The Young Campaigner

Redware and Brown Earthenware and its Use in the 19th Century

by William Chapman

Surely almost everyone in the living history community is familiar with the sometimes primitive, sometimes beautiful glazed pottery that has come to be known as Redware. This earth-toned pottery has been known for ages for its strength, its rich color, and its versitility. Commonly, this type of pottery is associated with the 18th century, but it has enjoyed a much longer history than that. Miriam Webster's dictionary defines redware as "earthenware pottery made of clay containing considerable iron oxide". It is this iron oxide that gives it its beautiful rust-colored appearance. Redware has been found extensively in archaeological digs all over the western hemisphere, and there is no doubt that its use was widespread. However, by the mid nineteenth century, who was using it? What was it used for? Was there any particular social class that used it more than others?

19th century redware pitcher with brown glaze.

Let's start with some background on redware. Redware is one of the oldest forms of pottery, found in Europe long before recorded history (some dating back to the 12th century BC). It is composed of one of the several major types of potter's clay, red-firing clay, which is prevalent in America. Red-firing clay, because of its high iron content, turns red when exposed to high heat. In its unglazed form, redware is also known as terra cotta, and has been used for flowerpots and tiles for hundreds of years. Redware has been in production on American soil since the 1600's. In the recent excavations at Jamestown, evidence of earthenware made in Europe as well as on-site has been dug in large quantities. Redware is glazed, just like most pottery, and certain glazes can be identified with different areas. Most glazes were clear, but a black glaze appears on English-made pottery. Elaborate artwork can be done on the pottery either by scratching the surface and glazing over it or "slip trailing", which is done by drawing designs on with a different color of clay, usually yellow.

In its mineral composition, brown earthenware is not much different from redware other than the fact that it contains less iron oxide, giving it less of a rust color.

By the dawn of the 19th century, England had moved on to producing more fashionable pearlware and china, leaving America to produce inexpensive and durable earthenware. America's elite and growing middle class bought the British-made goods, while the lower class relied on red, brown, yellow, and cream colored earthenware for their everyday needs.

Redware has turned up in the excavation of Five Points, a 19th century neighborhood in New York city, in use for common domesic items such as chamber pots, pitchers, and even piggy banks. The use of redware in a middle and lower class area such as the Points would suggest that it was definately present in 19th century daily life. Most of the Five Points redware is fairly plain, sometimes bearing pressed designs or other small decoration, but it is far simpler than the elaborate slip-trailed redware of past centuries.

Redware makes appearances in lower-class 19th century context quite often, and there is even concrete evidence of its use by civilians in the Civil War years.

This image shows an officer in camp during the war with his wife and children. On the table is some kind of white-glazed pot, while a brown or red earthenware pot sits on the ground.

From the evidence that we have today, it appears that redware was most common among the lower and middle classes. Finding it in Five Points, other archeaological sites, and period photographs all seem to point towards this conclusion. Redware was inexpensive, practical for use in the kitchen and in the field, and easily obtained by the working class.

Stephen Foster and His Influence on 19th Century Music

by William Chapman

One of the most influential people in 19th century American music is Stephen Foster. Along with Daniel Emmett, Dan Rice, Joel Walker Sweeney, and many others, Stephen Foster wrote and performed songs that were loved all over the country. His songs would be played on plantations, in dirty roadside inns, on Mississippi River steamboats, and by the light of countless army bivouac fires.

Foster was born on Independance Day in 1826 in Lawrenceville, Pennsylvania. It was on the same day, in the evening, that Thomas Jefferson and John Adams both passed away. He grew up in a poor household with nine siblings and an alcoholic father. Stephen's oldest sister, Charlotte, was already talanted pianist by the time of Stephen's birth. In 1829, Charlotte died of Malaria in Louisville, Kentucky. Her death as well as several other events added to the unhappiness of Stephen's childhood.

