Scrapbook of R.C. Carden
Section IV Old Soldiers of Sixties
Confederates to Pay Tribute to Col. Owen, Commandant of Ft. Morton.
An Unprecedented Event
An Appreciation of Kindness to Prisoners of War--Movement Started by S.A. Cunningham
Gov. Marshall Aided
(There is a picture of Col. Owen included but the book is too fragile to scan)
    A most unusual, if not an unprecedented, event is to occur in Indianapolis soon, in the dedication of a memorial bust, in the State Capitol, to Col. Richard Owen by men who were Confederate prisoners in Camp Morton during the early months of 1862.
    Col. Owen, as Commander of the Sixtieth Indiana Regiment, was assigned to duty as commandant of the prison in February, 1862, when over 4,000 of the prisoners from Fort Donelson were sent there.  This large number of prisoners was placed in the FairGrounds before suitable arrangements could be made for their comfort.  The buildings were mainly stalls for horses and other stock in summer time, with the cracks from dried planks so open that the snow and bitter winds caused much suffering, and, as there had not been made proper provision for a supply, the scant ration for twenty four hours was generally eaten immediately after being issued.  Through <????> of starvation for about two ???, there was no levity among the prisoners.  They were very angry because of their hunger.  However, the commandant of the prison was such a fatherly man, and was so zealous in his efforts to provide food and other comforts for the prisoners, that they grew speedily not only to respect, but bore sincere affection for him, and no prisoner was ever heard to utter a murmur against him.  Not only was the sentiment prevalent then but through the intervening half century no mention has ever been heard of him by Confederate soldiers except in words of gratitude.
    Partisan government authorities were displeased with the spirit of esteem for Col. Owen and an order to send him "to the front" with his regiment was issued.  Soon afterwards his command was pitted against the Confederates at Munfordville, Ky., and all were captured.  The commander of the victorious forces, riding up to the Sixteenth Indiana Regiment where they had stacked their arms, said:
    "Col. Owen, in consideration of your kindness to the prisoners at Camp Morton, you are free to go at will."
    The eminent Owen family of which Richard Owen was a member located at New Harmony, Ind., over a century ago.  Robert Owen, the father of Richard, bought out the Rapites of that place who had accumulated a million dollars worth of community property.  Robert Owen was a man of philanthropic traits, spending more than one fortune of his own accumulation largely in behalf of the poor in factories.  Two years ago the women of Indiana erected a monument in Indianapolis to Richard Owen's brother, Robert Dale owen, for his zeal in procuring a change in the Indiana laws whereby women could own and control their own property.
    Col. Richard Owen, whose deeds of kindness and invariably acts of courtesy to prisoners under his charge, won their esteem, is being honored by these prisoners and their friends.  Just previous to the war he was a teacher in the Nashville Military Academy, associated with Bushrod Johnson, a Northern man also, who became a Major General in the Confederate army, while Dr. Owen, through his attachment for the Union, returned to his native Indiana and became Lieutenant Colonel of the Fifteenth Indiana Regiment, and then Colonel of the Sixtieth Regiment.  He also commanded for a time the First Brigade of the Tenth Army Corps.  the life of a soldier, however, was not congenial to him, and he resigned in 1863 to accept a professorship in the University of Indiana.
    While commandant at Camp Morton Col. Owen was criticised by an Indianapolis paper for his consideration of the prisoners.  (See War Records, Series 2. Vol 3, pages 515-519).  This report shows his merit to the appreciation of all good men of either army or of any army.  It is a credit to him as a devoted Union man and as the highest type of a just man. Mr. Cunningham's Tribute     Two years ago Mr. S.A. Cunningham, editor of the Confederate Veteran, who is one of the few surviving prisoners, resolved upon paying tribute to Col. Owen, and this dedication to occur at Indianapolis is the result.  Gov. Marshall, now Vice President elect, has cooperated with him most cordially, and he is expected to participate in the dedication just befor becoming Vice-President.
    Miss Belle Kinney of New York, who was reared in Nashville, is doing her best work on this memorial, entertaining equal enthusiasm with the promoter.  she gave a reception at its exhibition on Wednesday evening the 22nd at her studio, 61 Fifth Avenue, which was a brilliant success.  Mrs. Henry Parker, President of the New York Chapter, U. D. C., assisted Miss Kirney in receiving.  There were present many Daughters of the Confederacy, friends of Col. Owen's family and of Mr. Cunningham.
