Mississippi Secedes From the Union

 

Photo credit: The Library of Congress:  Sergeant A.M. Chandler of Co. F, 44th Mississippi Infantry Regiment, and Silas Chandler, family slave.

On January 9, 1861, the state of Mississippi seceded from the Union giving its reasons in a “Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union.”

“In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.”

“Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.”

“That we do not overstate the dangers to our institution, a reference to a few facts will sufficiently prove.”

“The hostility to this institution commenced before the adoption of the Constitution, and was manifested in the well-known Ordinance of 1787, in regard to the Northwestern Territory.”

“The feeling increased, until, in 1819-20, it deprived the South of more than half the vast territory acquired from France.”

“The same hostility dismembered Texas and seized upon all the territory acquired from Mexico.”

“It has grown until it denies the right of property in slaves, and refuses protection to that right on the high seas, in the Territories, and wherever the government of the United States had jurisdiction.”

“It refuses the admission of new slave States into the Union and seeks to extinguish it by confining it within its present limits, denying the power of expansion.”

“It tramples the original equality of the South under foot.”

“It has nullified the Fugitive Slave Law in almost every free State in the Union and has utterly broken the compact which our fathers pledged their faith to maintain.”

“It advocates negro equality, socially and politically, and promotes insurrection and incendiarism in our midst.”

“It has enlisted its press, its pulpit and its schools against us, until the whole popular mind of the North is excited and inflamed with prejudice.”

“It has made combinations and formed associations to carry out its schemes of emancipation in the States and wherever else slavery exists.”

“It seeks not to elevate or to support the slave, but to destroy his present condition without providing a better.”

“It has invaded a State and invested with the honors of martyrdom the wretch whose purpose was to apply flames to our dwellings, and the weapons of destruction to our lives.”

“It has broken every compact into which it has entered for our security.”

“It has given indubitable evidence of its design to ruin our agriculture, to prostrate our industrial pursuits and to destroy our social system.”

“It knows no relenting or hesitation in its purposes; it stops not in its march of aggression and leaves us no room to hope for cessation or for pause.”

“It has recently obtained control of the Government, by the prosecution of its unhallowed schemes, and destroyed the last expectation of living together in friendship and brotherhood.”

“Utter subjugation awaits us in the Union, if we should consent longer to remain in it. It is not a matter of choice, but of necessity. We must either submit to degradation, and to the loss of property worth four billions of money, or we must secede from the Union framed by our fathers, to secure this as well as every other species of property. For far less cause than this, our fathers separated from the Crown of England.”

“Our decision is made. We follow their footsteps. We embrace the alternative of separation; and for the reasons here stated, we resolve to maintain our rights with the full consciousness of the justice of our course, and the undoubting belief of our ability to maintain it.”

Mississippi was the second state to secede from the Union, following South Carolina which had seceded on December 20, 1860.

War and Reconstruction in Mississippi 1861-1875: A Portrait

The Great Northern Rebellion of 1860 (alternate history)

Van Dorn's Raid on Holly Springs, Ms.

 The state of Mississippi was to see a great deal of hard fighting during the war. Major engagements were fought at Corinth (1862), Port Gibson (1863), Jackson (1863), and Vicksburg (1863). Obeying General Sherman’s orders to, “destroy everything public not needed by us,” Federal troops took the occupied parts of the state literally apart, looting stores and houses, and setting fire to warehouses, factories and foundries.

 The first raid made by Federal soldiers on Holly Springs occurred in early 1862. The raiding party ransacked the home of William Manson. Furniture was smashed to pieces, music was pounded out on the piano with the ends of muskets, and rich cushions and carpets were shredded. The soldiers poked holes in family paintings with their bayonets.

 In late November, the Union army moved south from Tennessee. General Ulysses S. Grant had set in motion a plan for the speedy conquest of Vicksburg. His line of march was parallel to the Mississippi River and some sixty miles east. He planned to sweep through northern Mississippi, carefully extending and maintaining his lines of supply as he progressed, until he reached Jackson. There he would cut the railroad line between that city and Vicksburg, at which point he expected to take Vicksburg with relative ease. On November 27, 1862 an advance guard entered Holly Springs and took over the largest and most comfortable houses. The Coxe Place on Salem Avenue was, taken over for the General Army Headquarters while the private residence of General Grant, accompanied by his wife Julia, was established at the Walter Place on Chulahoma Avenue. For two weeks a Federal army of 75,000 men rested in Holly Springs, before moving south toward Vicksburg.