Foster's teenage years proved to be happier than his earlier ones. He started taking classical music lessons from a German immigrant named Henry Kleber, who owned a music store in Pittsburg. Foster learned to play the flute at Athens Academy and later performed his first composition on it in Athens, Pennsylvania. Also, in 1833, his father got involved in the temperance movement and took an oath to stop drinking.

During Stephen Foster's adolescent years, a new form of music was becoming popular in the United States. It was called minstrel music. Based on flamboyant and often insulting parodies of Southern lower class white and black culture, minstrel music began to become a popular phenomenon. Joel Walker Sweeney, who is credited with the invention of the five string banjo, performed and wrote many minstrel songs and traveled all over the country performing them. Sweeney and his group, the Virginia Minstrels, performed in blackface, which was a kind of performance where whites dressed up as blacks by rubbing burnt cork on themselves and performed cheerful songs with exaggerated accents. Not all minstrel musicians performed in blackface, but it was quite common. This form of music and performance grew to be extremely popular in the 1830's and 1840's.

In the meantime, Stephen was beginning to make a living on his own. He got a job as a bookkeeper in his brother's merchant firm. For his new job, Foster moved to Cincinatti, Ohio. It was in Cincinatti that Foster wrote "Oh! Susanna", one of his most famous songs. The year was 1847. The song was first performed at Andrew's Eagle Ice Cream Saloon in Pittsburgh. The song was almost an instant hit.

In the next six years, Foster published four more hit songs: Nelly Was a Lady, Camptown Races, Old Folks at Home, and My old Kentucky Home. Despite Foster's success, he felt that his songs were being misunderstood. Foster was different from many minstrel tune writers in that he did not intend to mock slaves in his songs. True, he did write several of his songs in the lyrical style of minstrel songs, but they were not intended to be mocking or hurtful. Foster even went so far as to describe other minstrel songs as "trashy and offensive." Nonetheless, Foster's songs were performed in minstrel shows all over the country.

Stephen moved to New York in 1860 with his wife Jane and their daughter Marion. By 1862, Foster's songwriting had begun to go downhill. The North and the South had split and his country was torn by war. Foster would not live to see the end of the war. He turned to alcoholism and died in Bellvue Hospital in New York City in 1864. Foster is still misunderstood to this day. It is a common belief that Foster was a Southerner. However, Foster only visited the deep South once and he spent most of his life living in Northern states. He advocated Northern political views and showed true compassion for the slaves, unlike many minstrel songwriters of his day.

That is what made Stephen Foster stand out. He wrote beloved and lasting songs, but all of them were tasteful. That is why Foster's songs have lasted so long. While other songs faded away when peoples' opinions changed, Foster's songs remained beloved favorites. That was his contrribution to American music.

Sources:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/foster/timeline/timeline2.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Foster

An Examination of Five Occupational Photos

The common people in 19th Century America worked hard. Often, the way thy behaved or dressed was affected by their line of work. Tradesmen were proud of their hard work as well. That is why occupational photographs were popular with working-class Americans before the Civil War. Here is an examination of four of those photos from the Library of Congress. These images are all 1850's and they all show the common man's pride for his work.

This image shows a carpenter with his various tools. He is wearing a white work shirt with a large collar, which he wears down over a cravat or kerchief. Such work shirts were commonly worn by tradesmen in 19th Century America as a rugged, practical garment. These shirts were not worn with braces and commonly fit more loosely that regular shirts. This carpenter appears to be wearing hickory or jean cloth trowsers. A small chair sits beside him (possibly some of his work) and a plane and two chizels sxit on top of it. The carpenter wears a low-crowned straw hat with a wide band around it. He has a close-cropped beard of the style that was popular fo young and middle-aged men in the 1850's and 1860's. In his hands, he holds a hammer and a small cut nail. This man makes his profession very evident in his portrait by displaying his tools.

