Funeral proceedings were held on October 1, 1864 to lay to rest noted Confederate spy Rose O'Neal Greenhow. Greenhow worked in an elaborate spy network that encompassed Washington D.C. and the surrounding areas. Greenhow became one of the standouts in the spy-ring, supplying vital information to the Rebel forces at critical points during the start of the Civil War. Her greatest achievement came when she supplied Confederate General Pierre G.T. Beauregard with information concerning Union movements before the first major encounter of the Civil War. Her information helped secure the Confederate victory at the First Battle of Bull Run on July 21, 1861. Confederate President Jefferson Davis later acknowledged Greenhow for her loyal service.

     Union authorities apprehended Greenhow during the first year of the war. Allan Pickerton, a Union detective and spy, suspected Greenhow of participating in espionage as early as July 1861. Pinkerton imprisoned Greenhow in Old Capitol Prison in 1862, along with Greenhow's eight-year old daughter, Rose. Five months later, Greenhow was released with the stipulation that she be exiled to the South. Once released, Greenhow boarded a blockade runner to Europe, where she continually tried to raise support for the Confederacy in both London and Paris. In 1864, Greenhow left her daughter in a convent and decided to return to America. Her ship, the Condor, sailed for North Carolina but ran aground trying to escape a Union gunboat patrolling the blockade. On September 30, Greenhow boarded a lifeboat, hoping to reach shore. However, the boat capsized, and Greenhow drowned off the coast, dragged down by a large amount of gold in her pocket.

     Hundreds of Wilmington women lined the wharf awaiting Greenhow's remains. The funeral for Greenhow was organized by the Soldier's Aid Society and held in the chapel of Hospital Number 4. The body was surrounded by wax candles, garlands, and flower bouquets. Located on the bier, a Confederate flag paid tribute to the fallen woman who helped her country at any possible opportunity. Thousands of Confederate mourners paid their last respects. On Sunday, the body and coffin were moved to the Catholic Church of St. Thomas. After the funeral service, the coffin was carried to Oakdale Cemetery, draped once again with the Confederate flag. Greenhow was finally laid to rest, two days after her untimely death on October 1, 1864. Greenhow was raised as an orphan, grew to become one of the greatest Confederate spies, and died the heroine of a nation.

In the fierce debate over the annexation of Texas, Charles Hudson, took the floor of the House of Representatives in hopes of preventing the admission of Texas to the Union.  A Whig member of the House of Representatives, representing Massachusetts, as well as a Universalist minister, Hudson emphasized the selfish motives of the Southern advocates for annexation.

The admission of Texas to the Union would have been to the South’s advantage, as many Texas citizens were southerner’s who had migrated there with their slaves, and would therefore result in another slave state, as discussed by scholar, Jesse Macy.  This would have then given the South greater representation in Congress.  As a citizen of Massachusetts, Hudson opposed the annexation of Texas because Northern states would have been overruled by the South in Congress.  Hudson’s opposition was further cemented through his political affiliation as a Whig, as the Whig Party was a party dominated by the North, and therefore opposed to the annexation of Texas and expansion of slavery.  Further, Massachusetts was specifically against annexation as it was a hotbed of resistance to the annexation, led by Whigs as discussed by scholar Kinley J. Brauer.  Whigs were also apprehensive about the possibility of war with Mexico.

The South was not keen to point out how advantageous the annexation of Texas would be to the furtherance of their interests and the continuity of slavery, but rather attempted to persuade the North that the annexation of Texas would work to preserve the Union and expand Northern industry.  Hudson addressed this as he discussed the argument made by Southern Congressmen that “the commercial advantages to be derived from a connexion [sic] with Texas would be immensely great.”  Hudson quickly saw through the possible advantages of acquiring Texas for the North, as he points out that “the very annexationists, those new-born friends of Northern manufacturers, have been constantly in the habit of assailing manufacturers.”

