Black Suffrage in Pennsylvania: The Tale of Hector Tyndale, Part 3

The Battle of Antietam was not the last fight for Hector Tyndale. Amazingly, he recovered from his wound and returned to service, taking command of a brigade in the 11^th Corps as brigadier general and he led it through the confusing night action at Wauhatchie in late-October 1863. Unfortunately, his wound continued to plague him. Tyndale went home on a thirty-day furlough to recuperate, and when he returned to the army, he still felt unable to perform his duties. In August 1864, “with painful regret,” he wrote, he tendered his resignation, hoping that able officers awaiting promotion to brigade command would rise to fill his spot.

Tyndale did not retire from public life. In fact, he yearned to lead again. In June 1868, after four years of recuperation, he announced his intent to run for mayor of Philadelphia and received the nomination of the Republican Party. His selection pleased many Republicans. The party had traditionally done poorly in the city (to that point, it had put only two mayors into office), but with a war hero on the platform, one without any connections to corrupt political circles, Tyndale stood a good chance of winning. “Thoroughly upright in his political principles,” wrote a self-serving Republican paper, “he can be controlled by no ‘Ring,’ nor will he permit the offices in his control to be applied to any corrupt use. . . . The Democratic Party has no man to offer whose personal and official record is brighter than his.”

 

Hector Tyndale as Philadelphia's Republican mayoral candidate, The Philadelphia Daily Evening Bulletin (1868).

 

 

The Republicans were far too optimistic. The Democratic Party nominated Dan M. Fox and unleashed a bitter smear campaign against Tyndale. First, Democratic papers accused him of being an atheist, an accusation that Tyndale had a difficult time dodging since he did not belong to any church. Then, predictably, the Democratic paper in Philadelphia, the Age, quoted him as saying that John Brown was “a better man than Jesus Christ.” (This accusation came from Charles J. Biddle, a Democrat and former Union officer who, apparently, questioned Tyndale about a portrait of John Brown hanging in his house.) Republican newspapers did their best to reinforce Tyndale’s religious activities and to distance the candidate from the memory of John Brown. Of course, everyone knew that Tyndale had escorted Mary Brown to Harper’s Ferry to help recover John Brown’s body, but not every voter understood the non-existent relationship between Tyndale and Brown. Democrats supposed that Tyndale was a radical abolitionist (the Age called him a “disciple of John Brown”); Republicans claimed that Tyndale and John Brown had never met. The Daily Evening Bulletin explained, “We happen to know all about General Tyndale’s connection with and estimate of John Brown. He believes John Brown to have been a brave, pure, honest misguided enthusiast, whom Virginia had a perfect right to hang. He believes the way in which Virginia hung him was needlessly brutal and cowardly. He had no knowledge of Brown except what was open to everybody through the newspapers.” Further, the paper declared, when coerced to escort Mary Brown to Harpers Ferry, Tyndale expressed no love for Brown’s motive, but merely a “humane chivalrous spirit” to accompany a widow on her dangerous mission. When Election Day neared, one desperate newspaper implored, “VOTE ONLY FOR SUCH MEN AS WERE LOYAL TO THE COUNTRY IN 1861!”

Charles J. Biddle, a former Union officer and contributor to the Philadelphia Age, spread the rumor that Tyndale believed that John Brown was "a better man than Jesus Christ."

In the end, the damage control was not enough. Tyndale lost the election to Fox, 59,679 to 61,517. In fact, the Republican Party lost in Pennsylvania across the board, largely because the Republican-dominated legislature had proposed an amendment to the state constitution to allow for black suffrage. Tyndale had steered clear of supporting this, but he knew that if black suffrage had been allowed in 1868, his association with Brown’s widow would have been an asset for his campaign, not a hindrance to it. Philadelphia had more than 7,000 black men of voting age. Had they cast their ballots, they would have swept Tyndale into office. After all, he was the man who recovered the remains of the nation’s most well-known abolitionist.