This daguerrotype shows a traveling salesman displaying his wares. He holds two palletes filled with books, pencils, hairbrushes, and other various items (pomade?). A small japanned conical object in the center of the lower pallette is possibly a small child's trumpet. The salesman wears a paletot coat and two straps over his shoulders for carrying his peddler's trunks. Under his coat, the salesman wears a shawl-collar vest (possibly silk) with covered buttons. Around his neck is a black cravat. His hair is parted on the right side and slicked backwards. It also appears that he is wearing a pocket watch (a small chain is visible to the left of his fourth button down). This man was probably a door to door peddler such as the one in this photograph:

This peddler is quite similar to the other one. He is very well dressed in a frock coat and has a cravat on. In this photograph, his trunks can be clearly seen with the japanning being worn off. Both salesmen are displaying their "tools of the trade", but there are some major differences between them and some other tradespeople of the time period. One thing that is very noticeable is that both salesmen are fairly well dressed, which probably means that they made a little bit better living than a common tradesman (they also needed to be well dressed for their job).

This image shows a surveyor and all of his equipment. Surveyors made good money in the 19th century for their work, partially because surveying required a great deal of education as opposed to some other occupations. Behind him is a transit on a tripod. He his holding a map and a set of calipers. He wears a dark wool sack coat and an off-white shawl collar vest underneath it. A simple black cravat is around his neck. Like other occupational photos, this man is displaying his tools with pride for his line of work.

Two teamsters and their oxen standing in front of a wooden fence or barn wall appear in this image. Both of the teamsters are wearing large smocks with pockets on the front. These garments are fairly unusual. Both are wearing oilcloth mechanic's caps and high riding boots. The one on the left holds a crop in his hand. The oxen are yoked and prepared to go. This image is fairly unusual for an occupational photo. It is large and taken outdoors. Most are taken inside and show only the torso of the subject. Obviously, these two teamsters wanted to show their oxen as well as themselves.

As different from one another as all of the trades and occupations in the 19th century were, one thing that everyone was familiar with was photography. Photography allowed tradesmen to show pride in their occupation. Today, they provide a valuable resource to researchers looking for the way a person with a specific way of life would have looked.

Bullets, Clubs, and Bricks Did Fly: 19th Century Street Gangs

One thing that plagued almost every large city and town in 19th Century America was street gangs. Hordes of juvenile delinquents traveled the streets, causing mischief and sometimes even deadly violence. They bore names like the "Dead Rabbits", the "Bowery Boys", the "Baxter Street Dudes", the "Butcher Dogs", and the "Daybreak Boys". These gangs were mostly made up of poor neglected adolescents, rowdy firemen, runaway children seeking a new way of life, and homeless vagrants with little else to do. These groups of rowdy "street Arabs", as they were known, were incredibly common.

Gangs in America's cities started as early as the 1830's, when large slum areas began to be increasingly more common. Perhaps the most famous slum was Five Points in New York. Five Points was a large and notoriously brutal slum in Manhattan that had been set up on the location of a pond that had been drained in 1820. Only the low-income population remained in Five Points, so it became a haven for hoodlums, thiefs, robbers, vagrants, and prostitutes. Five Points holds the record for the highest murder rate of any slum in the world. Pigs lived in the streets, plaster crumbled, children played in the streets in their own filth, and gangs roamed the alleys. This neighborhood was the home of at least three rival gangs: The Dead Rabbits, The Roach Guards, and The Bowery Boys. In the year 1862 alone, ten percent of New York's population was arrested for involvement with these gangs.

The gang members were not only adolescent boys. Some of the ages of gang members are shocking. Some were as young as nine. Even more shocking was the fact that several New York gangs were composed of all girls. They had names like the "Forty Little Thieves" and the "Lady Locusts". In many instances, female gangs were equally as violent as male gangs. The Forty Little Thieves, like many other New York gangs, was composed almost completely of Irish imigrants.

