USA > Indiana > A biographical history of eminent and self-made men of the state of Indiana : with many portrait-illustrations on steel, engraved expressly for this work, Volume II > Part 79
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[Signed]
JOHN C. FREMONT, Major-general, Commander."
Other certificates of manumission, of similar import, followed, under the general proclamation. General Shanks was at Springfield, Missouri, with General Fre- mont at the time the latter was relieved, and remained with General IIunter until the troops retired under that general's command. During the time General Shanks was with General Fremont, the question of the return of fugitive slaves to their masters was submitted by the commanding general to Colonel Owen Lovejoy, Colonel R. N. Hudson, and Colonel Shanks. None were returned. General Shanks entered again upon his Congressional duties in December, 1861, taking prompt steps to prevent the return of slaves to their former masters by the army. He again served on the staff of General Fremont, in the Mountain Department in Vir- ginia, beginning March 31, 1862, taking his seat in
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Congress at its session, December, 1862. After the ex- piration of the Thirty-seventh Congress, General Shanks, under authority from Governor O. P. Morton, of Indi- ana, under date of June 12, 1863, raised, at much expense to himself, the 7th Regiment of Volunteer Cavalry, of which he was appointed colonel, being mustered in October 9, 1863. This regiment took the field December 6, 1863, at Columbus, Kentucky; and he served with his regiment and in command of a brig- ade and division of cavalry, the 7th always forming a part of his troops, in Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas, Missouri, Louisiana, and Texas. He was bre- veted a brigadier-general, December 8, 1864, for meri- torious service in the field, and he was, on the special recommendation of Secretary Stanton, on March 13, 1865, breveted a major-general for faithful and merito- rious service during the war. Secretary Stanton accom- panied the commission to General Shanks with the following autograph letter :
" WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON CITY, } August 4, 1867.
" DEAR SIR,-Inclosed you will find a brevet ap. pointment, which has been well merited, and it would have been long since conferred if your own modesty had not restrained you from calling my attention to the matter. It affords me great pleasure to bear this testi- monial to your faithful services. Yours, truly,
[Signed] EDWIN M. STANTON.
"To Brevet Major-general Shanks."
He was mustered out of service at Hempstead, Texas, September 19, 1865. In 1862 General Shanks was de- feated for Congress, owing to his advocacy of the draft, which took place a few days prior to the election of that year, and to the further fact that in the early part of the war the volunteers were very largely Republicans, and of course were absent from their voting-places. In the political campaign of 1862 a mob in the town of Hartford, in Blackford County, in the Congressional Dis- trict represented by General Shanks, and where he was then a candidate for re-election, destroyed the draft-box, caused serious disturbance in the place, and threatened his life, should he attempt to speak as was announced. Friends sent him word not to come, as large numbers of his political enemies were armed and threatened his life ; but in company with Joseph C. Maddox, a gentleman who was a true and tried Republican and a personal friend, the General started for the scene, and they decided to proceed. The turbulent crowd which had caused the trouble during the day forbade his speaking; but he armed himself and, despite noise and protest from them, uttered his thoughts freely and with emphasis. He said, " It is no time to hesitate before those who are coun- seling treason and denying assistance to the soldiers in front, and refusing to go themselves." He spoke in the bitterest and most unsparing terms of the conduct of the mob, denounced the treason that inspired it and .