Tyndale’s lost election in 1868 accounted for a sudden change in tone of Pennsylvania’s Republican Party in 1869. Party heads now realized they needed black voters to beat the Democrats. When the 15^th Amendment passed the federal Congress that year, Republicans in Harrisburg leaped at the chance to ratify it. One politician who demonstrated a noted change was John Geary, Pennsylvania’s Republican governor. In 1868, Geary had been only lukewarm to a state amendment. In 1869, he encouraged ratification whole-heartedly. One wonders if Tyndale—who had served with Geary in the 28^th Pennsylvania—had any influence on Geary’s change of opinion.

 

John White Geary served as Pennsylvania's postwar governor. Although he barely supported a black suffrage amendment to the Commonwealth's constitution in 1868, he strongly endorsed ratification of the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1869. Did Tyndale's defeat alter Geary's opinion on black voting?

In any event, the change had sweeping effects. Pennsylvania’s first black vote came in the year 1870. That year, Republican returns in Philadelphia made a great leap forward. Infamously, the next year, during the mayoral election of 1871, Mayor Fox, stung by the loss in the city, turned his policemen loose against black voters, driving them from the polls. (I often tell my students that during Reconstruction, the South had the Klan to control elections; the North had the Philadelphia police department.) Election riots broke out in five city wards, and at least three black voters died trying to exercise their right to franchise. Of course, black voting came to Pennsylvania to stay. It is often forgotten that Tyndale’s controversial election had been integral in making it happen.

This clipping shows the murder of Octavius Catto, a Philadelphia educator who lost his life in the election riots of 1871. Most likely, his murderers were members of the Philadelphia police department, operating under orders of the Democratic mayor, Daniel M. Fox.

Tyndale was not in Philadelphia for the riots. He retired from politics and traveled Europe for several years, returning in 1876 to serve as a judge for the city’s Centennial Exposition. On March 19, 1880, a severe heart attack caused by his Antietam wound killed him.

It is clear that Tyndale was no disciple of John Brown, yet his connection with America’s most notorious abolitionist transformed him into an unlikely proponent of black suffrage. Tyndale might even be rightly called an abolitionist himself—maybe not one of a radical stripe—but a man whose principles toward humanity inevitably led him to this path: to serve Widow Brown, to serve the Union army, and to serve the postwar Republican Party. Interestingly, abolitionist William Furness—a man who had stood alongside Tyndale in 1859 during the riot over John Brown’s body—delivered Tyndale’s eulogy. He called Tyndale a “lover of Freedom and Humanity.” Furness continued, “He is joined now to the invisible host of patriots and martyrs, whose memory speaks to the North with mediatorial power, charging us to be faithful still to the sacred cause for which they suffered, and to permit no advantage purchased for Justice and Freedom with their blood, to be lost through a base and cunning policy.”

I agree with such sentiment.

Antietam’s Lost Battalion: The Tale of Hector Tyndale, Part 2

When Hector Tyndale returned to Philadelphia in May 1861, he appealed to Governor Andrew Curtin for a commission. As it turned out, a brand new three-year regiment needed a major. Curtin signed a commission, assigning Tyndale to the 28^th Pennsylvania, a massive fifteen-company regiment commanded by Colonel John White Geary. Tyndale stayed in Philadelphia through September, even contributing his personal fortune to the purchase of uniforms for his men. (Altogether, he and Geary spent about $22,000.)

Here is an image of Hector Tyndale as major of the 28th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry.

Tyndale served with the 28^th Pennsylvania for the next year, never missing a day of service. Almost to a man, his men hated him. Tyndale played the part of a martinet quite well, demanding strict attention to order and discipline. A Pittsburgh soldier disliked him so much that when he wrote home he could not even find the words to describe adequately the hatred he felt for his regiment’s newly-minted major. A company captain called Tyndale “overbearing” and filled with “tyranny and insolence.” The captain stated flatly, “it has been most fortunate that we were not in a regular engagement as I fear he would, if the balls of the enemy spared him, [have] been injured by his whole command.”

