The 55th Massachusetts Colored Regiment liberating Charleston, South Carolina, residents from their enslavement, Feb. 21, 1865. (Harper’s Weekly. Public Domain)
On Decoration Day, May 30, 1875, the children of Mission Hill School unveiled a fancy Victorian tombstone in Evergreen Cemetery, dedicated to their school’s benefactor: London Nelson. He wasn’t a rich man, but an ex-slave who left his entire estate to keep the school from closing again. Nelson, on advice of A.W. Rawson, had his will stipulate that only rent from his real estate, and interest on his funds, would be used for the school.
This grew his modest estate into thousands of dollars, out of which they built a grand four-story school with a French bell tower that opened in 1875. The children had raised some money themselves to replace his wooden marker, whose painted words were flaking off. Almost forgotten, his 1860 burial records were consulted for the spelling of his name, and the cursive handwriting was misread as “Louden Nelson.”
Even though Nelson was not a soldier, Decoration Day (now Memorial Day) was not inappropriate for remembering him. National Decoration Day had been officially designated May 30, 1868, as a time when flowers were in bloom for decorating the graves of Civil War veterans. Yet one of the earliest versions of Decoration Day was established by Black citizens and soldiers, to thank those who had given their lives for their freedom.
The struggle
In 1850, California had barely avoided being split into a Southern Slave State and a Northern Free State. But the Gold Rush created a population explosion in Northern California, which overwhelmed the pro-slavery part of the state by voting California into the Union as an undivided Free State. The California Constitution says “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude –unless for the punishment of crimes– shall ever be tolerated in this state.” Yet enslaved people like London Nelson were brought into the state to work as slaves, and only with their master’s permission were slaves in California allowed to buy their freedom.
In 1852, the California Legislature gave everyone who had brought a slave into California a year to remove them as still-enslaved persons; then renewed this deadline for another year in 1853, and again in 1854. And the state elected some terrible racists to office. The first governor was former enslaver Peter Hardeman Burnett (1849-1851), who wanted to eject all Black and Chinese people from the state, and enslave the Indigenous Californians. The state’s first two senators were ardent Abolitionist John C. Fremont, and Mississippi slave-owner Wm. M. Gwin (1850-1861). Gwin called himself a moderate, but joined the Knights of the Golden Circle secret society backing a Slave Empire around the Gulf of Mexico, and Gwinn even considered making California part of a Slave Republic of the Pacific. In 1860, Gwinn was arrested in the company of secessionists John Slidell and J.L. Brent, but they were released to avoid an international incident. Then John Slidell was arrested in 1861 along with James M. Mason, as rebel diplomats hoping to get Britain to back the Confederacy. The “diplomats” were released as well.
Prior to the Civil War were the Kansas statehood wars, when Missouri’s “border ruffians” did everything to force Slavery on Kansas, from cross-border voting, to fugitive slave laws, to intimidation, massacre, and pillage. John Brown fought back in bloody vengeance, culminating on Oct. 17, 1859, with his raid on the armory at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia. When he and his group were caught and hanged, reactions ranged from outrage over his martyrdom, to delight at the punishment of Insurrectionists.
In 1860, the Black residents of Santa Cruz included servants George and Jane Church, from Canada and Virginia respectively. A public barbershop was run by three men with West Indies accents, named John Hester, Hille Williamson and Jeremiah Williams. Two cooks were the oldest, 38-year-old Able Daoney from Texas and 56-year-old Wm. Hurley from Maryland. An 18-year-old couple, Wm. and Ellen Towns, were the youngest, yet also the richest. Wm. Town was a logger from New York, and his wife Ellen a servant from Texas, who none-the-less jointly listed $100 cash and $400 in property. There was former gold miner George Andrew Chester who came to raise a family, joined by his mining friend Samuel Padmore. Mr. Robins and John Lewis were mining in Gold Gulch south of Felton. Watsonville had its own Black farm families, such as Robert Johnson, John Derrick, Jim Watson, Jim Brodis, Lewis Bardin and Dan Rodgers.
Most Black people felt Santa Cruz was a refuge of tolerance, with Abolitionist strongholds in Santa Cruz and Watsonville. Then in 1860, a corrupt sheriff falsely accused Black farmer Dave Boffman of stealing his colt when it wandered onto Boffman’s ranch. The sheriff fined him $100, and when a sympathetic George Otto paid the fine for him, the sheriff said it was only $50, because he deducted $25-a-month interest. While plenty of people tried to stop this injustice, California law said a Black man cannot testify in a court of law. So in the end, Boffman’s ranch was sold to the sheriff to pay the so-called “fine.” The outrage infuriated the local populous.
