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THE LAST OF THE OATES

Jeff Elliott Leave a comment

When “Oatsie” died recently at age 99 it closed the final chapter on Santa Rosa’s history with the Oates family.

Much has appeared here about the doings of the Comstock clan in the 20th century. But if not for a twist of fate her father might have owned (what would become known as) Comstock House – and had her family stayed here, their wealth along with her celebrity and forceful personality would have undoubtedly left its mark on Santa Rosa, for better or no.

It’s a shame the obits for Marion Oates Leiter Charles (at least, those which have appeared so far) dwell mostly on her final sixty years, with those everyone-who’s-anyone Georgetown parties and her place as the doyenne of Newport’s mansion dwellers. Interesting as that part of her life was, the beginning of her tale – the Oates part – is waved off with short shrift.

This is not a personal memoir of Oatsie; we corresponded very briefly (my first and only email with someone over ninety) and solely on details related to her family visiting Santa Rosa. She invited me to visit her in Newport a decade ago and to my regret, I did not take the trip. Most of what appears here is cobbled together from old issues of the Montgomery (Alabama) Advertiser together with interviews and private correspondence from others who crossed her path.

When done here, scan some of the items in the sidebar below, particularly the Owens article. There you’ll meet the mature Oatsie as she matches wits with young JFK, Ian Fleming (creator of James Bond), Katharine Graham – and surprisingly, Nancy Reagan.

She may have started life as an ingénue little different from the others who wallpapered the newspaper society sections, but she made herself into an indomitable woman. In 1955, a year after divorcing her first husband, she was found to have breast cancer and had a radical mastectomy. She recalled, “One day, a nurse stood me up in front of the mirror and said, ‘No one is ever going to look at you again.’ So I told her, ‘Don’t count on it.'”

Marion Saffold Oates was born on September 29, 1919, about four years after her father made the worst mistake of his life.

We don’t know what her dad said (or did) during the six-week visit with his rich California uncle but less than three weeks after he headed back to Alabama, James Wyatt Oates added a codicil to his will which completely disinherited his nephew. Before that, William C. Oates Jr. – who was his closest blood relative – was to get one-third of the entire estate (before taxes and any other distribution) which would have been about the equivalent of $900k today. Uncle Wyatt even dropped the bequest of a gold watch which came from Will’s father, suggesting the offense was so great as to shatter family bonds.

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MORE ABOUT OATSIE
Appreciation by Mitchell Owens

Official obituary

Washington Post obit

Newport Daily News

The President’s Bond Girl

Vanity Fair (2008)

Women’s Wear Daily (2012)

VIDEO interview (2007)

Had he not been kicked to the curb, it’s not hard to imagine 32 year-old Will and his wife, Georgia, moving here. They had visited Santa Rosa several times in previous years, and his father and mother had brought him along on earlier vacations. Will had friends in Santa Rosa; when he died in 1938 the Press Democrat was the only paper outside of Alabama that ran a full obituary, noting he was “well known here.”

There was no directive in uncle Wyatt’s will concerning the house, but as the main heir he could easily have made a deal with the executors for it – and since Will was an attorney, he might have even slipped behind his late uncle’s desk in the law partnership with Hilliard Comstock. Will might have considered that his sizable inheritance would have instantly made him a big fish in Santa Rosa’s very small pond, but the greatest draw to living here would have been the chance to get him away from his parent’s very long shadows.

Will’s late father was General William C. Oates, former Alabama governor, seven term congressman, and most importantly in Alabama, a Confederate Civil War hero – even though his most famous moment in the war was a humiliating defeat in the Battle of Little Round Top at Gettysburg. He died in 1910 leaving an estate equivalent to $5+ million today.

Inevitable comparisons of the son to his father only reminded Alabamans that Will was not only lacking his pop’s character but he was something of a bounder. Will was admitted to West Point in 1900, only to be abruptly booted out in the middle of his junior year along with three other young men. The official reason was “deficiency in trigonometry and higher mathematics,” but it was said to be a cheating scandal. Although his father told a reporter he “could have had his son re-appointed to the Academy without any trouble,” the letter from the Academic Board was clear they would not consider letting him retake the classes – which certainly suggests there was a bigger problem than flunking trig. He was sent to public universities and earned his law degree in 1908.

When his father died Will was named executor and tasked with creating a trust on his mother’s behalf. The paternalistic general had long bullied his wife by accusing her of being a spendthrift, demanding postmortem that a trust be created so “that she may not waste the means I leave her.” Administering that trust was apparently most of what he did for most of the next decade; I can’t find a single reference in a newspaper of Will representing a client – it’s all small-scale property management. He and Georgia also lived with his mother until he was 43.

And it’s a good thing they were living there once Marion was born; it seems Will and “Georgie” were lousy parents. The newspapers didn’t print anything about his lawyering, but there was frequent news about the couple partying and taking off on trips. Oatsie always said she was raised by her grandmother, Sarah Toney Oates (who went by the abbreviation “T”) and her African-American servants. “If I have any nice traits – any kindliness, any awareness of anything – it’s because I was raised by loving black hands.”

The year 1919 was pivotal for the family. Oatsie was born and her maternal grandfather died, which gave his widow, Oatsie’s grandmother Minnie Saffold, the freedom and finances to have her fill of world traveling. Also from this year on, Will would henceforth refer to himself as “Captain Oates” because during WWI he was an officer of 117th Field Artillery Regiment (they never left Camp Wheeler near Macon, Georgia). And Will also finally landed a real job by being appointed head of the Alabama State Securities Commission, a position he would hold until 1935 without somehow screwing it up.