Several of the New York gangs were involved in the draft riots, which went on from July 11 to July 16, 1863. As a protest to the draft into the Union army, they attacked the Provost Marshall's office on July 11 and set it ablaze. Fire Zouaves from the New York Fire Department were involved with the riot, as well as gang menbers of the Five Points gang called the Dead Rabbits. The same day, the mob burned the Bull's Head Hotel on Fifth Avenue simply because it would not serve alcohol. By Wednesday, July 13, 800 US troops had been sent to New York city to stop the rioting and order was restored after a bloody conflict at Gramercy Park on the previous day.

The New York draft riots were perhaps the largest example of gang violence in the 19th century. Not to mention, they were (or at least they started as) a political protest. It was not unusual for gangs to inject politics into their views. In Baltimore, a gang called the Plug Uglies sided with the Know-Nothing Party in the 1850's. The Plug Uglies were involved in several election riots in Baltimore. Most gangs during that period held a political or social stance, unlike the bank-robber gangs of the 20th century.

It seems that most of the gang violence that occurred in the 19th century was small knock-down-drag-out type fights. Two rival gangs would square off against each other and then a brawl would erupt. One song, titled "The Dead Rabbits Fight With the Bowery Boys", says:

"They had a dreadful fight, upon last Saturday night,
The papers gave the news accordin ;
Guns, pistols, clubs and sticks, hot water and old bricks,
Which drove them on the other side of Jordan"

For more research and information on nineteenth century gangs, visit the website of theThe Daybreak Boys, a living history association dedicated to recreating the Daybreak Boys gang and others in the New York area.

Social Movements of the 19th Century

The 19th Century was a time of many social movements. What is a social movement? It is a group, class, political party, society, or other loose group of people who work together for a common belief or goal. It can be beneficial to your impression today to learn about these movements and try to portray a member of one of them or someone who is effected by one. I understand that most kids under 16 were too young to be involved in many of the movements of the time, but almost all of them would have been aware of at least one of these movements. These were momentous and important things. Take the time to learn about at least one movements in order to better understand the spirit of the times.

Temperance-

The Temperance Movement was a movement against the production and consumption of alcoholic beverages. Temperance was one of the most widespread movements in 19th century America. It was the most popular with both men and women in the North. The Temperance movement got its start in 1826 with the founding of the American Temperance Society. By 1838, the ATS had over 1,500,000 members. By the 1830's, other societies were being formed with the same goal such as The Anti-Saloon League, The Templars of Honor And Temperance, and The Sons of Temperance. Many Protestant churches also began to advocate temperance.

This Temperance Movement illustration shows a drunkard being tormented by demons.

The Temperance movement said that alcohol was bad for the mind, the body, and society. Some even linked alcohol with the Devil. The Temperance societies started their members off young. The American Temperance Society (which changed its name in the 1840's to the Abstinence Society) had a pledge for children that read: "I do hereby pledge myself to abstain entirely and forever from the use of all intoxicating liquor as a drink."

Heavy alcohol consumption was common in the 19th century. Because of this, the idea of Temperance was looked upon as radical and extreme. In some places, the progress of the Temperance movement was met with strong and sometimes violent resistance. When Temperance activist Neil Dow got the Maine Law passed in Maine in 1851 that made alcohol illegal in the state, the people responded with riots. Despite the opposition, the Temperance Movement continued well into the 20th Century.

Abolition-

One of the most well known social movements of the nineteenth century is the abolitionist movement. Abolitionists were anti-slavery activists who were usually only active in Northern states. The Abolitionist movement began in the 18th century when Quakers began to oppose slavery, arguing that it was a moral wrong. By the 1830's, abolitionism had gained a large following of both women and men. Abolitionists were mostly white, but a growing number of free blacks began to join them.

In 1845, a former slave named Frederick Douglass published his autobiography, which told of the horrors that he experienced as a child when he was a slave. Douglass used his own experiences to argue against slavery and became a popular abolitionist speaker later in his life. Female abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe published her controversial book, Uncle Tom's Cabin in 1853, which also charachterized slavery as a great evil. There were several abolitionist newspapers in the North such as The Liberator, but they only obtained limited popularity.