the persons who composed it, and concluded, "The soldiers are fighting in front, and need help; open treason in the rear must be condemned and punished." Troops were sent to the place and quiet restored. At the close of the General's service in aiding to suppress the Rebellion, he was returned to the Fortieth Congress in 1866, to the Forty-first Congress in 1868, the Forty- second Congress in 1870, and the Forty-third Congress in 1872-closing his career in the House on the 4th of March, 1875, after serving in that body ten years, dur- ing which time he contributed his full share of efficient service to the government, and made a record alike honorable to himself and to his constituents. Without prejudice to truth, and with a disclaimer of any purpose to detract from the merits of others, it may be said that Indiana has never had a member of Congress in either chamber who labored with more unselfish devotion to business, was more watchful and attentive to his duties, performed greater or more valuable services, or left a brighter record, than has the subject of this sketch. On the 15th of July, 1861, General Shanks introduced a reso- lution in the House of Representatives, having for its ob- ject to secure a record of the names of all persons who had held, or thereafter should hold, office under the national government, having previously bound themselves by oath to support the Constitution of the United States, and then engaged in rebellion against it, with the view also of guarding against such persons holding office under the government thereafter. He believed that the "roll of traitors" contemplated by the above-named resolu- tion, perfected in official form, would have served a valuable purpose, as preserving in historical permanence a much-needed evidence of the kind of civilization that was bred of Southern slavery ; and it would have been a fit accompaniment of "The Treatment of Union Pris- oners by the Rebel Authorities during the Rebellion," a document that owed its origin and completion also to General Shanks. Thus early in his Congressional career the General manifested a just appreciation of the crime of treason, and proposed chronicling all its striking enormities, in order to omit from record no feature of the barbarism of human slavery, and vindicate the truth of history in after times. On the 20th of Decem- ber, 1861, in the House, he offered the following res- olution :
" Resolved, That the constitutional power to return fugitive slaves to their masters rests solely with the civil department of the government; and that the order of the Secretary of War, under date of December 6, 1861, to General Wool, for the delivery of a slave to a Mr. Jessup, of Maryland, as well as all other military orders for the return of slaves, are assumptions of the military power over the civil law and the rights of the slave."
This was the first movement touching the return of slaves to their masters that resulted in Congressional action. The resolution was referred to the Judiciary
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Committee of the House, and eventually it was in sub- stance made an Article of War. On the 4th of March, 1862, General Shanks, in a lengthy and able speech de- livered in the House of Representatives, after his service with General Fremont in Missouri, vindicated the gen- eral and his military administration of the Western Department, and sustained his proclamation confiscating the property and freeing the slaves of persons in active rebellion against the United States government, a por- tion of the proclamation in question being in these words: " The property, real and personal, of all persons in the state of Missouri who shall take up arms against the United States, or shall be proven to have taken active part with the enemies of the government, is de- clared to be confiscated to the public use, and their slaves, if any they have, are hereby declared free men." This speech of General Shanks was a bold attack on slavery and its allies, and on the enemies of General Fremont and his proclamation ; and his devotion to his principles and to his commanding general called forth the warmest expressions of approbation from members of the House and Senators, as well as from President Lincoln, who personally thanked him for the valuable information he gave in this exposition of Fremont's surroundings. In the course of his remarks he said :
" I now approach with hesitancy to attack the cordon of fortifications thrown by experienced hands across the pathway of an honest, devoted, and pure patriot, for his destruction, to satisfy the ambition of base and cor- rupt men, who, instead of supporting him, have seized upon the wisdom of his recorded councils, and the armies and fleets by him spoken into existence, from which to gather laurels, his rightful victories, to wreathe their brows, while he wears a crown of thorns.