By the time Oatsie was seven family dynamics had shifted. In 1926 they began living with Georgia’s mother in an ostentatious mansion Will had built just outside of Montgomery, about three miles away from where grandma T lived. They called it Belvoir, and it was an over-the-top interpretation of an antebellum plantation house with the same name as a similar manse built a century earlier by Georgia’s great grandfather. We can only hope Oatsie still lived with T (or mostly so), because the place with grandma Minnie reeked not only of sickly-sweet honeysuckle but of the stench of 19th century racism.

Georgia and Minnie were tight with the Bankhead family and as a child Oatsie was often around Marie Bankhead Owen, a close friend of Minnie’s and the aunt of movie star Tallulah Bankhead. (One of the most often repeated Oatsie stories concerns Tallulah getting her blackout drunk while telling her about the birds and bees.)1 Marie was the Alabama state archivist and historian, prolifically writing children’s plays, biographies of those whom she and her late husband deemed notable, plus all sorts of articles and books on historic topics. She wrote one novel, “Yvonne of Braithwaite: a romance of the Mississippi delta” – sort of a precursor to “Gone with the Wind” – which had a romanticized portrait of Georgia Oates on the dust jacket to represent the plucky heroine. Marie was also an unabashed white supremacist who had fought against women’s suffrage because she feared it would lead to weakening the state’s Jim Crow laws.

But little Oatsie didn’t have to visit Tallulah’s aunt for a dose of racist attitudes. Grandmother Minnie was known for her “light dialect poetry” which she had privately printed into a book titled, “Pickaninny Pickups.” She did readings at women’s clubs and Georgia – who fancied herself a serious composer – set some of them to music. Their musical high water mark was “Good Mawnin’ B’rer Mose” being performed at a 1943 Carnegie Hall recital by an inconsequential Russian violinist.2

Their lust for the good ol’ days of slavery was also on inglorious display at a 1929 costume party at Belvoir. “Once again the ‘deep South’ reigned supreme,” reported the Montgomery Advertiser. Guests impersonated famous people in the Confederacy by wearing their ancestor’s Civil War uniforms and antebellum wedding dresses while “all the servants wore bandannas and hoop ear rings.” (Bear in mind this disturbing Confederate cosplay was happening in a city with a 45 percent black population.)

Grandmother T – probably the person in town with the best Confederate bonafides, being the general’s widow – didn’t attend that party. (Weirdly, a couple came dressed as her mother and father.) Her views on race seemed to match what sadly passed as moderation in the South, with T objecting in 1904 to President Teddy Roosevelt’s tiny steps towards recognizing African-Americans as being “negro socialism.” But to be fair, this was likewise the view of many here in Santa Rosa in the day, and exactly mirrored the opinion of Press Democrat editor Ernest Finley. She might have felt more at home in Santa Rosa than the rabidly rebel world of Montgomery.

While granny Minnie was preoccupied with demeaning slaves and descendants of slaves (she also wrote “Sugar Babe: A Sketch of Plantation Life in the Seventies”), T had literary and artistic interests which rubbed off on Oatsie, who once wanted to be a writer and was bookish her entire life. T was a charter member of the Ionian Club in Montgomery, which was the women’s cultural society. Like the Saturday Afternoon Club in Santa Rosa, members were expected to make presentations on intellectual topics of all sorts. Classical music was performed at meetings and the club hosted professional musicians touring the area.

The family faced financial disaster in 1932, according to a new article by Mitchell Owens (see sidebar – it’s a must read). Oatsie was called home from school for an announcement. “My father stood up in front of the fireplace and said, ‘I am sorry to inform you all but I have been wiped out’…we were told we had absolutely no money whatsoever.” What that meant is unclear; had he foolishly invested all of T’s once-enormous trust fund, or had he only lost his personal nest egg? T died the next year, so if there was any of that left, Will must have inherited a fortune (at least by the standards of it being the depth of the Great Depression).

Oatsie’s privileged life continued uninterrupted. At thirteen she was attending an exclusive girl’s school in Montgomery (the 1935 commencement exercises for the ten members in her class was held in Belvoir’s garden). After that she was packed off to European boarding schools 1935-1936, first the equivalent of three semesters at an english-speaking school in Brussels which Minnie interrupted at Christmas time to drag her around to meet former German royalty. This was the second time she had been her grandmother’s “darling little fifth wheel.” When she was eleven she had spent the summer in Germany with Minnie, who wrote a letter to the Montgomery paper boasting of all the wonderful and expensive places they stayed and all the very, very important people who warmly welcomed her. And her granddaughter.

A semester at a convent school near Munich followed. The family’s description (read: Minnie’s) emphasized this place practically injected blue blood into Oatsie’s veins – she was supposedly the first American as well as the first Protestant allowed to attend Kloster St. Joseph, as the nuns traditionally only accepted girls who were the crème de la crème of European dynasties (which no longer existed, of course). Oatsie later spoke of sentimental memories where the young women cut hay alongside the local peasants, then lunched on black bread and white radishes by a stream. Since this was 1936 Germany, a portrait of Hitler hung in every classroom but the nuns had it turned to face the wall, flipping it forward when the Nazis dropped by.

Like her relatives, Oatsie was now making regular appearances on the society pages in the Montgomery newspapers. Long before she was born her parents and grandmothers were often mentioned for their social doings; Minnie’s globe trotting is particularly easy to track because she knew folks back home in Alabama were sleepless, wondering just how many crown princes and baronesses she had checked off during her latest tour of Luxembourg. Oatsie likewise was given VIP treatment. The Montgomery Advertiser printed its first portrait of her at age two, another when she was a 13 year-old “sub-deb,” and the 1935 photo, shown at right, ran on the top of the front page. In between she popped up in class pictures and similar groups.