A Holly Springs Home

Elements of the 8th Wisconsin infantry and a portion of the2nd Illinois Cavalry, some 1,500 men under the command of Colonel Robert Murphy, remained in Holly Springs to guard the newly established supply base.

 On Saturday, December 20, 1862, Confederate Major General Earl Van Dorn raided the town. In the pale light of dawn, Van Dorn‘s men stormed into Holly Springs, surprising the Federals who emerged half asleep from their tents, firing as they came.  The Confederate 2nd Missouri dismounted and charged on foot, dispersing any infantry they encountered. The Texas brigade charged from the east, coming in from the railroad depot. Most of the Federal garrison surrendered after a token resistance. Only the 2nd Illinois Cavalry chose to fight. With sabers drawn and flashing, some three hundred and fifty horsemen charged through the attacking Confederates, suffering one hundred casualties.

Major General Earl Van Dorn

 A long train of boxcars loaded with rations and clothing was captured. The railroad depot, the Court House and many houses were filled with supplies of all kinds. The public square contained hundreds of bales of cotton. A large brick livery stable and the adjacent Masonic temple were packed with unopened cases of carbines and Colt six— shooters. From 7 A.M. to 4 P.M. Union army stores were first plundered and then burned. Van Dorn’s raid destroyed huge quantities of supplies, leaving the Union army in enemy territory without supplies. Grant was forced to return to Memphis.

Civil War Humor 1861-1865

The 1865 Fall of Richmond in Pictures

Divorce in the American Civil War

 Authority over the family was legally vested in men, which profoundly influenced a woman's ability to control property, dissolve her marriage or insure custody of her children (there were fewer than 10,000 divorces a year in 1861).  A woman's right to own property emerged slowly.  Mississippi passed the first Married Women's Property Act in 1839.  In 1845 Massachusetts passed similar legislation, with New York following suit in 1848.  In 1855, Massachusetts far in advance of the rest of the Union, legislated to protect the wages of working married women, which were at that time, the legal property of her husband.

Laws concerning divorce varied widely among the states throughout much of American history. In New England, where the Puritans had defined marriage as a civil contract rather than a religious sacrament, secular law had provided for divorce as early as the 17th century. Like any other contract, the marriage bond could be broken when either of the contracting parties failed to meet the obligations it imposed. Adultery, impotence, desertion, or conviction for serious crimes, were all grounds for divorce. Additionally, wives could obtain a divorce on the grounds of non-support.

In most states in the early 19th century, an act of the legislature was required to end a marriage. As the century progressed divorce laws became more liberal. During the 1850s, Indiana was widely condemned for its liberal ways. A couple in Indiana could obtain a divorce on any grounds that a judge ruled “proper”. Indiana judges were far more permissive than the New York City judge who in 1861 refused to grant a divorce to a wife whose husband had beaten her unconscious in an argument over letting the family dog sleep on the bed. The judge advised the woman that “one or two acts of cruel treatment” were not proper grounds for divorce. Indiana’s liberal stance on divorce attracted a flood of applicants from other states. The influential newspaper editor and future presidential nominee, Horace Greeley denounced Indiana as “the paradise of free-lovers” whose example would soon lead to “a general profligacy and corruption such as this country has never known.”

 Among the enslaved population, divorce, like marriage, was within the master's jurisdiction.  Rules were as severe or lax as the master wished.

Love, Sex, and Marriage in the Civil War

The Civil War Wedding (e-book)

The Civil War Wedding Soft Cover

Civil War Bordellos

 

With the outbreak of war, many prostitutes, known as "Cyprians", "Fallen Angels", "Daughters of Eve" and "Daughters of Joy" followed the drum, attaching themselves to the armies as cooks and laundresses.  The mob of camp followers attached to the Army of the Potomac in 1862 was dubbed "Hooker's Army", in honor of the Commanding General Joseph Hooker.  The term "hooker" has come down to modern times as a description of a woman of easy virtue.

