindsay told me that he had sent in his resignation; Colonel Magruder has also sent in his resignation from the army and will go to Virginia tomorrow where Lindsay will join him…

Lindsay's April 21st letter of resignation to his U.S. Army commander was published in her diary. Here is the first paragraph.

Dear [Lt. Geo] Bayard:

I cannot stand it any longer and feel it my duty to resign. My State is out of the Union and when she calls for my services I feel that I must go. I regret it very much, realizing that the whole thing is suicidal....

Lunsford Lindsay Lomax, 1835-1913  

The White House pattern is a variation of mid-20th-century block, designed first by Nancy Cabot in 1937 and modified by the Famous Features syndicate. The 1930s blocks included small nine patches or stripes in the outer squares, a little too much piecing for an 8" block (It's BlockBase #1146). Here I've changed the pieced stripes to a fussy-cut striped print.

Cutting an 8" Finished Block

A- Cut 4 dark, 4 striped and 4 light squares 2-1/2". You want to fussy cut the striped squares by lining one up against the right side of the ruler and doing the same with piece B when you cut it. That way the stripes will realign when you piece A and B together.


B- Cut 4 squares of striped fabric and 2 squares of light 2-7/8".

Cut each into two triangles with a single cut.

Use only the striped triangles that match piece A---you'll get one out of each square you cut. Save the other parts for another block. You need 4 striped and 4 light squares.

GigiBrod's block from the Flickr group

Elizabeth Lomax's diary was published in 1942.  It's not available online (it IS on the subscription site Ancestry.com) Your library may have a copy.

Elizabeth Lindsay Lomax, Leaves From an Old Washington Diary, 1854-1863. Lindsay Lomax Wood, editor. Dutton, 1943.

Her son Lindsay went on to become a Major General in the Confederate Army. He survived the War to become president of the school we call Virginia Tech and active in many veteran's associations and causes.

 

An updated look with a stripe by LJ Bush from the Flickr site with a new pattern piece combining A and B.

 

10 Lincoln's Platform

Lincoln's Platform by Becky Brown.
She used the central square to fussy cut a flower
 to remember Mary Lincoln's floral silk dresses.

Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated as President of the United States on March 4, 1861. Lincoln's Platform can mark the anniversary week.

Lincoln in 1861

The quilt pattern dates back to the mid-nineteenth century. We don't know what quilters called it then but magazines and pattern companies gave it many names at the end of the 19^th century and into the twentieth. Among them: Shoo-Fly, Monkey Wrench and Hole In the Barn Door. In her 1935 book Carrie Hall called the nine patch Lincoln's Platform.

Several photos of the inauguration on the steps of the Capitol building were taken.

The new dome was not yet finished and

the building remained a construction project for several years.

Nineteen-year-old Charles Bowditch,  suspended from Harvard for taking part in a student protest, had time to go to Washington to watch Lincoln's inauguration. He documented his trip in letters to his mother back in Boston. The day before, he called at the office of his Senator Charles Sumner for tickets.

"He was very profuse in apologies and told me that he had made inquiries & found that no tickets were to be issued since they would have to issue 10,000 if any at all. He said my best plan would be to take my chance with the crowd."

On the morning of the 4^th Charles went by Willard's Hotel. Due to his family's political connections he was invited:

 "to the Presidents rooms & found a good many people there consisting however, I believe of his & his wife's relations…Mrs. Lincoln is a very pleasant looking woman & is by no means coarse looking as has been said. She was dressed in a brown silk with a black velvet cloak & a green plush bonnet."

Of course Charles's mother (and we) would want

 to know what the First Lady was wearing.

Here she is in evening dress in 1861,

wearing a silk with roses on a ground of pin dots.

Bowditch was swept up with the Lincoln/Todd party and observed the ceremony with the family. 

Charles is somewhere in the crowd here,

close to the wooden canopy at the center. 

 "About 1 o'clock we went out to the front of the Capitol the steps of which had been floored over & took our seat. We then saw Messrs. Lincoln & Buchanan come down the steps & the Judges of the Supreme Court. Lincoln then delivered his inaugural amid much cheering & shouting & afterwards took his oath of office….Uncle Thomas calls the Inaugural [speech] wishy-washy. I have not read it & was not near enough to hear what he said.

Thus you see the Inauguration has gone through very successfully & safely & Mr. Lincoln has not been made the victim of any hostile inventions or infernal machines [bombs]…Mr. Lincoln has rec'd a great many threatening letters which of course made the family feel very uncomfortably."

Cutting for an 8" Finished Block for Lincoln's Platform (#1646 in my Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns & BlockBase)

A - Cut 2 light and 2 dark squares 3-1/2". Cut each in half diagonally with one cut.

You need 4 dark and 4 light triangles

B - Cut 4 dark and 4 light rectangles 3-1/8" x 1-7/8".

C - Cut 1 light square 3-1/8"

Charles Pickering Bowditch's account of the Inauguration was published as "'We had a very fine day': Charles Bowditch Attends Lincoln's Inauguration" by Katherine W. Richardson in the Essex Institute Historical Collections, Volume 124, Number 1, January 1988, pages 28-35.

If you are worried about Charles being suspended from Harvard, don't fret. He went back to school and had an admirable career as an anthropologist. Read his lengthy obituary here.
http://www.archive.org/stream/charlespickering00tozzrich/charlespickering00tozzrich_djvu.txt

Another of Mary Lincoln's silk dresses from 1861.

This one is in the collection of the Smithsonian.