In her late teens she began attracting national attention for her good looks; Marion Oates might not have been a household name outside of Montgomery but her face was unforgettable, with her distinctive eyes and lantern jaw. (Yale, BTW, has a lovely photo of Oatsie and mother Georgia in 1937.) Three or four pictures of Oatsie circulated on the wire services every year in the late 1930s and early 1940s. She wasn’t alone, of course; glamor shots of pretty socialites and starlets were in papers almost daily all over the country, but she appeared often even though she was then a celebrity for no other reason. The images were a kind of Great Depression upper class pornography, just as movies in that same era might gratuitously throw in a scene at a glitzy nightclub or a palatial drawing room.

And lo, then came the Great Upheaval of 1938. It began right before New Years’, when the Montgomery newspapers printed a last-minute announcement that the upcoming party at Belvoir had been indefinitely postponed. No reason was given.

Then on January 14, 1938, the marriage of Will and Georgia Oates was dissolved by divorce.

Oatsie was then attending (yet another) finishing school in New York City and was called home on February 4 because her father was gravely ill. William Calvin Oates Jr. died two days later.

After waiting a respectful 34 days, Georgia married Philip Green Gossler on March 12 in New York City.

You can bet tongues were wagging back in Montgomery. A couple of stories were handed down that I won’t repeat here, except to say they are probably what you’d expect. Clearly problems had been brewing for some time.

The Montgomery Advertiser all but blacklisted any mention of the family, which must have given attention-hound Minnie the cold sweats. Even Oatsie’s blowout debutante party in New York (there were two, actually, both covered by the NY Times) merited only a few cursory paragraphs in the back of their hometown newspaper.

In late 1939 the Advertiser reprinted a lengthy article about Georgia which portrayed her as someone who was likely very mentally ill. Introducing the item with the snarky remark, “Mrs. Phillip Gossler of New York, formerly the lovely Georgia Saffold Oates of Montgomery,” the story claimed she rarely slept, believed she had psychic powers, was so sensitive she became sick when seeing clashing colors or discordant music and couldn’t bear to be far away from her huge collection of newspaper clippings. She was convinced F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote a story about her which was clearly about his future wife. When you read about manic, schizophrenic Zelda Fitzgerald and see a portrait of yourself, time’s overdue to seek help.

Let’s wrap up our story in 1940, when 21 year-old Oatsie was profiled in the Hearst’s Syndicate “Cholly Knickerbocker” gossip column. It’s mostly fluff about her taste in clothes and jewelry but gives us a peek at her unbounded life at the time: Fly fishing at her stepfather’s fishing lodge in New Brunswick, winter at his family’s estate in the Bahamas, a month at Belvoir every April. “Her clothes have a permanent crease from packing.” Her business mogul stepfather was stinking rich, and the man she would marry two years later stunk even more.

It would seem two paths were always open before her. Like her parents and Millie, she could have embraced their morbid antebellum sentimentality – “borne back ceaselessly into the past,” per the famous closing line of The Great Gatsby. Or she could have surrendered to the great wealth which she always enjoyed and idled away her days in the social whirl of the leisure class. Instead, she created a little world of her own and challenged the brightest and most interesting people to keep up. “She was a snob about intelligence but not about background or social things,” her daughter said.

I offer this as an epitaph: She made herself into a remarkable person, in spite of her crippling advantages.


1 Oatsie apparently told the birds-and-bees story often. This version appeared in “The Story of Edgewater House” by Nancy Glidden Coffey: Just before her wedding in 1942, a friend took her out to dinner. “After dinner he said, ‘Let’s go see Tallulah. She should be home from the theater by now.’ So we went to see Tallulah. And she said, ‘I know Georgia’s not going to tell you the facts of life,’ so she proceeded to tell me. In the meantime, I had [laryngitis and] no voice, so she was giving me bourbon on sugar. She more or less said sex wasn’t all it was cut out to be. I woke up the next morning and mother came in with a wedding present and some sort of tissue paper was rustling. I said, ‘My God, what’s that horrible noise?’ And I’ve never remembered what Tallulah told me.”

2 Only a single work by Georgia was published: a choral church piece, “For thy Gifts Untold.” It is unclear if Georgia could actually read music; a 1943 profile said she composed in a dark room with her eyes closed as one of her “arrangers” put it all down.
Marion Oates Leiter Charles at ages two, seventeen and eighteen

 

ALABAMA RELATIVES OF COLONEL J. W. OATES

Mr. and Mrs. William C. Oates of Montgomery, Alabama, are visiting Col. James W. Oates at his home on Mendocino avenue. William C. Oates is a nephew of Colonel Oates and is the son of Gen. William C. Oates, former Governor of Alabama. He is a capitalist and a member of the bar of that State. Mr. and Mrs. Oates will probably remain here until fall. They have made several visits to this city and at all times seem loath to go and anxious to return.

– Press Democrat, August 6, 1915

 

Society and Club Gossip by Dorothy Ann

Flashing lights, beautiful gowns, scintillating jewels and pretty women were paramount in the brilliant assemblage that gathered at the invitation of Col. James Wyatt Oates, Wednesday evening, at which time Mr. and Mrs. William C. Oates of Montgomery, Ala., and Miss Lois Granberry and Miss Pat Granberry were the honored guests. Amaryllis lilies cast their dainty fragrance from every nook and corner of the beautiful home, with long sprays of asparagus fern to enhance their pink beauty. The strains of soft music floated down from the balcony of the broad stair cases into the spacious rooms, where many friends gathered to bid welcome to the charming quartet of southerners.

Interest centered in Mrs. Oates, whose attractive beauty, sweetness of manner and charming simplicity won as one the hearts of those invited to meet her. Sharing with her the honors of the evening were Miss Lois Granberry and Miss Pat Granberry who have been with us a sufficient length of time to establish for themselves a prominent place in our social circles.