Washington saw an explosion of active and prosperous bawdy houses.  Before the outbreak of war Washington had some five hundred prostitutes.  As Washington became the bustling hub of the Union army in the East, ambitious girls from New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Chicago and St. Louis converged on Washington.  There were 450 known houses in Washington in 1862, employing 5,000 women, with an additional 2,500 women employed in nearby Georgetown and Alexandria.  Bordellos occupied whole blocks along the south side of Pennsylvania Avenue.  The Army christened these establishments, the "Post Office", "Fort Sumter", the "Wolf's Den" (run by Mrs. Wolf), "the Haystack" (run by Mrs. Hay) and the "Cottage by the Sea".  In the expensive houses, there were luxurious furnishings and pretty young hostesses dressed in silk.

These establishments were not popular with the neighbors.  Tired of loud late-night parties and the general atmosphere of carousing, residents of one neighborhood threatened to make up a list of officers who frequented "notorious places of infamy", and report them to the commanding general, and to their families at home.  The press also took a hand in censuring the sinful atmosphere, condemning the "uniformed idlers who go gallanting the painted Jezebels with which the city is stocked."  

The Provost Marshal made some effort to suppress the trade.  Brothels were raided by the Provost Marshal and, after a fine, declared "broken up".  For a girl, the fine was five dollars or three months in the house of corrections.  For a Madam, the fine was $50 or six months in the house of corrections.  As a practical matter the fines were paid, no one spent any time in the house of corrections and the "sporting house" merely set up shop at a new location.  The Provost Marshal did have some successes, however.  The employment of "pretty waiter girls" in beer and concert saloons was prohibited and these well-known places of assignation were quickly cleaned up.  Although the Provost Marshal's efforts were treated as a joke by many, there was a sound military reason for cracking down on "the trade".  Union military records reveal that 82 out of every 1,000 men (some 8 % of the Army) suffered from some sort of debilitating venereal disease.

Love, Sex, and Marriage in the Civil War

   The Civil War Wedding (e-book)

The Civil War Wedding Soft Cover

Lincoln's Wedding

 

      In the fall of 1839, twenty-year-old Mary Todd moved from Lexington, Kentucky, to Springfield, Illinois.  Shortly after her arrival, she met thirty-year- old Abraham Lincoln at a cotillion.  Lincoln came up and said to her, “Miss Todd, I want to dance with you in the worst way.” The next evening, Lincoln called on her again and began his courtship.  Over the next few years Mary became engaged to Lincoln, broke up with him, entered a period of separation and misunderstanding, and finally began seeing him again.

     On the morning of Thursday, November 3, 1842, Lincoln dropped by the home of Reverend Charles Dresser. The Dresser family was still at breakfast when Lincoln announced, “I want to get hitched tonight.” Reverend Dresser agreed to the arrangement.

     After leaving the Dresser home, Lincoln happened to meet Ninian Edwards in the street. He told Mr. Edwards of the plans for the marriage. Mr. Edwards replied, “No, I am Mary's guardian and if she is married at all it must be from my house.” When Elizabeth Edwards was informed of the plans, it was decided that the marriage would be delayed by one day as the Episcopal sewing society was meeting at the Edwards' home that night and dinner had already been ordered. 

     Sometime before the wedding, Lincoln visited Chatterton's jewelry shop in Springfield. He ordered a gold wedding ring and had it inscribed,  “Love is Eternal” .

     Abraham Lincoln and Mary Todd were married at the Edwards' home on Friday evening, November 4, 1842. Some thirty relatives and friends attended the ceremony. Mary wore a white muslin dress. She wore neither a veil nor flowers in her hair. A week after the marriage, on November 11, 1842, Abraham wrote a letter to a friend. Most of the letter dealt with legal matters, but he closed the letter with the following sentence: “Nothing new here, except my marrying, which to me, is a matter of profound wonder.”

                                   The Civil War Wedding (e-book)

The Civil War Wedding Soft Cover

Love, Sex, and Marriage in the Civil War

Captain Weir: Custer’s Would be Rescuer

 Thomas Benton Weir first served under General George Armstrong Custer during the American Civil War, enlisting in the Michigan Cavalry. He quickly earned promotion to first sergeant and later received brevet promotions to major, lieutenant colonel, and colonel in recognition of his superior performance during the war.