I know the combination is a strong one, and that Gen- eral Fremont, because a friend of freedom, is the sacri- fice to be offered on the altar of his country as a peace- offering to the slave power. It is but the first step of that march to degradation which you will all soon rec- ognize; for the want of nerve and manhood to repel the aggressors and to sustain Fremont in his proclama- tion will come upon us from this same combination, which is one of power and place; and when the war shall be ended, with rebel slavery protected by the gov- ernment, those slave-holding rebels will turn upon you in these halls, denounce your brave soldiers as a rabble, and rejoice at the blood they have spilled. Under the protection of the flag they have desecrated and torn, they will lash their slaves to daily toil ; protected by the laws they have violated and denounced, they will scorn the widows and orphans their treachery has made, and again will they strike down any Representative who, in these halls, dares to point out their crimes. You will talk of the high mission and glory of the nation, while rebels stand by your permission-nay, with your sanc- tion; aye, with still more, your protection-with one hand on the throats of their slaves, who are patriots, and with the other tear the flag which is the emblem of our national honor. You see this, you know it; the world sees and condemns it ; all civilized men pity you, and scorn the imbecility which permits it. You indorse the proclamations of generals in favor of protecting
slavery. At this moment we are asked to indorse and make a law of the late jubilant repetition of General Halleck's Order No. 3. You send your sons to fight in this war, brought on by slave-holders for the purpose of establishing slavery on the ruins of our government. Slaves aid their rebel masters in every species of the labor of war, and procure supplies for their armies. You listen to and indorse the proclamations of those generals who aver that this relation of master and serv- ant, even of rebels, shall not be molested; protecting, by this means, the very forces you are warring with, and holding the enemy's weapons at the heart of our friends. Not only so, but the slaves themselves are loyal, and would be true to our flag and people. To indorse slavery is a mark reckless enough in this age of civiliza- tion ; but for freemen to aid in holding those persons in bondage to the traitors of the country, men whom we despise and loathe, is a degree of ingratitude which the negro himself will pity in us, and feel proud that he is a slave. It is not enough that the nation has lost over twenty thousand of her brave sons by death in hospital and battle-field; that Rachel is weeping for her chil- dren, and will not be comforted, because they are not; that the blood of those four hundred and eighty brave young men stained the ensanguined field of Manassas; that the disgrace of that struggle has severely rebuked our wonted prestige in war; that we have spent in this causeless rebellion over six hundred millions of dollars, and with the inevitable necessity before us of spending hundreds of millions more; that the Ball's Bluff murder is but a part of this accursed tragedy, where treason and treasonable blunders murdered, by the hands of slavery's maddened demons, a brave and loved officer and a thousand pure patriots ; that at Springfield Lyon and his men struggled against a fearful and hellish power, until, outnumbered, he and hundreds of his sol- diers lay down for the last time, and their dead and mangled bodies became prisoners to traitors, who could not conquer them when living. It is not enough that at Rich Mountain, Carnifax Ferry, Belmont, Frederick- ton, Lexington, Springfield, Roanoke, Forts Henry and Donelson, our brave brethren fell, murdered by traitors for slavery; but these same traitors are to be protected and apologized for here; and the man who dared to proclaim their property confiscated to the public use, and their slaves freemen, is hunted down through every avenue which human ingenuity can invent, prompted by the most remorseless desire to fasten on us, and con- tinue, this cause and origin of our woes. Of history we learn nothing ; our own we do not study; we blindly sit here while the vortex is opening again to receive us. The blood of our own people, the tears of our widows and orphans, the sword of the army, and the Congress of the nation, all fail to do a simple act which God has warned us, through lamentations and sorrow, is our duty to mankind and to him; but in face of all this we support those who, with vulture eye, have hunted the friend of freedom to his fall and have divided his gar- ments."
In the Fortieth Congress General Shanks served on the Committee on Militia, as chairman, and also as a mem- ber of the Committee on Indian Affairs. On the 10th of July, 1867, General Shanks offered in the House the following important resolutions, which were adopted :
" Whereas, It is expedient that the subject of the treatment of prisoners of war and Union citizens, held
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by the Confederate authorities during the recent Rebell- ion, should be thoroughly investigated; therefore,
" Resolved, That a special committee of five members of this House be appointed to make such investigation, and to record the facts thereby obtained, and to report the same to the House at any time, with such recom- mendations as may seem proper.
" Be it further resolved, That such committee, for the purpose of this investigation, shall have power to send for persons and papers, to appoint a clerk and a stenog- rapher, and to sit during any recess of the House; and that the expenses of the investigation be paid from the contingent fund of the House."