Particularly attractive were some of the gowns worn, that of  Mrs. Oates greatly enhancing her flower-like beauty, it being white taffeta, trimmed with Bohemian lace and crystal trimming. A little scarf of tulle was draped around her shoulders and she carried Amaryllis lilies tied with graceful bows of pink tulle. She wore diamond ornaments…

– Press Democrat, August 22, 1915

 

Mrs. G. Frank Comstock has issued invitations for a tea to be given Tuesday afternoon complimentary to Mrs. William C. Oates and the Misses Granberry.

– Press Democrat, August 29, 1915

 

Mr. and Mrs. William C. Oates left for San Francisco Friday morning, on route to their home in Montgomery, Alabama. They will spend this week at the Exposition and then go to Los Angeles, where they will make a brief stay. They will be joined at the latter place by Miss Lois Granberry and Miss Pat Granberry who will accompany them home.

– Press Democrat, September 19, 1915

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WHO HATED THE GETTYSBURG ADDRESS?

Jeff Elliott Leave a comment

Lots of people, as it turns out, including Santa Rosa attorney James Wyatt Oates: He didn’t like what Lincoln said. Others had more knee-jerk reactions.

Oates, as followers of this journal well know, was the man who built (what would become known as) Comstock House in Santa Rosa. He originally came from Alabama but he personally played no role in the Civil War – he was only eleven when it began. Mr. Oates had views on the war that were out of step with what we might presume a Southerner of his generation would have. He did not mourn the Confederacy’s defeat and thought Lincoln was a great man who did the right thing in fighting to preserve the Union; he hated slavery, and deplored the way the South tried to justify it. We know his strong views on the subjects because he was also a writer of sorts, and twenty essays and short stories have survived. His 1905 essay, “Lincoln,” is partially transcribed below, but all of them can be read in facsimile at the web page for his collected works.

         

LINCOLN’S DOLOROUS AUDIENCE

Between the Battle of Gettysburg and Lincoln’s famous address four months passed, with the situation steadily growing worse in both the North and South. No one still had any illusions that the war would soon end or enjoyed complete faith that their side would ultimately triumph. It was these dispirited and discontented people whom Lincoln’s words needed to touch.

In the North, less than two weeks after Gettysburg and just as the public was beginning to grasp the enormous scope of the casualty count, came the unprecedented riots in New York City and Boston as the first draftees were called up under the new federal law. Anti-war judges began releasing men from the service duties using the writ of habeas corpus, resulting in Lincoln suspending this basic right in September. By doing so, Lincoln declared that he, as commander-in-chief, and the military did not have to honor court decisions. This made it easier for Lincoln’s many critics to charge he had assumed dictatorial powers.

The Union had also become more politically divided since the the war began. Lincoln’s Republican party suffered major losses in the 1862 midterm elections; the new Democratic majority in Indiana tried to assume control of all soldiers from that state and Illinois legislators wanted to send delegates to a rogue armistice convention in Louisville where peace would be negotiated.

The Emancipation Proclamation also divided the North. Outside of New England the Abolitionist movement was not as strong; Midwesterners typically didn’t want slavery to spread to new states, but were often indifferent to having it abolished. Following the Proclamation, propaganda spread that the Midwestern states were about to be “overrun with negroes, they will compete with you and bring down your wages…” So anxious were people about the rumors about immigration of former slaves that Lincoln was forced to debunk it in the State of the Union Address. Further alienating moderate Republicans, strident supporters of Lincoln formed “Loyal Leagues” that demanded local businesses declare full support of abolition or face a boycott.

In the South, Lee’s bedraggled army was at risk of collapse. There were not adequate rations or other basic supplies for the troops that survived Gettysburg or the 56,000 men who had just been released by Union forces at Vicksburg and other battle sites near the Mississippi River. Some states were no longer able to reliably support their regiments financially, leaving soldiers no option but to beg or steal food from farmers near their camps. Desertion became a major problem; by a month after Gettysburg, the Confederate War Department reported there were 136,000 soldiers absent without leave. Many simply went home but there were pockets of marauding deserters and draft-dodgers roaming the countryside. Near the Texas-Louisiana border it was reported an estimated 2,000 deserters had fortified an island on the Red River to serve as a base for raids on surrounding farms and plantations. The Confederate Armies had become armies of locusts laying waste their own land.

No less significant a crisis was the widespread belief in the South that they were losing the war because God was displeased. From the beginning Southerners were told from pulpit and podium that the war was a crusade against those ungodly sinners of the North, and if things were going badly they needed to get back in God’s favor, pronto. General Robert E. Lee called for a day of fasting and prayer for “a purer patriotism and more determined will” because “…we have forgotten his signal mercies, and have cultivated a revengeful, haughty and boastful spirit.” In the months following Gettysburg, a “Great Revival” whipped up evangelical enthusiasm among the troops in camp meetings that were intense and frequent, sometimes multiple times a day. One soldier wrote his regiment had not only become “members of the Church of the Living God, but professors of religion.”

Perhaps sensitive to this renewed Southern fevor, Lincoln added “under God” to the Gettysburg Address – words that do not appear in the version of the speech written down by his secretary at the White House before Lincoln left for Gettysburg.

 

Mr. Oates was also a well-respected lawyer, and there were two things about the Gettysburg Address that troubled his legal mind. The end of the speech particularly got under his skin: “…that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

He objected to Lincoln saying democracy would “perish from the earth” if the Union lost the war. Oates argued that Confederate soldiers – even though they “fought for a cause utterly wrong, utterly illogical and shocking to the sense of a fair man,” as he wrote in another essay – were “equally zealous, was as devoted to government of, for and by the people as was any Northern man who fought in that contest.”