 In May 1866, Custer was lieutenant colonel of the new 7th U.S. Cavalry stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas, where the regiment was to be organized and trained.  Joining Custer and his wife Libbie were a diverse group of officers, including Captain Thomas Weir, the charming but hard-drinking Michigan officer who had served with Custer before.

Captain Weir

The 7th Cavalry was ordered west in March 1867 to overawe the Cheyennes and Sioux.  Custer fruitlessly pursued an elusive foe. By summer he was surly and morose and on July 15 decided to abandon his command and lead a small detachment on a dangerous forced march to Fort Harker, Kansas where he expected to find Libbie.  He discovered that she was still at Fort Riley.

Custer had received an anonymous letter urging that Custer should “look after his wife a little closer.” Lieutenant Edward Mathey later confirmed that Thomas Weir was “the reason why Custer left his command without permission.” Weir had indeed been very attentive to Libbie during Custer’s long absence, rescuing her from a flood, escorting her on long evening strolls and proving himself utterly charming. A serious flirtation seemed to be in progress. Confirmation for this comes from Custer himself when he later wrote to Libbie, “The more I see of him…the more I am surprised that a woman of your perceptive faculties and moral training could have entertained the opinion of him you have.”

Libbie Custer

Custer boarded a train for Fort Riley and surprised Libbie that summer of 1867 with what Libbie described as one long, perfect day, which would always be hers for time and eternity.  The romantic gesture resulted in a court-martial and a humiliating suspension from rank and pay for Custer, who only recouped his name by leading the 7^th Cavalry to victory at the Battle of the Washita.

On June 25, 1876, during the Battle of the Little Bighorn, Custer ordered Captain Frederick Benteen to “come quick, bring packs (that is the spare ammunition that was lagging behind).   Benteen, came upon Reno’s beleaguered force and halted. 

At this point, Captain Thomas Weir, considered a part of the Custer clique, disobeyed Benteen’s orders to remain with Reno’s command, and rode to the sounds of battle in an attempt to support Custer.  He made it as far as what is now known as Weir Point, about three miles south of Last Stand Hill and about one and a half miles north of Reno Hill. Here, Weir was later joined by Benteen and Reno. 

The would-be rescuers were set upon by a large party of Sioux warriors and made a fighting retreat back to Reno’s original entrenched position, where they were besieged for a day and a half before being relieved by General Terry.  

After the Battle of the Little Bighorn, Weir’s mental health declined rapidly. Assigned to recruiting duty in New York City, Weir wrote letters to Libbie Custer hinting at untold secrets regarding her husband's death.  He repeatedly wrote promising to come to her side in Monroe, Michigan.  He never made it. 

Thomas Weir died on December 9, 1876. In the final months of his life, he refused to go outside, began to drink heavily and in his last days was said to be extremely nervous, to the point of being unable to swallow.  Doctors informed Libbie Custer that the 38 -year- old captain, in the advanced stages of alcoholism, had died of “melancholia.”

UFOs over Phoenix (1997)

 Ancient peoples around the world have reported unidentified lights in the sky for thousands of years.  The ancients believed that the gods themselves came down and visited them on a regular basis.  Native Americans in Arizona were no different.  These interactions were memorialized in petroglyphs and through oral traditions preserved as myths and legends. It is only when humans achieved high altitude flight that visits from the gods became visits by Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs).

On March 13, 1997, Arizona experienced one of the largest mass UFO sightings in history, the so-called Phoenix Lights. Lights of varying descriptions were seen by thousands of people during a three-hour period, over a distance of three hundred miles stretching, from the Nevada line, through Phoenix, to the edge of Tucson. There were two distinct events involved in the incident: a triangular formation of lights seen to pass over the state, and a series of stationary lights seen in the Phoenix area. The United States Air Force identified the second group of lights as flares dropped by military aircraft.  The initial sightings remain unexplained.

The first call came from a retired police officer in Paulden, Arizona, a small town about two hours north of Phoenix at approximately 7pm.  After that, calls began pouring into television stations and the police.  The reports were unanimous on several key points: there was a triangular craft that was enormous (some witnesses described it as a mile wide), it was totally silent, it moved slowly, and it often stopped to hover.