Besides these attempts to persuade the North that annexing Texas was in its best interest, Hudson stated that the House of Representatives received little information on why they should annex Texas.  Congress only received threats that it was important to annex Texas, because if not the South may secede as they had more to gain through affiliation with Texas than with the North.  This can be observed, according to Hudson in Mr. C. J. Ingersoll’s opening of the debate on the admission of Texas by stating “that he should offer no argument in favor of the measure, till he should hear it assailed!”  Further, Hudson pointed out that during meetings regarding the annexation of Texas throughout the South, “annexation or dissolution were the only alternatives presented.”

Hudson quickly dismissed these arguments as he argued that the annexation of Texas “is a device, got up by Messrs. Upshur and Calhoun, to place slavery on a more permanent foundation, and to give the South a balance [of] power.”  Texas would be annexed in “an attempt, in one part of the Union, to build itself up at the expense of another.”  He wanted to argue that the annexation of Texas could also have possibly led to war, and a great accumulation of debt, and would not have provided any of the advantages that the Southerners discussed.  In essence, the annexation of Texas would tear the Union apart, as “the admission of Texas into the Union would sow the seeds of discontent and alienation and do more to jeorpard[ize] the peace and endanger the perpetuity of the Union.”

Regardless of the problems Texas potentially caused the Union, Congressmen such as Hudson were succumbed to defeat, as Texas was annexed to the Union in 1845.

In 1864, Robert Knox Sneden, a Union private and mapmaker, lived as a prisoner in the notorious Andersonville Prison. During his stay, Sneden kept a diary of the conditions and daily monotony of the captives. Occasionally he gave up trying to write a daily account and would lump his entries together by the week as he did from April 8 to 20, in 1864. This particular week, Sneden talked about a group of Union criminals within the prison known as “The Raiders.”

Andersonville was a Confederate prison that was originally designed in early 1864 to hold 10,000 Union prisoners of war. By April, the prison population had reached its capacity and continued to increase until August. Prisoners suffered from terrible burdens caused by overcrowding. These problems included unsanitary living conditions, an insufficient amount of Confederate supplies, and disease. Along with these horrible living conditions, prisoners also had to deal with the threat of being mugged and killed by these thieves.

Sneden first encountered the Raiders in April when one of his fellow prisoners was killed. On a foggy night, the group killed a prisoner with pine clubs and subsequently robbed him of his overcoat and money. Due to the fog, the Raiders were able to escape undercover. The scoundrels kept together and continued to steal from prisoners on foggy nights.

 Sneden described the Raiders as a desperate set of thieves and murderers from the Belle Island prison camp located west of Richmond, Virginia in the James River. Most of them were from the slums of the cities and originally served time in prison before they listed in the Union army. Sneden expressed discontentment in saying “…no one’s life is safe among us as long as these Raiders have their own way.” To help each other fight, members lived in groups. Sneden added that “They are given a ‘wide berth’ and no right minded prisoner will venture into their quarters knowingly, as he is sure to be robbed of everything he has if he does.”

 To counter the Raiders, prisoners organized a police force known as “The Regulators.” This group of fifty or more of the largest and strongest men used club force to keep Raiders from attacking. Twenty of the men were to move about the camp during the day while twenty-five stood at important points at night to head off and club Raiders. A certain portion of each man’s ration was to be allotted to these men in order to keep them in shape for fighting. The chief of the Regulators, “Big Pete,” was to decide the cases among prisoners and lash them with the cat-o-nine-tails when they were found guilty.

John Brown, noted abolitionist, was arrested after his raid on Harper’s Ferry in early October 1859. He was taken to Charles Town, in present day West Virginia to be tried. Early in the trial, a surprise telegraph arrived that placed Brown’s sanity in question, but the court eventually disregarded the insanity plea largely aided by Brown himself who pronounced that he of all people, should know if he was insane and he deemed himself sane. Witnesses gave testimony on Brown’s raid. On October 31, Brown received the guilty verdict on all counts:  treason, conspiring with slaves to rebel, and murder.