Even though the soldiers of the 28^th Pennsylvania disliked him, his superiors considered him an exemplary officer. In June 1862, he received a promotion to lieutenant colonel, and in August, he received brigade command. Within a few weeks, Tyndale’s brigade joined the Army of the Potomac, becoming 1^st Brigade, 2^nd Division, 12^th Army Corps. Despite these steady advancements, Tyndale felt that he had much to prove. After more than year in service, he had not fought in a major battle. In October 1861, he missed the 28^th Pennsylvania’s first engagement at Bolivar Heights. (Colonel Geary had held him with the reserve battalion.) Then, in August 1862, when in command of the 28^th, Tyndale missed the Battle of Cedar Mountain. This happened because his brigade commander (Geary) had detached the regiment to hold a signal station. Accusations of cowardice surrounded Tyndale, for he had held firm to his orders during the battle, planting his men atop the signal knob all day, even though he could hear the sound of gunfire not far distant. Some officers claimed that they would have marched to the sound of battle, and wondered if Tyndale had purposefully stayed put because he lacked the stomach to face the enemy.

Here is Tyndale as brigade commander.

Eager to prove himself to his now doubtful superiors and to his spiteful men, Tyndale led his brigade (he took over after Geary was wounded at Cedar Mountain) with gusto when it went into its next affray on September 17, 1862. With 1,050 men in the ranks, Tyndale’s brigade surged into Antietam’s West Woods, tearing all before it. It routed two Confederate brigades and repelled the assault of two others, capturing seven enemy battle flags in the process. Tyndale’s men entered the West Woods at 8 A.M., received two ammunition resupplies, and held their position until 3 P.M., a total of seven hours of combat. If the men hated Tyndale before, they showed no sign of it now. They cheered him as he rode along the lines, and every time Tyndale lost a horse (he lost three that day), an officer gladly gave up his mount. Tactically, Tyndale’s brigade made quite a problem for the Army of Northern Virginia. Three more regiments came to support it that afternoon, and this sizable force stood in the center of the Confederate line. Possibly, it might have changed the outcome of the battle had Tyndale’s brigade stayed put in its forward position, but it forced Lee to commit more troops to that sector of the field to drive it out. Historian Ted Alexander later wrote that the stand of Tyndale’s brigade (and its supporting units) was much like the famous “Lost Battalion” of World War I. I’d have to agree.

(There aren't many good maps showing the position of Tyndale's "lost battalion" at Antietam. Even though it fought for seven hours, few historians describe the brigade's harrowing action in any detail. This crude map that I made depicts Tyndale's brigade as it made its stand from about 2-3 P.M. You can see the brigade's forward position in the West Woods at the lower left of the map. Note the two Confederate brigades that attacked it from front and flank. Then, at the lower-center of the map, you can see the last stand of Tyndale's brigade as it tried to hold its position just west of the Mumma Farm.)

When the brigade began to run low on its third supply of ammunition, it drifted eastward across the Mumma farm fields, giving ground stubbornly. Tyndale paused at a haystack, turned around to see if any reinforcing troops were coming up, and just then, a Confederate musket ball slammed into the back of his head, glanced off the lower occipital bone, and lodged between his jugular vein and carotid artery. He fell unconscious and might have been left behind, as his line gave way at that moment, but thankfully, two soldiers—a lieutenant and a corporal—grabbed him and dragged him by his heels to the safety of a haystack 150 yards away.

Surgeon H. Ernest Goodman of the 28th Pennsylvania arrived on the scene, and with forceps, extracted the ball. Tyndale awakened, but was partially deaf and unable to move all of his face. Nevertheless, he burbled, “Thank the officers and men for their great courage this day; and tell them that, though I have always been very strict with them, it was for their own good, and I love and respect them.”