A drawing of the object created by witness Tim Ley appeared in USA Today

The Governor’s office was besieged with calls, especially after a USA Today article in June brought international attention to the incident.  To stem a mounting sense of panic in the state, Governor Fife Symington held a press conference during which he claimed to have “found who was responsible” for the lights.  Symington then brought in his chief of staff dressed in an alien costume, handcuffed and looking contrite.  Crisis averted.  Ten years later, however, Symington confessed before the National Press Club, that he had pulled this stunt only to avert public panic.  He said that he himself had seen the object and that it was, “enormous and inexplicable.”

The Great UFO Secret (Six Short Stories of First Contact)

Legends of the Superstition Mountains

Amazon:                           All other:

A Newsman at the Battle of the Little Bighorn

 

Mark Kellogg rode with Custer and wrote: “The hope is now strong and I believe, well founded, that this band of ugly customers, known as Sitting Bull's band, will be "gobbled" and dealt with as they deserve."

George Custer and the Grand Review of the Army of the Potomac

 

At 9:00 A.M. on May 23, 1865. a cannon boomed, signaling the beginning of the Grand Review of the victorious Army of the Potomac as it marched down Pennsylvania Avenue.

The cavalry led the march under the command of Brevet Major General Wesley Merritt, a hero of the Gettysburg and Shenandoah Valley campaigns.  Brevet Major General George Armstrong Custer led the 3rd Cavalry Division in the forefront of the march, astride a magnificent stallion named Don Juan.  Custer cut an imposing figure atop his stolen horse.  In fact, the horse belonged to one Richard Gaines of Clarksville, Virginia.  Unfortunately for Gaines, Custer took a fancy to the horse and had his soldiers appropriate the animal as “the spoils of war.”  Gaines was never able to regain possession of his legal property because of Custer’s powerful friends.

Before the Presidential reviewing stand, a woman threw an evergreen wreath in front of Don Juan. The horse panicked and galloped toward the president and other dignitaries. Custer regained control of the animal to the great applause of the crowd, and casually proceeded down Pennsylvania Avenue.

Many detractors at the time, and subsequently, thought that this was just the type of theatrical stunt that Custer routinely engineered to draw attention to himself.

Civil War Humor 1861-1865

The Great Northern Rebellion of 1860 (alternate history)

The Perils of the Mona Lisa

 

Leonardo Da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa in the early 1500’s.  It soon was acquired by the King of France and after hanging in various royal apartments went on permanent display at the Louvre in Paris in 1797 and is now, at $870 million, one of the world’s most valuable paintings.

The painting was not always so popular, and owes its worldwide recognition to an art theft in 1911.  The theft was carried out my one Vincenzo Peruggia, a museum employee and Italian nationalist, who thought this Italian masterpiece had no business in France.  Peruggia tried to sell the painting to the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy but ended up in jail.  The Mona Lisa returned to France after a three year odyssey.  Peruggia may have had accomplices who planned to sell forgeries of the Mona Lisa in America to unscrupulous collectors.  Their story did not come to light until 1932.

During World War II, a phony Mona Lisa was allowed to fall into the hands of the Nazis, while the original painting was moved from secret hiding place to secret hiding place throughout the war.  The real Mona Lisa resurfaced in Paris on June 16, 1945.

In the early 1950s, a man claiming to be in love with the painting tried to cut it out of its frame.  A glass covering was placed over the painting to prevent future attempts, but to no avail.  On December 30, 1956 a Bolivian man threw a rock at the Mona Lisa while it was on display at the Louvre. The rock shattered the glass case and dislodged a speck of pigment near the left elbow.

Since then, bullet proof glass has been used to shield the painting, which is just as well, since the assaults have continued.  In 1974, while the painting was on loan to the Tokyo National Museum, a woman sprayed it with red paint in a protest to further rights for the disabled.  In 2009, a Russian woman threw a ceramic teacup purchased at the Louvre’s gift shop at the painting.  She had personal grievances against the French government. In 2022, an environmental activist tried to smash the glass protecting the world’s most famous painting before smearing cake across its surface.

Mona Lisa, she’s faced the wild storm waves of ages, and bravely she faces them still.  And always with a smile.

Love, Sex and Marriage in Victorian America

Legends of the Superstition Mountains

Alternative sources

The Ghosts of the Real Downton Abbey

 

Highclere Castle

Where is the real Downton Abbey?  The setting for the iconic television show is Highclere Castle in Berkshire, England.  Few fans of the show may be aware of the castle’s connection with ghosts and the occult.