On November 2, when the judge asked Brown if he had anything he wanted to say, Brown rose from the cot on which he had been lying the entire trial due to injuries sustained at Harper’s Ferry and addressed the court. Brown denied having committed any crime aside from wanting to free the slaves. He stated that he never intended to murder, to commit treason, or to incite slaves into a rebellion. However, having had committed murder, Brown did not appear remorseful of that fact. His only goal was to free the slaves as God wanted him to do. He seemed resigned saying, “if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments--I submit; so let it be done!” Brown spoke a couple more words to the court and then resumed his position on the cot.

A month after his closing words, on December 2, Brown was  hanged outside of Charles Town. Brown left a lasting impression on both the North and the South. Many southerners saw Brown as a fanatic and one who had threatened their way of life. Some northerners viewed Brown as a visionary man who wanted to help the deprived slaves while others agreed with the southern view. Still others chose to ignore him altogether. Even after Brown’s execution, his raid on Harper’s Ferry stood as the beginning of the end of civil relationships between the North and South.

Cyrus McCormick gave a public demonstration of his newly improved Reaper near the little town of Lexington, Virginia in 1832. Around 100 people were present to watch the twenty-three year-old innovator’s contraption take to a field of grain. Herbert N. Casson explained in his book, Cyrus Hall McCormick: His Life and Work, that the crowd included “several political leaders of local fame, farmers, professors, laborers, and a group of Negroes who frolicked and shouted in uncomprehending joy.” Undoubtedly, this demonstration would be one of the most important in American agricultural history, considering that the harvesting of grain was done by hand with scythes and sickles up until this point.

As McCormick made his way across John Ruff’s hilly field, the reaper appeared to be an utter failure as it jolted in various directions. Ruff shouted in protest, “Stop your horses. You are rattling the heads off my wheat!” The young farmer-inventor felt humiliated to have his machine proven faulty in front of this large group of bystanders.

Laborers celebrated McCormick’s failure, as his machine was their challenger in the labor market. These men resented the reaper, similar to the drivers of stage-coaches dislike for railroads. Professional harvesters felt that their jobs were threatened by the machine, considering it had the potential to harvest ten acres of grain per day compared to their average of two to three acres.

A young farmer, William Taylor, approached the dejected McCormick: “I’ll give you a fair chance, young man. That field of wheat on the other side of the fence belongs to me. Pull down the fence and cross over.” If Taylor did not ask for McCormick to try his machine in his patch of grain, it is unclear what might have become of his reputation.

McCormick gratefully accepted Taylor’s invitation. This field proved much more level which allowed the reaper to perform well. Before sundown, McCormick’s reaper had laid low six acres of wheat in front of the large audience.  The fear of those against the machine was rightfully formed. The reaper could harvest more in less than a day than they could do in several days.

The reaper was driven back to the courthouse square of Lexington, where it remained on display for the public to see, and praise. Professor Robert Bradshaw of the Lexington Female Academy said emphatically, “This-machine-is worth- a hundred-thousand-dollars.” McCormick joked that he would gladly sell his machine for nearly half as much. Little did he know that his machine was the beginning of a company that revolutionized grain harvesting.  With his reaper, he was able to defeat the task of feeding the hungry masses and eliminate the back breaking work of manually harvesting wheat.  The crude machine that Cyrus McCormick slaved over in the small log workshop on a Virginia farm, was about to revolutionize harvesting around the world.

In 1971, schools attempting to overcome segregation faced fierce opposition in the North. The year before the South passed the North in integration of schools and the North’s integration record continued to decline in the 1960s. The question facing Americans was whether the busing plans would overcome the opposition. Some cities moved forward with the forced integration via busing, but other cities fought back. Opposition ranged from legal appeals to violence. President Nixon held a strong anti-busing stance and instructed the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare to “work with individual school districts to hold busing to the minimum required by law.” Some felt that his opposition caused more problems.

