While the battles and emotions making up the American Civil War took place far from the territory of Washington, the land that would eventually become the 42nd state in the union on Nov. 11, 1889 found itself affected by the conflict nonetheless. Before, during and after, the Civil War’s impacts were felt across this land.
Mixed support for slavery
Washington Territory was carved out of the Oregon Territory in 1853, and consisted of the present day state along with Idaho and Western Montana until 1863. Also coming with the change was the provisions of the Organic Act of 1848, which extended the mandate that U.S. territories north of the Ohio River remain free of slavery, to Oregon.
As a territory and state, Oregon passed legislation barring free blacks from residing within its boundaries. Washington, on the other hand, did not.
In 1857, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the Dred Scott case that Congress did not have the power to prohibit slavery in the territories. Washington’s territorial legislature passed a resolution approving of the decision, but the ruling had no practical effect in the Northwest.
HistoryLink.org associate editor and historian John Caldbick notes in his 2013 essay “Civil War and Washington Territory” that there was “little if any public support for allowing slavery in the territory despite the fact that a significant number of those settling in the area had come from slaveholding states.” Part of that feeling came from the fact that, unlike the states of what would become the Confederacy, Washington’s economy had no need for slave labor and was subsequently not based on it.
Because many of those settling in Washington, which at the opening of the war in April 1861 had just over 11,500 people, were from southern states the territory was largely affiliated with the Democratic Party. Virtually all of its elected officials and representatives were Democratic, which led to sympathies for the South’s cause, to a certain point.
Caldbick notes that while slavery was prohibited in the territory, slaves were not as long as they had not “originally been enslaved and bought and sold within its boundaries.” The best records indicate that only two slaves were known to live in Washington at the time, one rumored to be a woman while the other was “well documented” to be Charles Mitchell from a plantation in Maryland.
Anti-secession
While no opinion polls are available from that era, the best analysis of Washington residents feelings on the coming war and issues around it come from editorials in local newspapers. To that effect, this often mirrored an editorial written in Olympia’s “Pioneer and Democrat” prior to the election of 1860 in which the editors noted that the battle over slavery represented “a crisis in political affairs, compared with which all former ones were as gentle gales to the destroying whirlwinds.”
But the editorial also stated what was likely the public sentiment at the time that “no force of argument can dislodge the simple but powerful fact, that the abolition of slavery, except by the lapse of time and the direct destiny of man, could confer no blessings on the white or colored race in America.” These split feelings are further illustrated by the fact that after the election, Republicans — who were small but growing minority party in the state — formed a coalition with supporters of Democratic presidential candidate Stephen Douglas — who believed the slavery issue in the territories should be decided by a vote of the people — in the lower house of the territorial Legislature.
Caldbick writes that because of this and other events, the public feelings towards slavery seemed to reflect the Republican position at the time —that slavery be allowed to continue in the states where it existed but barred elsewhere.
While Washingtonians had different view on the slavery issue, they had a clear feeling about secession — and that was opposition. The reason was very simple: at some point the population hoped to join the Union as a state, and that wouldn’t be possible if the Union they knew ceased to exist. To that degree, they threw their support in the war behind President Abraham Lincoln.
“Whilst we regret the election to the Presidency of one whose principles are aggressive of Southern rights, we maintain that it is the patriotic duty of every good citizen to stand by that preference which the Nation has expressed conformably to the provisions of the Constitution. We therefore, disavow all sympathy with those who place themselves in the attitude of Rebels against that powers that be,” the editors of the Port Townsend Register wrote.
Washington in war
The spread of news was not as instantaneous in the mid 19th century as it would soon become. Word of the start of the Civil War didn’t reach the Northwest until April 28, 1861 when the steamship Cortez brought the word to Portland, Ore. Steilacoom’s Puget Sound Herald announced its start on the front page of its May 2 edition.
While no battles were fought in the territory, Washington did feel a military presence arising from the conflict. Many officers served at frontier forts in the region, including Ulysses S. Grant, Philip Sheridan and George B. McClellan for the Union and George Pickett for the Confederacy. Locally, Brigadier General George Wright served as commander of the Union’s Department of the Pacific.
