In yesterday's issue of the NYT Disunion blog, author Rick Beard talks about "The Scapegoat of Ball's Bluff" [Disunion] and has this to say about two leaders on the War Committee, one of whom was Michigan's senior senator:
'Two of the senators, Republicans Benjamin Wade of Ohio and Zachariah Chandler of Michigan, were radicals — staunch opponents of slavery intent on using the war to end the South’s “peculiar institution” and unlikely to look kindly on efforts that stopped short of that goal.'
Their wrath descended on the 'scapegoat', General Charles Stone, at the feet of whom the Ball's Bluff debacle was laid. Stone also stated that he returned fugitive slaves to their masters because that was the law in Maryland. The gist of the column is that Stone got a raw deal, and traditionally the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War has been seen as a Star Chamber of sorts. On this federal holiday honoring a man who courageously called his nation to fulfill the unfinished civil rights legacy of the Civil War, it is well worth pausing from the mainstream interpretation to ask: wasn't Chandler on the right side of the main issue?
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