Further, Oates argued, the United States of America wouldn’t have been harmed by having a Confederate  States of America next door:


To say that the establishment of the South as a separate government would destroy that character of government finds no justification in any process of reasoning from the then known facts. There were then abundant evidences of that stalwart spirit in the American people, both North and South, that would not permit that character of government to ‘perish from the earth,’ whether we remained one or became two distinct nations.

Read together with his 1910 essay, “The Southern States,” Oates’ central tenets appear: Although Oates strongly denounced slavery and was pleased the Union triumphed, he also agreed with Southerners who viewed the Civil War as “The War of Northern Aggression.” And while he admired Lincoln, he thought the president and other Northerners were so worked up over the slavery issue that they couldn’t see past it and recognize the South states had every right to spin off a government of their own, exactly as it was for the colonists in 1776. Holding such logically and morally complex and contradictory views reveals Mr. Oates as undoubtedly capable of walking and chewing gum at the same time.

Our Mr. Oates didn’t take issue with Lincoln’s remarks about the “honored dead” who had “consecrated the ground” at Gettysburg, but certainly his older brother would have had strong opinions about that. Confederate Colonel William C. Oates had command of the 15th Alabama Regiment on the second day of fighting at Gettysburg and led them in the Battle of Little Round Top. Among the regiment was another Oates brother, John, who was wounded and left behind as the Rebels retreated in panic. John survived for three weeks in a Union field hospital near the battleground. Even while Lincoln was speaking, John’s body was still on the farm where he died, about two miles away. John’s name was written on a wooden marker and placed on the grave. By the end of the war, the marker was lost.

As Lincoln spoke, over a thousand bodies had already been buried at the Gettysburg soldier’s cemetery. That was less than half the total, and it would be another four months before the last soldier who died at Gettysburg would be buried there. Of course, that meant the last Union soldier, because the cemetery was only for them. When workers encountered a Confederate body, they left it at the same spot, only reburying it deeper down. By contrast, the government was treating the Union dead with tender care, endeavoring to make certain the identification was correct, sorting the caskets so soldiers could be buried next to comrades from their home state. Any mementos were carefully collected and saved for the fallen soldier’s nearest kin.

The Civil War had been over for seven years before private funds were raised to deal with the body of John Oates and the other dead Confederates. His body was among those taken to the Hollywood cemetery in Richmond, where about 2,000 Rebels who died at Gettysburg – most of them unidentifiable by that time – were placed in a mass grave. Record keeping was so poor that it took William Oates 45 years to even find out that much.

(That the Union forces chose to not deal with the Confederate dead remains a contemporary problem. Throughout the 20th century, Confederate remains kept turning up at Gettysburg, most recently in 1995. As there were about 1,500 Confederate soldiers at Gettysburg that are still unaccounted for, there are almost certainly many bodies undiscovered, according to the National Park Service.)

But give the Oates’ credit: If they disliked the Gettysburg Address, it was because they took issue with what Lincoln said. Others in the South hated it for more visceral reasons. In the days after the speech, Southern newspapers mostly ignored it; some ridiculed it as inconsequential or even silly; others claimed Lincoln didn’t even speak at the ceremony. The very few that printed the speech did so only after taking out the first line, with its inflammatory bit about all men being created equal.

After the surrender at Appomattox, Southern resentment over Gettysburg and Lincoln’s Address continued even after the Civil War generations began dying out. There’s a very good academic study (PDF) written by Jared Elliott Peatman that looks at Southern opinion of the Gettysburg Address as viewed through newspapers in Virginia.

For the century that followed, the South tried to pretend the Gettysburg Address didn’t exist. In most of the country it became customary for someone to recite the Gettysburg Address on Memorial Day; in the South, the custom was to have someone read General Robert E. Lee’s Farewell Address. No school district or college would consider a textbook that discussed the Gettysburg Address; the United Confederate Veterans formed a committee to make sure “long-legged Yankee lies” were not being taught. A 1909 list of history books approved by the state of Virginia did not include a single title about Lincoln or the Gettysburg Address, but it did include Confederate biographies and the Uncle Remus books.

Lincoln’s reputation in the South was rehabilitated after World War I – at the 1922 dedication Lincoln Memorial there were even a few very aged Confederate Army veterans attending in uniform. But the Gettysburg Address mostly continued to be shunned, even during the big fuss over it during the 1963 centennial. The Richmond News Leader of November 19, 1963, according to the Peatman study, presented an article titled, “Gettysburg Address: Unforgettable Words” which “…was, from start to finish, a condemnation of the Address’ literary style. Among the many faults the author pointed out were the repetition of verbs, the lack of punch, beginning the speech with a number, the brevity of the speech, the repetition of ‘great,’ and the use of various clichés.”

But why did the Gettysburg Address end up being the South’s Civil War Purity of View Litmus Test? Part of the hatred probably is simply because it explicitly said all men were created equal. Part was also because the speech was inexorably tied to Gettysburg, and the memories of what happened there – both the defeat and how poorly their dead were treated afterward – lingered as an open wound well into the 20th century. But there probably are still some like our Mr. Oates, who view the Gettysburg Address as unfairly demonizing them as being haters of American democratic ideals. Peatman’s study deserves the last word on the subject:


In 1858, Lincoln declared, “A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free… It will become all one thing or all the other.” But Lincoln was wrong. The story of Virginians’ reaction to the Gettysburg Address shows that when it comes to issues of race, and the remembrance of the struggle for freedom, as of 1963 the United States remained divided, with no prospect of soon becoming “all one thing or all the other.”

Adapted from remarks delivered at the Remembrance Day ceremonies at the Santa Rosa Rural Cemetery, November 16, 2013

LINCOLN

No one would detract an iota from the justly high estimate of Lincoln held by men. He was one of the greatest of his race, and today when all the passions that surged around him during life have died, foe and friend alike can and do extend full justice to that most unique and pathetic figure.