The New York Times examined specific cases to see how desegregation was taking place. In Houston, Texas, Nixon intervened with citywide busing and “asked the Justice Department to appeal the ruling.” Denver, Colorado’s opposition won in their court case and went on to consider other plans. San Francisco, California saw “heckling and fist fights” at meetings discussing busing. They experienced large opposition from Chinese-Americans, as well as conservative whites. The assistant chief of the Office of Intergroup Relations for the California Department of Education, Ted Neff, felt that “Racial and ethnic isolation is increasing.” Wichita, Kansas, under pressure to integrate, chose to integrate according to the “city’s racial make-up”. Pontiac, Michigan appealed a court order to start busing in the fall failed and ten buses were firebombed as school was beginning that year. The Seattle, Washington school board attempted to implement a citywide busing plan, but was stopped by a court order. Rochester, New York began busing voluntarily, while Providence, Rhode Island was in it’s third stage of desegregation, there were still strong objections seen here. Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Duluth, of Minnesota, underwent partial integration. The states of Pennsylvania and Massachusetts sternly enforced busing, particularly in major cities. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania began a busing program in 1970 “based on the students’ racial and economic background.” Pittsburgh and Philadelphia appealed the order. “Richardson Dilworth, president of the Philadelphia school board and former Mayor, said, ‘The white population of this city would never permit the kind of massive cross-busing the order would require, nor would the City Council or the state legislature appropriate the money’” The Massachusetts Board of Education chose to deny $21.3 million dollars in funding from Boston, because of their unwillingness to comply with the busing program.

These events coincided with, and in some cases were a reaction to, the influential court case of Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education (1971). This stated that because racial integration is so important, busing could be used, if necessary. Opponents to busing, like the cities mentioned in the article, felt busing interfered with their community. Although Nixon campaigned on a strict anti-busing stance, he was not able to stop the busing programs from moving forward. Americans feared that the same type of violence which was seen in the desegregation of the Southern schools would be seen in the North.

South Bostonians, mostly Irish-Americans, felt frustrated and angry after just three weeks of forced busing in 1974 according to the New York Times. Federal Judge W. Arthur Garity ordered busing because he felt that “the local school authorities operated a deliberately segregated system.” During the three weeks school was open, there had already been altercations, including “a lunch-tray hurling, spaghetti-tossing brawl that emptied the school.” Attempts were made to stop the tension with a “biracial committee of students”, but protestors felt this was not enough. Police stood by as crowd control when the marchers, joined by local politicians, gathered in Marine Park. The march, sponsored by the local Home and School Association, coincided with a boycott of schools “that cut school attendance in half.” The permit for the demonstration specified that protestors were not allowed to march to schools. Protestors, nearly 5,000 in number, represented a mixture of ages, mostly young to middle-aged and carried signs with slogans “with racial undercurrents.”

Boston schools faced many problems with desegregation. Desegregation in the North was harder in many ways because the segregation was de facto. White residents in these areas felt that busing hurt neighborhood schools. Boston’s particular busing plan caused a lot of turmoil that continued throughout the 1970s. The city was by far the most extreme case of busing. Making matters worse, as the protests and violence got stronger over the decade, the courts broadened the busing program. Busing in Boston finally ended in 1988.

Boston schools faced many problems with desegregation.  Desegregation in the North was harder in many ways because the segregation was de facto.  White residents in these areas felt that busing hurt neighborhood schools.  Boston’s particular busing plan caused a lot of turmoil that continued throughout the 1970s.  The city was by far the most extreme case of busing.  Making matters worse, as the protests and violence got stronger over the decade, the courts broadened the busing program.  Busing in Boston finally ended in 1988.

Many African-Americans had become frustrated with the slow rate of racial progress in the 1960s.  While Martin Luther King Jr. and others protested racial injustices in a nonviolent way, other African-American lost patience with the attitude of whites towards these movements.  Stokely Carmichael, a one-time non-violence believer, became an advocate and leader of the “Black Power” movement.  This movement called for a more violent and direct way of protesting against the inequality between whites and blacks.  “For too many years, black Americans marched and had their heads broken in and got shot,” Carmichael stated in the New York Review of Books.  Indeed, much of the peaceful resistance put up by King and other Civil Rights leaders served only to frustrate the white population rather than make them change.  While the south was full of passive protests, Northerners like Carmichael felt a growing anger inside with the way racial progress was going.