Charleston
Stakes could not have been higher in the presidential election of Nov. 6, 1860, in which Abraham Lincoln was kept off the ballot in all Southern states. California and Oregon were the only states west of Texas to vote. The most pro-Lincoln counties were Santa Cruz, Santa Clara, Alameda and Marin, with Contra Costa, San Bernardino and Nevada counties not far behind, delivering California to Lincoln. Lincoln tried to reassure the South he wouldn’t force abolition on existing slave states. But the Charleston militia seized the federal arsenal as the first strike in the Southern insurrection. South Carolina, half of whose population were slaves, held a convention in Charleston on Dec. 20, 1860, in which they voted to be the first state to secede from the United States for the preservation of slavery. These were the last months of James Buchanan’s presidency, a Southern sympathizing Northerner trying to please everybody. He responded that secession is unconstitutional, but he had no legal means to oppose it. Thus, without any enforcement of law, six other states seceded in January and February 1861, stealing land that belonged to the entire nation.
Lincoln took office March 5, 1861. Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor was commanded by Major Robert Anderson, formerly a professor at West Point. On April 12, the fort was attacked by insurrectionists led by Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard, once Anderson’s assistant at West Point. After a 34-hour bombardment, Anderson surrendered the fort. This began the Civil War, causing four more states to secede. Lincoln responded by setting a blockade of all Confederate ports on April 19, 1861, monitoring 3,500 miles of coast with 500 ships. Confederate blockade runners managed to supply the ports of Wilmington (North Carolina), Charleston (South Carolina), and Mobile (Alabama), losing one out of 10 ships at first, then one out of three ships as the blockade improved.
The attack on Fort Sumter instantly galvanized the loyalty of an 18-year-old Irish boy named John T. Sullivan.
He’d had a difficult childhood. His father was an Irish revolutionary who died in prison when Johnny was 5, causing his mother to die from grief. Johnny was sent to his father’s revolutionary protegee in Brooklyn, who was indifferent to him. Johnny went to work on the farm of Sylvanius Dickinson, in Hadley, Mass., finding a family who treated him like a son. At age 13, he came to South Carolina to load Sea Island cotton onto Pocotaligo trains. But at the outbreak of hostilities, the cotton-growing islands were abandoned. Johnny returned north, enlisting in the 10th Massachusetts Infantry, then was deployed in the 1st Massachusetts Cavalry as a scout with knowledge of the South Carolina area. He was in battles at Pocotaligo railroad hub, Morris Island in Charleston Harbor, Second Battle of Bull Run, Poolsville, Frederick City, and wounded at Antietam. He was twice captured, and twice escaped.
Charleston became the last stronghold for blockade runners, with almost impenetrable defenses.
Confederate President Jefferson Davis said it was better Charleston be reduced to “a heap of ruins” than surrender. Wm. Tecumseh Sherman had the same idea, and employed it in the burning of Atlanta, and his March to the Sea, leading a path of destruction through Georgia and the Carolinas. Cut off from the interior, Gen. Beauregard ordered the evacuation from Charleston of remaining Confederate forces on Feb. 15, 1865, and South Carolina’s capital at Columbia was destroyed by Sherman Feb. 17, 1865, forcing the Charleston mayor to surrender his city to the Union army. The first soldiers to enter the city were members of the 21st Infantry Regiment of the US Colored Troops and the famed 55th Massachusetts, singing “John Brown’s Body.” With most Confederates evacuated, the streets were full of Black people freed by this Union victory.
After so much death, how do you say thank you for your freedom? The Black population of Charleston began by exhuming a mass grave at the old race track, where 260 Union prisoners had died of disease and exposure in the Confederate prison camp. They were reburied in a new cemetery, with a tall whitewashed fence that read “Martyrs of the Race Course.” Lee surrendered on April 9, 1865, and Lincoln was assassinated April 14, 1865. This left a Civil War death toll of 620,000 lives, greater than the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, the Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, and the Korean War, combined.
On May 1, 1865, the Charleston graves of those who died to end slavery were decorated. Then a crowd of 10,000 mostly freed slaves, staged a parade, featuring 3,000 black school children with bouquets, plus members of the 54th Massachusetts and other Black Union regiments marching, while Black ministers made Biblical observations of the significance of this event. Thus, the first known Decoration Day was held, in the very city that started the Civil War for slavery.
Santa Cruz wrap-up
Back in Santa Cruz, Decoration Day of 1869 and 1870 featured the veterans leading a march to Evergreen Cemetery, where a special G.A.R. section had been created to honor the 16 local Civil War dead. But John T. Sullivan was not one of the dead. Though seriously wounded, he settled in Santa Cruz in 1885, as a hotelier, first at Bay State Cottages, then at his magnificent Sea Beach Hotel. Lucas F. Smith was in Gen. Sherman’s March through Georgia and the Carolinas, then became a Santa Cruz judge after 1888. And John Brown’s family were partly hiding out in the Santa Cruz Mountains from their patriarch’s notoriety. John Brown’s wife and daughters Sarah and Ellen lived in Saratoga, while his son Jason lived in a remote section of Ben Lomond. And London Nelson is getting the respect his generous spirit deserves, as the correct spelling of his name is restored.