(This is the area where Tyndale was wounded. That's me standing in the foreground. In 1862, the area around me would have been dotted with haystacks. The Confederates would have been on the horizon near the New York monument. The Union troops--now firing away the last of their ammunition--retreated eastward toward the perspective of the viewer. When Tyndale fell unconscious, two Union soldiers--Lieutenant Charles W. Borbridge and Corporal A. Henry Hayward--grabbed Tyndale by his ankles and pulled him to safety.)

Although he expected to die, Tyndale survived. (The wound did eventually kill him, but much later—in 1880. It produced a blood clot that induced a severe heart attack.) Tyndale’s head wound shattered his physical health, and the fight at Antietam, which cost his brigade 448 officers and men, stuck with him, giving him a sobering outlook on life. Writing to historian Ezra Carman in 1870, Tyndale explained, “If there is one thing more painful than many others to a commander in action, it is to lose the lives of men over whom he exercises almost unlimited power, and to whom he owes more than life itself—to lose them uselessly in a barren or resultless, even though glorious battle. If war consists merely in killing men (which I do not believe), then, my regrets are unfounded; but unless that killing leads to higher end for humanity, all wars are merely damnable, and without justification of God or man.”

 

This is The Battle of Antietam (1887) by Thure de Thulstrup. It's not exactly clear which Union attack Thulstrup meant to depict in this amazing oil painting, but it must either be the attack of Col. William Irwin's brigade or the attack of Hector Tyndale's brigade. If it was meant to be the latter, the man on horseback is certainly Tyndale.

 

John Brown’s Body: The Tale of Hector Tyndale, Part 1

We often say the Civil War transformed the lives of its participants. If so, we must certainly say this of Hector Tyndale, the man who recovered John Brown’s body. In his case, a simple act of kindness altered his reputation forever. It began on December 1, 1859, just twenty-four hours before John Brown met his maker on the Charles Town gallows. Mary Ann Brown, wife of the condemned abolitionist, entered the city of Philadelphia, stricken with anguish, finding a particularly unhelpful city. Many Philadelphians called Brown a fanatic, declaring that he had brought the nation to the brink of disunion. Distraught and fearful for her life, she found comfort with two friends, James Miller McKim and his wife, Sarah Allibone McKim. The McKims expressed their concern, worrying that if Mary Brown went alone to Virginia to collect her husband’s remains, she might meet foul play. Miller McKim wanted a brawny man to accompany her. Sarah McKim suggested the husband of one of her friends, Hector Tyndale. It was an odd choice. Although he hated slavery, Tyndale was not—and had never been—a true abolitionist. Yet, Tyndale’s wife, Julia Nowlen Tyndale, counseled him to go. It did not matter what Brown had done, Julia Tyndale explained, no widow should have to face the hatred of her husband’s killers without adequate protection. With that logic, Tyndale made haste to Virginia. His mission: retrieve the body of John Brown.

Hector Tyndale, the man who retrieved John Brown's body, shown here as bvt. major general. John McLaughlin, A Memoir of Hector Tyndale (1882)

 

 

Tyndale’s abolitionist entourage arrived at Harpers Ferry that evening, and there, the four northerners patiently awaited the return of the remains. Tyndale paced all morning, and at one point, he heard the crack of a gunshot and the zip of a bullet. Spinning around, he saw no one, but knew he had barely escaped assassination. At 9:00 P.M., Sheriff James Campbell arrived with a crude coffin, and Tyndale insisted that it be opened so that Mrs. Brown could identify the remains. The sheriff unleashed an oath of imprecations, wrathfully complaining that Tyndale dared to suggest that he or anyone associated with the hanging had removed or defaced the body. Tyndale remained resolute. Campbell opened the casket. Mrs. Brown identified the corpse as that of her husband, and with that morbid task accomplished, the funeral cortege sealed the coffin a second time, setting off the next morning, December 3.