However, the American people on occasions become emotional and lose the power of discrimination. Truth is vastly more important than the interest of any man or than the memory of all men. It is a fine trait that yields willing and full mead of praise to him to whom it of right belongs; but it is a finer trait to do that and at the same time keep to the truth. The disposition today is to exaggerate and claim for Lincoln a stature not his in truth. Of course, to paraphrase the Gettysburg speech, it little matters what we here and now say; rather will he in the end be judged by what he then did. But we should seek to get at the core of things; to over-estimate any man is not justice to him or to others, and I have that confidence in Lincoln’s love of truth to feel that he would prefer to be judged as others are judged, and to be judged justly. The enthusiasts are trying to make a myth–a god–of his memory, all of which will fail as such things have failed all down the ages.

[..]

The one thing that I do not like in this hour of unstinted adulation is the unthinking, uncritical way in which Lincoln’s celebrated Gettysburg speech is praised. As a a composition it is excellent; as a means to an end it was a stroke of genius; as a truth — it will not stand. He was speaking of the Union soldiers who fought on that field, in the light of American institutions, and the essence of what he said is in this expression: “That we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that the nation shall have a new birth of freedom, that government of the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” This meant that the people of the South were trying to destroy “government of the people, for the people, by the people,” which was not true. The South was equally zealous, was as devoted to government of, for and by the people as was any Northern man who fought in that contest. Both sides equally desired that kind of government; nor was that kind of government in issue or in danger. The question is issue was rather whether there should be one government by, of and for the people North and another government by, of and for the people South, or one government for both.

Truth will not permit anyone to say that that kind of government in the North was in any sense menaced. No one so desired such government “to perish from the earth;” nor was anyone endeavoring to do anything which would produce such a result. Certainly the South was making no such effort. Had she been successful, the North would have had for herself “government by, of and for the people” just as she wanted it [and] just as she had it before; and so would the South, for her government, in that respect, was identical with the government established by the Fathers of the Republic. In truth, we might go further; as it was given to Lincoln to understand, he was, of course, telling the full truth, but in all honesty with prejudice laid aside, with a clearer light, we may ask, was he engaged in an enterprise that extended to the South “government of the people, by the people, and for the people” in the sense of the Father’s work? Truth will not permit it to be said that he was. He was denying to the South that kind of government. The frozen truth is that Lincoln was trying to save the Union in a way that negated the idea of such government; and he in substance said at another time that he would do anything to preserve the Union. That it was best to save the Union may be admitted and I believe it was; but that was not what he said. He was speaking of a thing that might or might not exist in or out of the Union. To say that the Union was necessary in order that such government might exist will not do. That was not true then nor is it true now. What would have happened by way of change in that character of government North or South had the South succeeded, was then a matter of prophecy; and all the prophets have been dead for centuries. But to say that the establishment of the South as a separate government would destroy that character of government finds no justification in any process of reasoning from the then known facts. There were then abundant evidences of that stalwart spirit in the American people, both North and South, that would not permit that character of government to “perish from the earth,” whether we remained one or became two distinct nations, and there was not one fact tending to show that such government would “perish from the earth” if the South succeeded.

A recognition of this is due to the brave and devoted people of the South who fought and died in the firm and honest belief that a right to have a government of their own choice was as much the right of eight million of Americans then in the South as it was of three million of Colonists in 1776.

That it has come about since 1865 that the South has a full measure of that kind of government is due, not to the logical sequence of that war, but to the inherent love of that kind of government all over this Nation, North and South.

Since that war we have not lived up to that idea of government in dealing with others. This will not please our self-love; but it is a fact all the same. Read that phrase from Lincoln’s speech and then look at Puerto Rico and the Philippines and see, if one can, where that doctrine comes in. The very spirit of the war waged by the North for the Union was destructive, in its necessary tendencies, of the character of government Lincoln did not wish to “perish from the North.” I am not saying whether that idea is at all times the best; neither am I contending that it would have been for the best had the South succeeded. All that is aside from the question; for what is the best kind of government depends upon a multitude of things, and what is best for one people or one condition may not be so good for other people or for the same people under different conditions. This truth lies behind the reason for the government by, of and for the people, that they may change it when they do not like what they have. The power to change is the very essence of such a government; if this American government

There was enough of the great and good in Lincoln for an exceeding large mead of admiration and praise, but it should stop where he was wrong, as in that matter. Nor am I satisfied when I hear admirers of Lincoln claim that he was as great or greater than Washington. The equal of Washington never breathed the breath of life, and from present indications this estimate will stand forever as the truth of all the ages.

James W. Oates.
August, 1905.

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THE COLONEL’S LONG YEARS OF CONSTANT SORROW

Jeff Elliott Leave a comment

Even though his brother was 76 year-old, James Wyatt Oates was shocked to learn the old man had died that afternoon in 1910. He had always seemed invincible; countless times he cheated death during the Civil War, despite being on the front lines of some of the bloodiest battles – the Wilderness and Spotsylvania, Chickamauga, Gettysburg. He was wounded six times, the last injury costing him his right arm. Still, it was nothing short of a miracle that he survived his last bout of combat at all; when that lead minie ball destroyed his arm he was facing a hail of enemy gunfire, waving his sword and urging his troops to fight even though the battle was clearly already lost. Confederate Colonel William C. Oates always fought hardest when he was on the losing side.