The General was made chairman of the committee, which, after a most patient and exhaustive investiga- tion, made a report of over twelve hundred pages, in which the subject of the treatment of prisoners of war was considered from the earliest periods, as governed by the laws of nations from the time: First, when prisoners of war were murdered on capture ; secondly, when they were enslaved, with the right of the captor to kill them ; thirdly, when they were held to ransom, with the right in the captor to either enslave or murder ; fourthly, when they were exchanged, under cartels established between the combatants, without the right in the captor to either enslave or take life; and, fifthly, when there was adopted a partial system of paroles, but which is at the discre- tion of the captor, who may hold them for exchange under cartel; together with the treatment of prisoners of war in the late Rebellion. The final report was made through the chairman, third session Fortieth Con- gress, March 2, 1869, and by resolution of the House it was ordered printed. This report, much the larger part of which is the production of the General, shows his characteristic energy, his conscientious love of truth, his abhorrence of injustice and oppression, and his firm resolve to expose the abuses of prison life, with a view to their correction. He has shown that the recorded evi- dence of the purposed cruelty and inhumanity of the rebel treatment of Union prisoners points unmistakably to the low civilization wrought by slavery ; and he further shows that, eliminating from it the facts brought to light by the testimony of Union and loyal citizens, and accepting only the proof furnished from rebel sources, official and personal, collected by him, however hard the lot and cruel the suffering of the slave, the degradation of the white oppressors, their insensibility of crime, their callousness and indifference to the demands of common humanity and the ordinary precepts of morality, did even greater injury to the dominant race, thus, as ever, illus- trating the beneficent lessons of retributive and inexorable justice, in its balancing influence ; and that whenever, among any people, labor is dishonored, and is stigmatized as suited only to menial serfs-in communities in which all the power in Church and state is assumed by a select few, and totally denied to the masses; in the low con- dition of humanity that tolerates caste and enforces E-8
,
social distinctions based solely on the will of the acci- dentally governing class, and in which all authority is arrogated by one division of society, and servile submis- sion required of the other-the inevitable result is the introduction of the dry rot of moral and physical ruin among the oppressors, even more than among the op- pressed ; and the truth of this remark applies to the sexes as well. Such in brief are the views and reflections of the subject of this biographical notice, and their cor- rectness is clearly evident to all rightly ordered and properly informed persons; and these sentiments have recorded expression and most emphatic illustration in the volume thus cursorily sketched. The following ex- tracts from the report are given by way of summarizing the evidence embodied in its pages, and as enforcing its conclusion :
" As a subject closely connected with the treatment of prisoners, your committee call attention to the conduct of the colored people of the South, as described by the evidence before them. We have shown, as we think, very clearly and emphatically, who were the inveterate and implacable enemies of the prisoners ; and we are now to speak of those who were, through all their persecu- tions and woes, his faithful and steadfast, though poor and humble friends. The course and conduct of these people during the War of the Rebellion will be a study of deep interest to the historian of the future. Slaves as they were, they passed its ordeal without revolt or insurrection. They seem the calm, waiting spectators of the great struggle in which the interests of their race were so deeply involved. It is not now claimed that this seeming indifference was the result of love for their masters, or of a want of appreciation of the blessings of freedom. The African race of the South had inherited a bondage which for nearly two centuries and a half had been the condition of their ancestors in America. Their oppressors were white men, who, discarding for them the spirit and the claims of liberty, had intensified and strengthened the system of slavery by laws of the greatest rigor, and the advancement of material interests which seemed to demand its perpetuity. To the black race their captivity could but appear a hopeless one. Their servitude became day by day more abject in mind and body. They were the property of the master, and passed by the laws of inheritance; the privileges of edu- cation were denied them under the severest penalties ; the marriage relation was abrogated ; they were denied the rights of property, and were bred and sold like beasts in the market. Their poverty and degradation, at the breaking out of the Rebellion, seemed indeed to have reached the most profound depths, and to foreshadow for them, in the midst of the terrible struggle raging around them, nothing but utter destruction and annihi- lation. But Providence, in its care and mercy for the oppressed and helpless, preserved them from the horrors of such a fate. They were neither plunged by their passions into the terrible vortex of insurrection and bloodshed, nor seduced into a voluntary support of the war upon the Union. There can be but little doubt that, if they had possessed the elements and knowledge of organization, they would have been the active and effective enemies of the Rebellion. Still they were, after all, in some respects, our true and faithful auxiliaries. Without the spirit of revenge they nursed the spirit of