Tyndale insisted upon opening John Brown's coffin to make sure it contained his remains.

The train bearing Tyndale and Brown’s body rumbled into Philadelphia at 12:45 P.M. When Tyndale looked outside, he saw Mayor Alexander Henry and a squad of police there to meet him. Mayor Henry explained that a large crowd had assembled outside the depot, apparently eager to see the corpse, for good or ill. An ugly scene occurred. Henry demanded that the body leave Philadelphia immediately, but Tyndale argued that it would be indecent to issue such an order. Pushing Mayor Henry aside, Tyndale invited Mary Brown to lean on his arm, and with her face covered in a plaid blanket shawl, they exited the train, followed by the McKims.  Tyndale and Brown passed through the crowd unnoticed, entered Washington Avenue, walking as far as Eleventh Street, where they caught a railway car that took them to the residence of Edward Hopper, an abolitionist who lived on Arch Street.

This left Mayor Henry with the grim task of dealing with the unruly crowd, some of whom wanted to vandalize the body. Henry expected the passage of John Brown’s remains through Philadelphia would “lead to a scene of indignity and indecency, extremely discreditable to our citizens, and painful to the friends of the deceased.” He executed a curious plan, one that had been devised by Tyndale, apparently. Henry instructed his officers to requisition a wagon from the rail yard. The policemen put a tool box into the flat-bed and covered it with a horse blanket, such that it now bore the appearance of a sealed coffin. The officers took position on the wagon and drove it down Broad Street. A reporter explained, “The scene was one of ludicrous description. It seemed as if all the boys and negroes in town were in full speed. A number of women were in the crowd and joined in the hue and cry.” The crowd pursued the wagon as it wended its way to the Delaware River. It came to rest at Walnut Street Wharf, where those who persisted in following it discovered the mayor had hoodwinked them.

Mayor Alexander Henry, the politician who resisted the arrival of John Brown's body into Philadelphia. Frank H. Taylor, Philadelphia in the Civil War (1913)

 

 

Meanwhile, Mayor Henry accompanied the real coffin to Camden Depot, where Tyndale, Mary Brown, and a committee of five abolitionists joined him. One member of the committee, Reverend William H. Furness, insisted that Brown’s body spend the night in the hands of an undertaker, but Mayor Henry repeated his plea that it leave immediately. Tyndale tried to resist the mayor a second time, but now he relented. He and Miller McKim agreed to accompany Mrs. Brown and the remains to its ultimate destination, a farm house in North Elba, New York. With that, they boarded a new train and sped off. When Tyndale returned later that month, he faced public ostracism. Although he had never known John Brown personally, and although he had never voiced approval of the raid on Harpers Ferry, Tyndale became a pariah. Some friends—people who had known Tyndale for years—utterly refused to speak to him. He had never been an abolitionist, but by 1860, he was now a de facto member of John Brown’s army. In July, he left for Europe, and stayed there for a year, returning in May 1861—at some pecuniary loss—to join the war effort. Perhaps Tyndale then realized the mere act of consoling a grieving widow had altered his life forever.

Tyndale served as bodyguard for Mary Ann Daly Brown (center), Brown's widow, taking her to Harpers Ferry and then to North Elba, New York. 

 

A Little Too Much to Drink

Following the Battle of Mine Run, the Army of the Potomac went into winter encampment at Brandy Station. For five months, 100,000 soldiers endured winter hibernation, awaiting the next major operation against their long-time foe, the Army of Northern Virginia. (If ever the Army of the Potomac needed a new book, it needs one about the Brandy Station encampment, a giant city of log shacks that housed an unusual mix of anxious, idle veterans and uncertain, newly-drafted conscripts and substitutes.) Brandy Station became the place where the bluecoats readied themselves mentally and physically for the tough campaign that followed. This is where the Army of the Potomac did its “spring training.” We might say that if the Army of the Potomac was a caterpillar that became a butterfly, then Brandy Station was its cocoon.