    No expense is spared to make this memorial a pride to the people of the South, and in making it an ornament in the Capitol of Indiana, which cost $2,000,000.  Mr. Cunningham is soliciting contributions for this work, and a little more than half the cost has been contributed, but whatever be the result of assistance, the memorial will be perfect, without stint. "Do Not Know War is Over" That is what Isabel Worrell Ball Says of U.D.C.'s in D.A.R. Organ.
Roasts the Convention
Says There Were So Few U.S. Flags in Hall That They Were Lonesome--That Rebel Yell
    The following criticism of the U.D.C.'s in general, and those who attended the recent convention in Washington in particular, appeared in the "National Tribune," a D.A.R. organ, published at Washington.
    "The mighty Webster's prayer for national union comes to mind with titanic force after a week of brainstorm and delirium such as we in Washington have withstood this past week.
    "Let our object be our country, our whole country, and nothing but our country," was Webster's plea, and, when, later, he saw the clouds of treason and secession lowering he cried again:
    "When my eyes shall be turned to behold for the last time the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on states dissevered, discordant, belligerant; on a land rent with civil feuds or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood."  And later yet he declared:
    "I was born an American; I will live an American; I shall die an American."
    "For the glorious principles thus enunciated by Daniel Webster a million men went down to death and deadly night, on a battlefield 3,000 miles long, and the victory for the Union and the flag was four years in the winning.
    "Grant, the victor, gave to Lee, the vanquished, surrender terms so magnanimous as to amaze a gaping world.  Wise ones wagged their heads and said Grant was a fool to give away the fruits of victory.
    "But Grant was even greater in that act than in all others of his magnificent generalship; and equally as great in defeat, Lee accepted the terms with expressions of grateful thanks, and turning from the flags of discord and dismemberment, furled as all believed, never again to see the light of heaven, told the brave men who had followed him as their god to return to their homes and become worthy citizens.
    "They obeyed him literally.
    "Today, without sycophant mingling of blue and gray and in very truth, there is peace and harmony between the fighting men of the two mightiest armies of the greatest war in the world's history.  The money of the North, backed by its brains and brawn, is eagerly welcomed by those whose dreams of a "Greater South" are being realized in richer homes and wider possibilities in every avenue of human endeavor.
Swapped Jokes
    The men who followed Lee and Stonewall Jackson, Albert Sidney Johnston Longstreet, M. Jeff Thompson, Harry Heth and the long line of gallant fighting men of the South grasp hands, crack jokes and swap yarns with the men who followed Grant, Sherman, Thomas Sheridan, Meade, Hancock and the other great military leaders of the Union army, and for all these the war is over.
    At least, we have been told that it is, and that we have one land, one flag, one brotherhood, and wanting to believe it, have practiced Christian science on it until we have forced ourselves to accept the statement as truth.
    It is not true, however sadly, disconsolately, dejectedly, one who isn't color blind must acknowledge that black is just as black, and that there are no shades in it.
    The women of the South do not know the war is over.
    On invitation of the people of Washington they came to the national capital, enjoyed its hospitality, freely extended in a thousand ways.  They held a reception in the Congressional Library without authority from anyone who has the right to give it, and they got into the United States Capitol carrying rebel flags, a thing the whole Confederate army failed to accomplish in four years of fighting; but they were our guests, and we could not resent the insult.
    They decorated the city from turret to foundation stone with flags typifying those which Lee gladly left with Grant at Appomattox.  Not only that, they were invited to the White House by the President, and insolently flaunted in that stately edifice the flag representing sectional strife and bitterness.  They were our guests, however, and we could not resent this insult.  But even deeper insults were to follow.  On the evening of their open meeting, when the President as their guest was to speak to them, a woman with treasonable epithets and insulting familiarity, presented a large silk flag emblem of the defeated South to the United Daughters of the Confederacy and waved it above the head of the President of the United States as he sat, unsmiling and unassenting, upon the platform beside her.  On the wall back of him was a United States flag and a rebel flag intertwined and above these the flag of the president of the United States.
That Rebel Yell
    Out in the audience sat women from whose white throats came the rebel yell, and one, who was more fiercely exultant than others, was featured in the Washington newspapers.  They said of her:
    "None of the delegates can give the rebel yell with the vigor or enthusiasm of Mrs. S.D. Drury of Mineola, Va., who was taken prisoner in the early days of the civil war for shooting at Union soldiers.  When taken before the Judge Advocate of that section, she declared that if she had a cannon big enough not a Yankee would ever cross the Mason and Dixon line without being blown up.  She gave several fine exhibitions of her prowess as a yeller yesterday."
    And more, but this is quite enough.