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loyalty. Bound hand and foot in slavery, large num- bers managed to escape and swell the ranks of the Union army. They fled from bondage to fight for liberty. These sons of poverty and oppression proved faithful to the last to the cause of liberty and Union. . But the character and magnitude of the cru- elties exercised by the rebels precluded a general retali- ation in kind. A resort to such retaliation would have produced a brutal demoralization or justifiable mutiny. The officer or soldier of the Union, while he remained worthy the name of a man, would not have stood guard over a camp in whose limits the worms and mag- gots were reveling in the wounds and sores of thirty thousand starving men. The subject is too terrible for speculation or thought. Let us dismiss it, with the congratulation that the United States has no cause to reproach itself with having visited on the brave but misguided prisoners in its hands the awful doom of An- dersonville or Salisbury. Let us rejoice that by us civilization and Christianity were not forgotten nor out- raged, and that the light of humanity was not eclipsed by a retaliation for the horrors endured in Southern prisons. We, therefore, proceed to group together the violations of public law of which the Con- federate government was guilty, and of which it to-day stands condemned by the judgment of mankind. We find them to be: I. The murder of prisoners of war after capture or surrender, and by shooting and other means while confined in prison. 2. The enslavement of persons mustered into the military organizations of the United States. 3. The search of prisoners, and the robbing and plunder of their private property and effects. 4. The unnecessary confinement of prisoners in crowded, unhealthy rooms and stockades, in pestilential localities, and in numbers inconsistent with good treatment and due regard to health and comfort. 5. The exposure of prisoners to infectious and malignant diseases. 6. The wanton and cruel neglect of the sanitary condition of prisons and prisoners. 7. The continued confinement of prisoners without a sufficient supply of clothing, fuel, water, and food, and without shelter. 8. The employ- ment and retention of harsh, cruel, and incompetent prison commanders. 9 The unnecessary infliction of corporeal punishment for slight and imaginary violation of unwarrantable prison rules. 10. The cruel use of dogs or hounds in the pursuit and recapture of escaped prisoners. 11. The illegal punishment of prisoners for attempting to escape. 12. The issue of unwholesome provisions, and the reduction of rations without just cause. 13. The retention in confinement of prisoners of war, when by its own confession, if true, it could not properly care for and maintain them, thus compelling their death by exposure, disease, and starvation. 14. Wanton and disgraceful treatment of the dead. 15. The arrest, persecution, imprisonment, and murder of non- combatant Union citizens. And all, with the guilty knowledge of the Confederate authorities. In the broad field of investigation to which this report must in the nature of things invite the attention of the American citizen, he will find ample scope for reflection on the causes and results of the Rebellion ; he will find underlying its pretenses the charm of despotic power and the allurements of human slavery, and, as the cause of its continuance, ignorance, and its kindred vices- credulity and disregard of human rights. With these the conduct of the rebels is consistent, without them their course is madness. They beheld slavery and its kindred crimes staggering before the advance of Chris- tian civilization and the genius of a republican gov-
ernment, which was gathering new light under the influence of universal education. The aggressive pow- ers of liberty and oppression here found their battle- ground and measured their strength. Slavery sought nothing short of supreme power, and the intelligent republicanism of the Union would be satisfied with nothing less than the integrity and preservation of the Republic. But the triumph of civilization and repub- lican principles has also left in its train most sad and mournful recollections of the character and consequences of the great contest. Your committee, in closing their connection with this subject, can not leave it with the impression which arises only from a contemplation of the public character and results of the Rebellion. Pro- found as is the interest which surrounds the moral and political questions involved in this investigation, there are others more personal in their character, and laden with sad and mournful memories. It is not alone of the living that they have been called upon to speak. The suggestive forms and presence of witnesses who brought from the sufferings of their prisons, and from the torture of their confinement, shattered health and the seeds of mortal disease, might well awaken the strong- est sympathy of the beholder. To these men, the suf- fering survivors of a terrible captivity, who came at the invitation of your committee to aid them in their inves- tigation, our earnest thanks are extended, with the as- surance that the deep sympathies awakened by their con- dition will not fail to follow us through life. Toward the surviving friends of those who perished in prison or returned only to meet an early death, the eyes of a na- tion saved from destruction and dissolution are turned with condolence and affection. To the memory of the fallen who perished in the depths of their imprisonment a sacrifice upon the altar of their country, the victims of the ineffaceable cruelties of the Rebellion, the grat- itude of a grateful people, whose country was saved by their heroism, will raise a monument of enduring propor- tions and grandeur, while their devoted patriotism will adorn the pages of history and win for them a garland of future fame and glory."
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