But I digress.

Plenty of mayhem prevailed at this winter encampment. Perhaps few sections of this log city were as chaotic as the 3^rd Corps bivouac. In the spring, General Meade planned to break up some of his smaller corps and meld them into others. As a means of showing solidarity (and protest against Meade’s decision), the 3^rd Corps officers hosted a series of balls and celebrations, proof that their crucial bonds of affection might be forever sundered if Meade disbanded the Corps. In the end, the 3^rd Corps officers lost their bid for independence, and both of the corps’ two divisions went into the rival 2^nd Corps.

For the enlisted men, the frequent parties meant lots of opportunities to get drunk. Of course, balls were no fun unless the soldiers had girls with whom they could dance. Acquiring girls was no easy task. Officers possessed the means to pay for their wives to come down and visit. The enlisted men had to convince the local populace to go as their dates. A few women from Culpeper County accepted their invitations, but not enough to pair with every lonely bluecoat. Few girls wished to travel to the encampment and risk being labeled a Union fraternizer. Without women, the enlisted men did the next best thing: they dressed their youngest soldiers in drag. When the 3^rd Corps balls happened, it was not uncommon to see soldiers wearing dresses and bonnets, slathered in make-up. In March, Brig. Gen. Joseph Carr’s Brigade had no fewer than fifty soldiers dressed as women, each one “escorting” another soldier dressed in ordinary attire. Charles Perkins, a musician with the 1^st Massachusetts, wrote home, “Evans of [Company] K dressed as woman made very good one too. He went with Sergt. Kelly, who was one of the managers. . . . some of the ladies (men) were got up well. Corpl. [Lydston] of Co. D was in my judgment the best got up lady on the floor. There were others very good, 2 drummers from the 11th & some from other Regt’s. I came away with Joe at 3 o’c in morning. Pretty tired. Turned in at once[.] I should state also that Joe’s skeleton skirt consisted of 3 barrell hoops suspended.” Another soldier noted that several real women attended Carr’s ball, but “the boys girls was much better looking.”  Jealous, the real women left before the ball ended, leaving the fifty cross-dressers as masters of the dance floor.

To our own twenty-first-century sensibilities, to hear about soldiers dressing up and playing the part of the opposite gender might seem a little bizarre, but this was the common method of dealing with the absence of women. However, there seemed to be another point to the whole affair, that is, to introduce alcohol into congregation and make as many people look as stupid as possible. Perkins reported happily that he observed “several cases of drunkenness” at Carr’s ball. More to the point, the enlisted men made one officer look especially foolish, Major William H. Hugo, the commander of the 1^st Excelsior. Hugo drank too much, allowing the costumed enlisted men to trick him. The soldiers of the 1^st Massachusetts introduced him to Corporal Edward W. Lydston of Company D, telling Hugo that “she” was a girl from Culpeper. Hugo believed it, and Lydston played the part well, batting his eyes and acting coy, a fact that drove the randy major to pursue “her” with greater gusto. A member of the 1^st Massachusetts’ staff wrote, “There was a major [who] fell in love with a boy [who] belongs to Comp D of our Regiment who was the bell of the evening. He is a young fellow and fair and no one could have told him [apart] from a handsome girl. The major was introduced to him as a girl from Culpeper and was really smitten after her or him all evening.”

Eventually, Hugo pursued Lydston into a back room, and when the major began to get a little too amorous, Lydston let the cat out of the bag. He lifted his skirts, revealed his maleness, and said, “Do you like how I look, now?”

I’d like to see the letter that describes how Hugo reacted to this, but I imagine that I’ll never find such a gem. In any event, Hugo became the butt of jokes for weeks to come. I think that was the goal all along.

This Harper's Weekly image depicts the 3rd Corps ball at Brandy Station. We can assume that some of the women depicted here are actually men wearing ball gowns.