`    Over in Arlington sleep 22,000 men who fought for the Union and the preservation of the flag.  A magnanimous government, great in its desire to cement peace between once sundered sections of the country, has granted to the South the privilege of interring therin the veterans who wore the gray.  Furthermore, that section of Arlington so dedicated has been laid out and beautified and marble headstones put at each grave.  In the centre of this section the Daughters of the Confederacy are erecting a monument, the cornerstone of which was laid with military pomp and ceremony last week, all by permission of the government which they disdain and which is footing most of the bills.
    The President of the United States made an address, and Hilary Herbert, a Confederate veteran, laid the cornerstone.  In the box that went into the cornerstone went flags of each of the so-called Confederate States and the flag of the District of Columbia.
    The District of Columbia has no distinct flag.  It uses only the United States flag, the Star Spangled Banner.  But the Daughters of the Confederacy, disdaining even reference to the United States flag called it the flag of the District of Columbia.
    It had been planned by the Daughters of the Confederacy of Washington to use the United States flag in the decorations of the big hall in the hotel where the National Convention was held.  It had also been planned by the same broad minded women to present to each of the 2,000 guests a small United States flag, to be worn with the Confederate flag.  The Star Spangled Banner was spared this humiliation, however, as the guests of the city declined to wear the flag of flags, repudiated by the Confederate Congress almost before it was born, the sad little bastard emblem which one of their poets declared:
"Represents nothing on God's earth now,
And naught in the water below it."
U.S. Flags Lonesome
    And we could not resent this insult to the nation's emblem, because these women were our guests.
    Four, just exactly four, small United States flags, looking lonely and unwelcome--as it proved they really were--were hidden in two dark, obscure corners of the balcony, fairly weltering in miles upon miles of red and white--red and white only, except where their long folds were topped by Beauregard's batle flag with its starred blue cross.
    At the other end of the room was a small United States flag of electric lights, nd in the center of the side wall, above the heads of the officers, was one big electric light Beauregard flag.
    Fiercely these Daughters of the Greater South protested against the wisps of United States flags, and declared them "out of place" beside the flags of the Daughters of the Confederacy.
    Believe me, they were out of place, and they looked it.  If those glorious stars could have given voice to their scintillating thoughts, old Vesuvius in eruption would have been a Willie boy's wax match beside the mighty upheaval that would stir the very foundation of the deep with the sulphurous wrath of those white stars.
    When the Star Spangled Banner was played by the bands at any time the toploftical ladies of the South 'riz up in wrath' and many of them hobble-skirted out of the landscape.  But when "Dixie" was played they screamed, gave the rebel yell and rent their raiment in exuberant joy, especially when they thought of that classic verse of the negro walk around"
"Dar's buckwheat cakes an' injun batter.
Makes you fat or a little fatter.
Look away, look away, look away, Dixie Land!
Railed Against Histories
    The Historian of the U.D.C. railed against all the histories of the war, and declared them biased in favor of the North.  She urged the writers of the South to get busy and write history that would "tell the truth about Southern heroes."
    The President General in her annual address found fault with the records of the War Department, and the U.D.C. will now proceed to fix up their heroes records on "affidavits" from friends.
    It is useless to say more of the proceedings of the convention of the U.D.C.  Most of the Daughters of the Confederacy of the Northern States were shocked and grieved by the flagrant violations of good manners and the treasonable exhibitions of temper with regard to the flag by their sisters of the South.  There were hundreds of high-bred, law abiding flagloving women who are among the U.D.C.'s--women who are broad minded, high thinking, and who are proud of their whole country.  One of these said to the writer:
"You know, we have many among our numbers, some who are right common, and they have no more sense.  We do not approve of their insults to the flag.  It is our flag today."
    Sweet seekers after peace were these low-voiced, bright daughters of heroic Southern fighters, and all praise is due them that they glory in the prowess of their own.  But, alas!  They are so few among the many, and the many have left us with a bad taste in our moughs, a hurt in our hearts.
    To meet in Washington was high tide in the history of the U.D.C.  We who live nere have learned our lesson, and when they come to Washington again, on the invitation of Washington, they will have learned their lesson, and will love the flag even as we do.
    These "howlers" of the U.D.C. are a menace to the South, and sow seeds of treason where the lillies of peace are trying to take root.  The splendid women of that order who long for a reunited country ought to spew them out.  It is no wonder the Confederate Veterans will not have them for an auxillary, and that they have to herd alone.
    Also, we can now see, with clearer vision why the Daughters of the Confederacy of Georgia selected the beast Wirz for a gallant and heroic example of Southern chivalry, to whose memory they erected that snubbing post monument at Andersonville.
    Why do not those cultured U.D.C.'s whom all love, get rid of the 'po' white and 'overseer' element, which will yet spell ruin to the order?