Abolitionism was probably one of the most detested and least popular movements of the 19th century. It was strongly opposed by slaveholding Southerners, who saw that slavery was an important part of the economy. Abolitionism remained a relatively small movement compared to others.

Know-Nothings and Nativists-

The American Party was an American nativist political party that was opposed to immigration. They were commonly referred to as Know-Nothings by other Americans because whenever they were questioned about their activities within the party, they would reply that they knew nothing. The Know-Nothings worked to stop the immigration of several groups, including Irish Catholics, to the Uninted States. They believed that Irish Catholics and other followers of the Pope would undermine democracy. The thought was that there could not be democracy if citizens of that democracy were answering to another supreme power at the same time.

The Know-Nothing Party began to decline by the middle of the 1850's as it was divided over slavery. Many of the anti-slavery Know-Nothings turned to the Republican party because of its anti-slavery views. In the election of 1856, Millard Fillmore ran for a third term as a Know-Nothing candidate and lost to James Buchanan.

Image of Millard Fillmore and Andrew Donelson on a campaign broadside from 1856

Nativists were famous for putting up signs in their businesses when they were looking for new employees that read "N.I.N.A.", which means "No Irish Need Apply". The Know-Nothing Party lasted as a whole from 1849 to 1860, but nativism an racism towards Irishmen, Catholics, and Irish Catholics lasted much longer.

Manifest Destiny-

Manifest Destiny was a movement to expand the size of the Uninted States from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Some radical believers in Manifest Destiny not only believed in expansion from coast to coast, but in conquering the entire continent of North America.

Coast to coast Manifest Destiny was realized by James K. Polk during his presidency. Through treaties with England and the waging of the Mexican War, Polk gained all the land that is now the continental Uninted States. Manifest Destiny supporters popularized slogans such as "54 40 or Fight", which was used by Polk as his campaign slogan referring to the present day boundary between Washington state and Canada, and "Oregon or Bust", referring to the settlement of the new Oregon Territory.

Manifest Destiny was an important cause of the Civil War because it brought up the issue of the expansion of slavery. Every time a new state or territory was added to the Union, it threw off the balance of slave states to free states, so more territories would have to be added to compensate for it. Abolitionists and Republicans opposed the expansion of slavery to any new territories, while Southerners realized that the cheap public land in the West was perfect for the expansion of the Southern economy and way of life.

Secessionism-

Secessionism was the movement in America for separation of the Southern states from the Northern states. The movement was first started in 1828 during Andrew Jackson's presidency. The main issue then was the Tarriff of Abominations, a tax on goods from foreign countries that was intended to keep the South from purchasing English-made goods. John C. Calhoun responded to this by defending his home state of South Carolina with the South Carolina Exposition and Protest. The South Carolina Exposition and Protest claimed that South Carolina could nullify the tarriff within her borders because of James Madison's Nullification Theory. South Carolina refused to pay the tarriff, and as a result Jackson urged Congress to pass the Force Bill, which would give Jackson the power to send troops to South Carolina if they did not pay the tarriff. The bill was passed in 1833 and South Carolina threatened to secede from the Union. If it had not been for Henry Clay, who negotiated a compromise between South Carolina and Jackson in 1833, they might have seceded 28 years before the Civil War.

The "Nullification Crisis" in South Carolina was not the first time that the idea of secession had been brought up. During the War of 1812, New England had threatened to break away from the US because of a trade embargo that had been enacted in order to prevent the war (it didn't work).

The issues of the expansion of slavery into new territories, the economy, public land, slavery, and the development of an increasing social rift between North and South all were factors in creating a large movement of secessionists in the South. By the time James Buchanan got in office in 1857, tensions were already too great between the two regions. Buchanan did little to fix the situation, and in 1860, it became inevitable that if Lincoln got elected the South would secede. Lincoln's anti-slavery and Unionist stances were incredibly unpopular in the South. South Carolina, of course, was the first to go.