William and James Wyatt grew close, but not until after the Civil War. William was 17 years older, more like a father or uncle than a sibling. He was hardly around at all while Wyatt was a child, and was approaching middle age before he apparently developed any kind of bond with his youngest brother. William had already lived a full life to that point, having spent his youth brawling and gambling before settling down to be a successful Alabama lawyer, then Civil War warrior, then lawyer again. He was unmarried until he was 48 (although he was the father of two boys, one of them born to a slave who was his domestic servant), but there always was one constant in his life – his brother, John.

There was only two years difference in age between John and William. They were inseparable as children, each other’s best friend. They even looked alike, although John was always a few inches shorter. John also read for the law and joined William’s practice in Abbeville and when the war came they both were patriots in the Confederate vein. John was quick to enlist and became a private; William delayed a few months to raise a company from among the local men, with himself as captain. They were apart only a few months in different regiments before John was posted to his brother’s company and promoted to 2nd lieutenant.

The 15th Alabama Regiment saw action in the following year of 1862, but luck followed them; even at the Battle of Antietam – the bloodiest day of the entire war – fewer than ten of them were killed. Morale remained high. John’s health was beginning to deteriorate, however. Sleeping on frozen ground during the winter of 1862-1863 had caused him to develop acute rheumatism in his right hip and leg that was getting worse by the week. In the spring of 1863 he even requested a desk job as it had become painful to simply take a step.

By the time they arrived at Gettysburg on July 2nd, he was in particularly bad shape. They had just marched all night, making 28 miles in eleven hours; John fell behind and William sent back his spare horse for his brother to ride. Besides his constant pain and exhaustion, John had a high fever, yet still defied William’s order that he report to sick leave. “I will go in with my company though I know it may cost me my life,” he said, according to William’s history. It would be the last time the brothers’ spoke.

William had been given command of the 15th Alabama Regiment only about two months earlier, and this would be his first time leading them into battle. He was respected by his troops for always being in the front of the fighting, but his habit of not faithfully following and/or understanding orders along with his lack of any military education repeatedly led them into trouble that day. While under an artillery barrage, Oates sent 22 men off in search of water, leaving the regiment short-handed (and without canteens) when the order to advance came. He disobeyed direct orders to advance towards a position on the Confederate line, instead fruitlessly chasing Union sharpshooters up a steep hill covered with boulders, both further exhausting his men and wasting valuable time. When an officer caught up with his regiment and found them on the wrong hill, Oates tried to argue he thought there was a strategic advantage in staying put. Oates’ regiment was ordered to follow orders, now greatly delayed with the afternoon shadows were growing longer. Meanwhile, Union troops had beaten Oates in taking command over the nearby hill called Little Round Top. (The battle for Little Round Top was introduced in an earlier essay about William’s 1905 visit to Santa Rosa, and can be explored in great depth at many Civil War history websites, such as this one.)


Artist’s rendering of Col. Oates and the 15th Alabama at Little Round Top. Image courtesy U.S. Army CECOM Historical Office (artist credit not given)

For purposes here, let’s summarize that Oates’ many delays resulted in his regiment fighting uphill on Little Round Top, another rocky slope. The combat was bloody and continued for over an hour. On word that Union troops were also approaching from the rear, Oates ordered a retreat and his men began withdrawing for the night. Suddenly the Yankees locked bayonets and made a screaming charge down the hill, causing the Rebels to panic – “we ran like a herd of wild cattle,” Oates later wrote with remarkable candor. Left behind were their dead and wounded, including John Oates. William did not know if his beloved brother was captured or dying or dead.

It was nearly two full months before William learned that John had been wounded by no less than six bullets. He survived for 23 days in a Union field hospital near the battleground before dying of blood poisoning. He was buried in his own casket in his own grave on the site, with a wooden headstone. By the time William revisited Gettysburg after the war, the marker was gone.

Through all the accomplishments that followed – four terms as a Congressman and two years as governor of Alabama, appointment as a brigadier general in the Spanish-American War – William Oates was haunted by Gettysburg and the fate of his brother. Biographer Glenn W. LaFantasie wrote in Gettysburg Requiem:


…[H]e was tougher than most men his age. What weighed on him, though, and sapped his strength…were his memories of Gettysburg, of the death of his young brother, of the ghost-like images of his comrades falling on Little Round Top, and of the lost opportunity that the battle represented for the Confederacy and for him personally. Oates could not escape the vise grip Gettysburg had on him, a grip that prevented him from ever gaining any real peace in his old soldier’s soul.

He hungered to know every detail of what happened to John after Little Round Top and what happened to his remains. After much sleuthing, he found the Union doctor who treated John and was heartened to learn that the doctor’s family was drawn to John and his last words were, “Tell my folks at home that I died in the arms of friends.”

William became morose every July 2 and December 24, the latter being John’s birthday. On Christmas Eve, 1900, he wrote a letter to his 17 year-old son attending West Point. “The night recalls to me the fact that one whom you never saw but who was dear to me was born on Christmas Eve night.” On these anniversaries, he wrote to Willie, the memories of their last conversation flooded back, and how he had failed to convince John to stay out of the battle. That John had died a prisoner of war sickened him. “He was a noble young man and died for his country and in a just cause as he and I both saw it.”

For the last fifteen years of his life, William fought to have a monument built on Little Round Top commemorating the 15th Alabama regiment. “[W]hen I am dead and gone, I want to leave a little stone on the spot where my brother and others were killed,” he wrote in his application. He wanted the marker to include a wordy plaque that mentioned John twice:


To the memory of Lt. John A. Oates
and his gallant Comrades who fell here
July 2nd, 1863.  The 15th Ala. Regt.,
over 400 strong reached this spot, but
for lack of support had to retire.

Lt. Col. Feagin lost a leg.
Capts. Brainard and Ellison,
Lts. Oates and Cody and
33 men were killed, 76 wounded
and 84 captured.