            Carmichael called for young black people to join his Black Power Movement, which was more aggressive in both speech and actions.  Carmichael denounced the concept of integration, saying that “. . . in order to have a decent house or education, blacks must move into a white neighborhood or send their children to a white school.”  Instead, he argued that blacks should have better facilities in the first place so they can be in a less hostile environment (presuming the hostility of schools consisting mainly of whites).

            This type of attitude appealed to many younger African-Americans who saw their parents and leaders of the Civil Rights Movement beaten down without any repercussions or retaliation.  The youth saw no progress being made and thought that a resistance that was not as passive may be the only way to get justice. Carmichael says in the New York Review of Books “One of the tragedies of the struggle against racism is that up to now there has been no national organization which could speak to the growing militancy of young black people in the urban ghetto.”  This type of movement was popular, but also drew the wrath of white law enforcement and the government, who were less likely to accept this method of resistance than the nonviolent variation adapted by the southern Civil Rights activists.

In the Fall of 1995 the Los Angeles Times gave a hard look at Los Angeles’ ethnic gulf and noted how the city was balkanizing. The city of Los Angeles has long been a tense place in terms of race-relations.  The intermixing of different peoples set the stage for violent race riots in the early 1990s, which were kicked off when Rodney King was beat savagely in 1992 by four LAPD officers and the police were found innocent of all charges.  The trial and subsequent acquittal of OJ Simpson in 1995 added fuel to the simmering divides between ethnicities..  The race riots did not simply take place between blacks and whites—Latinos and Asians also feuded with those who did not share the same heritage.  The time for peaceful resolutions to these race problems had long since passed, as Los Angeles has always been more open to a diverse population more so than other cities in the United States.  The Los Angeles Times journalists noted: “In many ways, L.A. symbolizes the racism in this country like probably no other city.  It’s become the poster city for racism in America.”  The economic problems of Los Angeles during this time, as well as the constant drug trafficking, further intensified the racial tension in the City of Angels.  Residents of Los Angeles competed for money whether they could obtain it legally or illegally, and if a member of a different race took another race’s means to make a profit, racial hostility occurred. 

            The riots in the early 1990s were brutal; residents reported incidents of people being dragged out of their cars and being beaten.  All races were involved in the simmering tensions in Los Angeles.  Buildings were looted and set ablaze, and Los Angeles’s reputation would not recover from the highly publicized events.  “A place once viewed as idyllic and tolerant, a palm-lined paradise, has come to be seen as quite the opposite—a worst-case example” claimed the Times writers..  The Los Angeles Race Riots were large in scale and gave the city a tarnished image in the view of the rest of America.  Citizens of the city found out that the easiest way to avoid the racial problems was to avoid other groups altogether.

Born Bobby Zimmerman, Bob Dylan escaped a life in small town Minnesota and eventually arrived in Greenwich Village, New York in 1961.   Andrew Muchin, author of the article “Dylan’s Jewish Pilgrimage,” argues that Dylan’s arrival in New York gave him the chance to “reinvent himself as the musical heir to folk troubadour Woody Guthrie.” Zimmerman’s choice of names, given the prominence he achieved as Bob Dylan, begs for explanation.

In Chronicles: Volume I, Dylan says himself that “I’d seen some poems by Dylan Thomas… People had always called me Robert or Bobby, but Bobby Dylan sounded to [sic] skittish to me…” By the time Dylan reached New York and was asked his name he “… instinctively and automatically without thinking simply said, ‘Bob Dylan.’”

When recreating himself something would have had to happen to the old identity. Dylan explains Zimmerman’s disappearance was due to a motorcycle accident in 1964. In the place of Bobby, Andrew Muchin believes, Bob Dylan began his career by “re-animating tradition-laden folk music with original, topical songs.” Bob Dylan found success with this in his songs such as “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “Masters of War” and “Like A Rolling Stone.” As Dylan notes he became labeled the conscience of a generation but really, he felt he “…was only a musician.”  In Muchin’s article Dylan’s Jewish Identity is questioned and the feeling is “There’s a sense of Jewishness, especially culturally, but also an overriding feeling that ‘you’re an American.’”