Secessionists frequently wore signs such as cockades to show their sympathies. Secession cockades were generally particular to one's state. South Carolina's cockade was woven from palmetto leaves, the symbol of South Carolina. There are several good examples of secession cockades in the Confederate "Echoes of Glory" book.

The Pig War: How the US Almost Got Into Wars On Both Borders.

The year is 1859. In the rugged western Oregon territory, tensions have been high for years between the American settlers in that area and the British Canadians to the North. The last straw between the US and Canada just happens to be a mischevious Canadian pig.

It had been agreed by the US and Great Britain in 1818 that the Oregon territory would be "jointly occupied" by both nations (this was part of the fallout from the war of 1812). Due to American economic growth in the region in the 1840's, the American Democratic Party claimed that the US had the right to claim the whole Oregon territory for themselves. Of course, Britain wasn't happy to hear this, so a compromise was made. The border with Canada was placed along the 49th parallel and America got to have the Oregon territory. Unfortunately, a dispute grew over the ownership of the land inbetween Vancouver Island and the Oregon Territory. The islands in the middle of that strait, the San Juan Islands, were not clearly on either side of the 49th parallel.

For fifteen years, the British settlers and the Americans coexisted on San Juan. The British had started a sheep farming operation on the island and the Americans had come there to "squat" on the land. It was quite good soil for farming, which made it attractive to westward-bound Americans who needed cheap, fertile farmland so that they could subsist.

Things got ugly in 1859. An American farmer named Lyman Cutlar found a large pig rooting around in his potato patch. Cutlar shot the pig dead, only to find that its owner, Charles Griffin had been watching all the while. Griffin was an Irish man who was hired by the British government to hed sheep on the island. Griffin was furious. Griffin demanded payment as compensation for the death of his pig. Cutlar refused. He said that the pig was trespassing on his land, so therefore he had the right to shoot it. Griffin alerted the British authorities of what had happened. The British threatened to arrest Cutlar, but the several of the other Americans living on San Juan requested protection from the American Army.

Three ships of the British Navy were sent to supress any conflict that might ensue on the island. As a response to this display of power, the American Army sent 66 infantrymen under the command of George Pickett (of Picketts charge fame) to protect their citizens and prevent the British troops from landing. By the end of the next month, 461 American troops and a heavy number of artillery had been sent to the island. Three more warships had been sent in by the British, making five in total. A large faceoff was brewing on San Juan.

General George Pickett

Despite the firepower assembled on the island, the biggest conflict that ever occurred was an exchange of insults between the British and American pickets. No shots were fired. Basically, the only casualty of the war proved to be Griffin's pig. The occupation of San Juan had started in July and it would last until September.

U.S. President Buchanan sent General Winfield Scott to San Juan in September of that year to negotiate the ending of the occupation. The negotiations were sucessfully carried out and the result was a resolution for both countries to jointly millitarily occupy the island. In the years following, camraderie between the American soldiers and the British soldiers was great. They celebrated holidays together, drank together, and had a good time.

It wasn't until 1872 that the US claimed San Juan for themselves, due to a third-party order from Kaiser Wilhelm I of Germany.

How does all this relate to the Civil War? The Confederacy was formed in 1861, only a year and a half after the resolution of the pig war. As it so happened, the Confederacy and England were in good standing with each other. The Confederates sent them cotton and they sent millitary goods. Had the pig war become a major conflict between the US and England, the US would have been cought in the middle of an onslaught from both North and South at the outbreak of the Civil War. Even worse for the US, the two enemy forces would have been allies. The outcome of the war could have been quite different. Basically, the Civil War had the potential to become a world war, had things turned out differently.

There were times during the conflict when the South almost won the support of England. All of those times, they failed. The first attempt by the Confederacy to gain British support was at the beginning of the war. They let their cotton sit on the docks and rot, thinking that withholding it would coax the British into helping them. They tried again at Gettysburg when the British sent over a representitive. Seeing the great Confederate los of life, he deemed the cause to be hopeless and went home.