Following Lincoln’s lead, in May 1861 Washington Gov. Henry M. McGill issued a proclamation calling for volunteers to serve in a territorial militia, but with little success. Shortly thereafter, Adjutant General Franklin Matthias of Seattle appointed men in each of the Territory’s 22 counties to identify and record “all persons liable for Militia duty.”
While this proved more fruitful, only six of the counties responded, producing a headcount of 361 volunteers, many without useful weapons.
Eventually, Col. Justus Steinberger was dispatched from Washington D.C. in October 1861 to raise a regiment of volunteers who were mainly needed to garrison the forts, such as at Colville and Walla Walla, that were left vacant when their garrisons of Union soldiers were recalled to the East to fight. Steinberger eventually raised the regiment, but with seven of its eight companies made up of volunteers from California.
Most of the concerns among military officials at the time were centered on the threat of privateers serving the Confederacy raiding Union shipping. To that effect, two forts were established to guard the mouth of the Columbia River, but saw no action.
Two attempts to commandeer vessels appear to have arisen from concerns made by the U.S. consul in Victoria B.C. One of these was thwarted when the captain and most of the crew of the Shubrick were detained onshore, allowing the second in command to sail the vessel to Port Townsend.
The others, if they existed, may have been averted when the Union sent the USS Saginaw and USS Narragansett to sail Puget Sound waters at various times during the war. Neither found any privateers.
Legacy
The biggest impact of the Civil War in Washington really came after its conclusion when many of those who fought on either side settled in the region. According to information from the Cheney Historical Museum, about 144 veterans lived in the area at some point and are buried in cemeteries in Cheney, Medical Lake, Spokane and surrounding smaller communities.
Many of these individuals were active in their communities, joined local chapters of the Grand Army of the Republic and eventually had major landmarks and features named after them. The most colorful of these might by the individual who homesteaded near the lake that now bears his name — John Williams.
Williams, who served in the Confederate’s Company H of the 5th Kentucky Infantry, settled near what was then Philleo Lake in 1870. Originally a sheepherder, Williams eventually became known for fine horses and cattle, a herd that museum director Joan Mamanakis said was rumored to have “grown unnaturally fast.”
A lifelong bachelor, Williams was said to have been a regular in the social scene in Cheney, attending dances and being extra friendly with women.
“He was said to be quite the character,” Mamanakis said.
Williams was also apparently well off financially. According to a 1967 Cheney Free Press article, he was one of three local men who pledged $5,000 each to the National Bank of Cheney to keep it solvent during the bank panic of 1893. When Williams found out he was the only one who actually loaned the money to the bank, he resigned his position on the bank board and demanded his money back, which he received in gold.
He subsequently swore off using financial institutions and was rumored to have buried his gold somewhere near Williams Lake. In 1967, Harry Barchowsky uncovered a small number of gold pieces while tending his garden on the former Williams property, and the owner of the land, Al Weismann, also dug up some gold coins.
Mamanakis added she hoped people wouldn’t go traipsing through private property to continue the search.
“People have been looking for years and no one (else) has found any (of his pieces),” she said.
Other features bear the names of Civil War veterans. Crunk’s Hill, razed in 2011 to become the Cheney School District’s Crunks Field sports complex, was named after George W. Crunk, who fought for the Union in Company C of the 20th Regiment of the Kentucky Infantry, and was home to one of the first schoolhouses in Spokane County in 1878.
John H. Betz, a prominent farmer who settled north of Cheney in 1881, served in the war twice, most notably the second time around in Company K of the 33rd Illinois Veteran Volunteer Infantry. According to the “Story of Spokane County” published in 1900, Betz took part in numerous skirmishes and 13 heavy engagements, including the siege of Vicksburg and took 12 Confederate prisoners at the battle of Champion Hill.
Finally, John Wolfe, who served in a Confederate regiment in the war’s final months, moved to the area in 1889. Three of his sons, Clever, Garnett and Kyle, invented the “Cheney Rod Weeder,” which was manufactured at the edge of the town along Cheney-Spangle Road and sold worldwide to farmers, proving effective in removing weeds on farmland until the advent of chemical prevention in the middle of the 20th century.
These men, along with many others who settled in the state, brought their feelings, experiences and allegiances with them to the region. Mixed with those who already had settled here, and with others who came later, they helped make Washington and the Inland Empire what it is today.
John McCallum can be reached at [email protected].
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