Erect 39th Anniversary of battle,
by Gen. Wm. C. Oates who was
Colonel of the Regiment.

In early 1909, he happened to discover John’s body had been exhumed in 1872 and sent with the remains of eleven other Confederates to Virginia for reburial. Excited that he was at last about to find a grave where he could place a marker he sought more details, only to find that John’s general burial spot was again unmarked and lost somewhere amid a large section designated only as “Gettysburg Hill” in a Richmond cemetery.

Hearing that news, “Oates became seriously ill and bedridden,” according to biographer LaFantasie, not specifying what his ailment was. His doctor suggested the cool mountain air in North Carolina might make him feel better, but he soon turned back home and returned to bed. Exactly two months after learning that John’s grave had forever disappeared, William Oates passed away quietly.

You could say he simply lost his will to live, and surely that would be hard to dispute.


SOURCES:
Gettysburg Requiem: The Life and Lost Causes of Confederate Colonel William C. Oates by Glenn W. LaFantasie, 2006
The War Between the Union and the Confederacy and its Lost Opportunities by William C. Oates, 1905
John A. Oates: No Brothers Loved Each Other Better by Rosemary Pardoe
The Inimitable William C. Oates by Glenn W. LaFantasie

 

GENERAL WM. C. OATES DIES AT ALABAMA HOME
Was One of Most Beloved Men of the Entire South

General William C. Oates, a brother of Judge James W. Oates of this city, died at his home in Montgomery, Alabama, on Friday. Not only did the news cause great sorrow in the Oates household here, but it will cause sorrow and genuine regret to many Santa Rosans who had met the courtly southerner in his several visits to Santa Rosa, where he was the guest of his relatives, Judge and Mrs. Oates.

The deceased was a born leader of men, and all of his life has been in the forefront of progressive movements for his beloved south. He served from the start to the finish of the civil war, first under General Stonewall Jackson and after his death under General Longstreet. At the close of the war he had gained the title of colonel and was in command of a brigade of cavalry.

General Oates was probably the most beloved man of Montgomery, and one of the most prominent men of the entire south. Early in his eventful and energetic life he became a great favorite with the people there, and the close of his life found him receiving the admiration of all the people among whom he had lived so many years. Judge Thomas C. Denny of this city spent some days with General Oates and his estimable family during July, and he remarked when he returned to this city that he had never seen a people so united in the love and veneration of a man as were the residents of the southern city in their love and veneration of General Oates.

Thirteen times was General Oates wounded in the civil war, and in that eventful struggle he lost his right arm. As soon as he could recover from this wound, he was back at the front again, and the close of the great struggle found him fighting as aggressively as he did at the commencement of hostilities. General Oates enlisted with the Fifteenth Alabama Infantry Volunteers of the Confederate army, taking up arms early in 1861, and remaining with the army until the final close. He was in every fight in which the Confederate army of northern Virginia engaged from and including the first battle of Bull Run. In his thirteen wounds General Oates was twice severely wounded, one of these being the loss of the arm. Wounds had no effect on his valor and he would again go to the front as rapidly as he could recover and and fight aggressively. He was always a leader, and in every movement looking to the restoration and upbuilding of the south following the war, he was in the Vanguard. General Oates lost his arm in front of Petersburg in the fall of 1864, Death claimed him at the age of seventy-eight years that were crowned with many successes. Prior to becoming a resident of Montgomery, he resided in Eufala, Alabama, where he was born.

General Oates had many times been honored by the people of his native state with public office. In 1870 and the two years following he was a member of the state legislature; in 1875 he was chosen a member of the state constitutional convention; in 1880 he was elected to represent his district in Congress, and remained in the national legislature for the following fifteen years; at the end of that time he resigned to accept an election as governor of his state. He served as governor for two years, and then declined re-election. In 1897 he was again chosen a member of the state constitutional convention.

At the beginning of the Spanish-American hostilities the war spirit in the southerner again arose and he was appointed a brigadier general in the army, and he served until the close of the war.

Five years ago General Oates was given an appointment by President Roosevelt that was a fitting close to his activities of his earlier life. He was made a United States commissioner to locate and mark the graves of Confederate dead, who had died in Union prisons. He was busily engaged in this task almost up to the time of his death and to him it was a pleasant duty to seek out the graves of former comrades in a great struggle and see that they were given proper recognition.

For some time past it had been realized that the health of General Oates had been failing, but it was not believed the dread end was near. A short time ago he went to the springs at Asheville, North Carolina, but no change for the betterment taking place in his condition, he returned to his beloved Alabama to pass his remaining days. The news of his death was a great shock to Judge and Mrs. Oates here, for they had believed that their beloved relative was improving. They had intended making a journey to Alabama early in the coming spring to visit with General Oates and his family.

Four times General Oates and his wife and only son William C. Oates, Jr., crossed the continent to this city. They met many residents of this city and all of the people here who met them formed close friendships for the visitors.

Judge Oates is an only brother of the deceased, but three sisters survive, Mrs. M. J. Long of Abbeville, Ala.; Mrs. A. E. Linton of Galveston, Texas; and Mrs. L. Hickman of Jacksonville, Fla., In addition to these the devoted widow and son mentioned above also survive.

– Santa Rosa Republican,  September 10, 1910

The news of the death of General Oates, former Governor of Alabama, came as a shock to Colonel James Wyatt Oates, the Governor’s brother. Governor Oates is very pleasantly remembered by many Santa Rosa friends who had the pleasure of meeting him here when he visited his brother. He was a fine man, possessing all the qualifications of the courteous, hospitable Southern gentleman. He was an eminent scholar and a distinguished soldier. Many sympathetic messages will be forwarded to the family from Santa Rosa.

– “Society Gossip,” Press Democrat, September 11, 1910

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