The castle’s best-known resident was the Fifth Earl of Carnarvon who financed the expedition to find the tomb of Egypt’s King Tut.  In 1922, the Earl called archaeologist Howard Carter to Highclere to tell him that the funds had dried-up for further excavations. But he agreed to a final dig. On the 4th of November, Carter discovered a staircase beneath the sand leading to the sealed tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun. The Earl travelled to Egypt immediately. Lord Carnarvon and Howard Carter broke the seal of the mummy’s tomb together.

Fifth Earl of Carnarvon

The Earl of Carnarvon didn’t live to see Tutankhamun’s most precious treasures removed from the burial chamber, he died at the Continental Savoy hotel, Cairo, in April 1923.  Some said he was the victim of the “Mummy’s Curse.” At the very moment of Lord Carnarvon’s death all the lights in Cairo went out and at his English home Carnarvon’s dog let out a great howl and dropped dead. 

Though the curse is scoffed at by many, Lord Carnarvon himself might well have believed in the possibility of such a curse. Carnarvon was a believer in spiritualism and the occult. He was an active member of the London Spiritual Alliance. On numerous occasions Carnarvon organized séances in the East Anglia Room at Highclere Castle.

In his published memoirs the sixth Earl of Carnarvon says that his father became “keenly interested in the occult”.  “My father said, 'If we sit round the table holding hands, I believe we shall achieve a levitation.' 'What does he mean?' I whispered to my sister. 'I think he hopes the flowers on the table will rise several feet into the air,' she replied, and they did.”

The current Countess of Carnarvon recounts having seen the ghost of a footman who committed suicide in the castle. “I turned and saw a man coming towards us out of the gloom,” she explained, “He seemed slightly undefined.” At that point, she told her son, who was driving a toy car, to go faster, and they ended up crashing through a door. The unexplained figure, however, just stayed at the doors watching them.  After the encounter, Lady Carnarvon asked an Anglican monk to bless the castle. After the monk blessed the property, she said that she never saw the ghost again.

The footman isn’t the only ghost that has been seen at the castle. Lady Carnarvon’s father claimed to have seen a “well-dressed lady” who greeted him by saying, “good evening”. 

Gold, Murder and Monsters in the Superstition Mountains

E-Book Version

Lost Inca Gold

 Museo de Oro del Peru

     When Spain conquered the Inca Empire, between 1533-1553, she came into possession of an almost endless supply of gold and silver.  One story from the conquest of Peru will suggest the wealth of the Incas.  As a ransom, the hostage Inca Emperor Atahualpa filled a twelve by seventeen foot room with objects of pure gold.  A second room was filled with silver.  The gold and silver were melted down into bars by the Spaniards who, in all, collected 13,000 pounds of gold and 26,000 pounds of silver.  The ransom did Atahualpa no good.  He was murdered by the Spaniards.  This was only the beginning.  The Spanish conquerors, initially fewer than four hundred men, under the command of Francisco Pizzaro, ravaged the land, killing and torturing in a frenzy of gold lust.  Sometimes the Incas had their revenge.  One hapless Spaniard was executed by having hot molten gold poured down his throat.  “Since you love gold, you shall have as much as you want”, said the Incas.

    Cuzco’s Temple of the Sun, was the most revered shrine in the empire.  Only three Spaniards ever saw the temple in its full glory.  These men were sent by the Spanish commander, Francisco Pizzaro, to speed up the collection of the royal ransom.  The temple had gardens in which everything…trees and grass and flowers, animals, birds, butterflies, cornstalks, snakes, lizards and snails were all made of hammered gold.  The main room of the temple held the high altar, which was dedicated to the sun.  The four walls of the room were hung with plaques of gold, from top to bottom, and the likeness of the sun topped the high altar.  The likeness was made of a gold plaque twice as thick as the plaques that paneled the walls and was composed of a round face, surrounded by rays and flames.  The whole thing was so immense that it occupied the entire back of the temple, from one wall to the other.  The disc was positioned to catch the morning sun and throw its rays into the gold-lined temple, filling the room with radiant light.

    On either side of this enormous golden sun were kept mummies of former Inca kings, which were so well preserved that they seemed alive.  The mummies were seated on golden thrones and looked directly out at the visitor.

    Five other rooms made up the temple complex.  The first of these rooms was dedicated to the moon, the bride of the sun in Inca mythology.  It was entirely paneled in silver and a likeness of the moon, with the face of a woman, decorated it in the same way that the sun decorated the larger building.  The bodies of long dead queens were displayed in this temple just as those of the kings were kept in the other.

     The room nearest to that of the moon was devoted to the stars.  This room was hung with silver and the ceiling was dotted with stars.  The next room was dedicated to lightning and thunder and was entirely covered with gold.  The fourth room was devoted to the rainbow.  It was entirely covered with gold and the rainbow was painted across the entire surface of one of the walls.  The fifth room was reserved for the high priests.

     The reigning emperor’s private quarters were similarly gold studded.  Outer and inner walls were sheathed in gold and the Inca’s palace had a golden garden similar to that of the Temple of the Sun.  When receiving visitors, the Inca sat on a golden stool.  He ate from golden platters and drank from golden goblets.

     The first three Spaniards to see the temple did not remove the holiest religious symbol of the empire, the golden disc of the sun, though they reported its existence.  Subsequently the disc vanished, hidden before the main part of the Spanish army arrived.  It has never been found.     The Spaniards conquered Peru over the course of several decades in an atmosphere of civil war and chaos.  Throughout the period the Inca scurried about trying to hide the most sacred religious items from defilement.

      One of the highlights of Peru’s capital is the outstanding collection of Inca artifacts in the basement vault of the privately owned Museo de Oro del Peru or Peruvian Gold Museum.  As extensive as the gold collection is it’s sobering to realize that these are merely crumbs.

Paititi (The Treasure of the Lost City)

Gold, Murder and Monsters in the Superstition Mountains

ebook version

Railroad Lore: “The Wreck of the Old 97.”

 Fast Mail Train

   After the Civil War, railroad ownership In Virginia was consolidated and people and freight began to move seamlessly throughout the state.  The next seventy years marked the heyday of rail traffic in Virginia.  Two spectacular train wrecks during this period contributed to Virginia’s railroad lore. 

   Seventeen year old Myrtle Ruth Knox had recently joined a company of opera performers and was dreaming of a successful musical career.  Her dreams were cut short on April 26, 1890 when her train crashed into the train depot in Staunton.  The tracks west of Staunton drop eighty feet before reaching the train station.  Two miles into the steep down-grade the train’s breaks were applied, but nothing happened.  The train did not slow down, in fact it went even faster.  The cars shook violently until the train jumped the tracks and slammed into Staunton’s train depot.  The building collapsed and toppled over into the railways cars.  Miraculously, there was only one fatality, young Myrtle Ruth Knox.  A new station was built in 1902, only to be abandoned in 1960.  The structure has since been the home of a number of restaurants.  The ghost of Myrtle Ruth Knox is said to wander around the station’s platform.   

   Virginia’s most spectacular rail disaster inspired the famous railroad ballad “The Wreck of the Old 97.”  On September 27, 1903, the Southern Railway train number 97, the so called “Fast Mail”, was running behind schedule.  The Fast Mail had a reputation for never being late.  Railroad company mangers instructed the train’s engineer, Joseph A. Broady, to get that train back on schedule and make up the one hour he was running behind (the company had a contract with the government which included a financial penalty for every minute the train was late reaching its destination).  Steep grades and tight curves made many places along the route potentially dangerous.  Signs were posted along the way warning engineers to slow down.  But Broady disregarded the signs and took one particularly steep grade at excessive speed.  Because he was going too fast, Broady couldn’t reduce his speed before reaching the curve leading into the Stillhouse Trestle near Danville.  The 97, the Fast Train, derailed and plunged into the ravine below. The train exploded in flames.  Eleven people died, including Broady. 

   The disaster served as inspiration for songwriters and singers for generations and “The Wreck of the Old 97” became one of the most popular railroading songs of all time.  While railway company officials placed blame for the wreck on Broady, denying that he had been ordered to run at unsafe speeds, the ballad disagrees and begins, “Well, they handed him his orders in Monroe, Virginia, saying, ‘Steve, you're way behind time; this is not 38 it is Old 97, you must put her into Spencer on time.’”

Virginia Legends and Lore