The Belle and the General: The Life and Times of Thomas M. and Kate Cox Logan.

By Dr. Stewart W. Bentley Jr.

This is the story of Thomas and Kate Logan as well as the story of antebellum America through the War and Reconstruction. Books on the American Civil War are legion; that was perhaps the most challenging obstacle in writing this biography of a Logan family member. The urge to use previously published material was undeniable and an obviously avoidable error. As much as I could, I used original source material to tell the story of a young couple’s journey through the antebellum South, a war ravaged country and the rebuilding of a State, largely through their eyes and the eyes of their family.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Nov 16, 2021
• ISBN: 9781665543620

Dr. Stewart W. Bentley Jr.

Dr. Stewart W. Bentley is a retired Army officer with an interest in military history and strategy. He is married to Patricia Bentley and lives in Woodbridge, Virginia with various rescue animals.

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© 2021 Dr. Stewart W. Bentley Jr.. All rights reserved.

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ISBN: 978-1-6655-4361-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6655-4362-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021923062

Published by AuthorHouse 11/12/2021

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Table of Contents

Introduction

List of illustrations

Chapter 1: Prologue to War

Chapter 2: Fire on the Mountain

Chapter 3: Kate and Mully

Chapter 4: A New South

Chapter 5: The Railroads

Chapter 6: The Future

Appendix 1: Letter from Georgie Logan DeSaussure to her children:

Some days of Mother’s life

Bibliography

Introduction

This is the story of Thomas and Kate Logan as well as the story of antebellum America through the War and Reconstruction. Books on the American Civil War are legion; that was perhaps the most challenging obstacle in writing this biography of a Logan family member. The urge to use previously published material was undeniable and an obviously avoidable error. As much as I could, I used original source material to tell the story of a young couple’s journey through the antebellum South, a war ravaged country and the rebuilding of a State, largely through their eyes and the eyes of their family.

Too often, in my judgment, Civil War histories focus on ‘battles and leaders.’ Thomas and Kate Logan’s story is both typical and atypical for the time. General Logan’s business successes were largely derived from his leadership qualities and from the financial backing he received as being part of the Clover Hill mining business along with Kate’s support as his wife and partner. But this is also a very typical story for the time: Families who lost members and property during the War, lives cut short or changed forever. Finally, this is the story of the South in the turmoil of Reconstruction both socially, culturally and economically.

I am indebted to Sarah Donnelly and the Logan family for their permission to reprint the Daniel D’Oyley Logan diary. I would also like to thank Susan Poe, the owner of Clover Hill for her generous hospitality and allowing Sarah, my wife Patricia and me access to the home and the grounds where the Coxes lived.

This book is dedicate to my father, who helped make publication happen.

List of illustrations

Figure 1: Clover Hill

Figure 2: Kate Virginia Cox

Figure 3: Thomas M. Logan (probably about 1860)

Figure 4: First Bull Run: The small valley where the Legion stood its

ground; view towards the Confederate line as the Union units would have seen it.

Figure 5: The Robinson House (foundations are on the left; the Confederate line on the right

Figure 6: Bacon’s Race Church

Figure 7: Daniel D’Oyley Logan

Figure 8: Barhamsville Road near Eltham’s Landing

Figure 9: Eltham’s Landing Battlefield

Figure 10: USS Sebago

Figure 11: 5th New York Monument-the Confederate line of advance was from the right.

Figure 12: The Dunkard Church

Figure 13: The Fredericksburg Battlefield sector of Jenkins’ Brigade

Figure 14: The Clover Hill Mining District

Figure 15: The Richmond and Danville Railroad

Figure 16: The Cox family grave site at Clover Hill.

Figure 17: Algoma

Figure 18: A Wedding Party of the Gay Nineties

Figure 19: T.M. Logan in his later years

Figure 20: Kate Cox Logan in her later years

Figure 21: The Logan gravestone-Hollywood cemetery, Richmond, Va.

Chapter 1: Prologue to War

The man in the Confederate butternut uniform of a Brigadier General seemed too young and too gaunt to have actually commanded a brigade of Rebels during General Joe Johnston’s final battles in North Carolina in 1865. He seemed too young to have witnessed nearly every major engagement of the Army of Northern Virginia since Manassas. As he traveled north into southern Virginia towards Chesterfield southwest of the devastated capitol city of Richmond, his heart was heavy. The South had been crushed; his family’s future in his native South Carolina was unclear; the girl he loved on a plantation outside Richmond might or might not be still waiting for him. His own future was an uncertain one.

Thomas Muldrup Logan was only twenty-four when the War ended. Known as Mully to his family, he had witnessed the outbreak of the War at Fort Sumter; fought at First Manassas with the Hampton Legion and risen through the ranks of the Confederate Army until finally being promoted to the rank of Brigadier General of Cavalry.

The object of his affections was a striking brunette with piercing blue eyes and a deep romantic streak. Kate Virginia Cox was the daughter of Judge James H. Cox, a landowner and coal mine owner in Chesterfield County southwest of Richmond near a small village called Winterpock. The plantation/coal mine was known at one point as Winterpock, but then renamed Clover Hill.

Figure 1: Clover Hill

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Source: Author’s collection

Clover Hill is a 19th Century Federal style farmhouse with outbuildings that served a variety of purposes during Clover Hill’s working life: A smokehouse, a henhouse or aviary and a separate storage shed. Coal had been discovered on Clover Hill, ironically by someone who could never profit from the find, a slave named Moses. With this discovery, a series of mines were constructed in the nearby area; coal would be transported over specially constructed railroads to Richmond and ended up not only heating and lighting homes and businesses, but also powering the Tredegar Iron Works for the Confederacy during the War.

The Logans were from Charleston by way of Restalrig, Scotland; Logan ancestors traced their lineage to Sir Robert Logan, a baron in the service of Robert the Bruce. When the Bruce died in 1329, in response to his deathbed request, Sir Robert and Sir Walter Logan, had accompanied the casket containing the Bruce’s heart on a crusade, the lifelong dream of the Scottish king. A small band of knights led by Sir James Douglas landed in Andalusia, located in modern southern Spain and offered their services to King Alphonso. Alphonoso was fighting a crusade again the Moors and specifically against the Sultan of Grenada. The Logans died during the battle while trying to rescue the casket of the Bruce after its capture.

In perhaps one of the oddest court cases ever, Sir Robert was posthumously accused of conspiring against James I. For Logan’s trial, his body was exhumed and the skeleton placed in the courtroom during the proceedings. Unsurprisingly, as he could not defend himself, Logan was found guilty and his skeleton paraded through the streets afterwards. The Logans had their estates confiscated and handed over to a rival lord. The Logans left for Ireland, settling at a place they named Luigan. From Ireland, the two branches of the family diffused; James Logan went to Pennsylvania with William Penn, establishing the mid-western Logans; the other emigrated to Charleston, South Carolina.

The southern branch was established by first Logan in the Americas, Colonel George Logan, an officer of His Majesty’s Army. Arriving from Aberdeen in 1690, he became the commander of a militia troop of cavalry. During the periodic raids on colonial Charleston by Spanish and French colonists in 1706, Colonel Logan led his troop in defense of the city. The revolutionary spirit ran deep in the family; as Speaker of the Provincial House in 1716, he submitted a letter, signed by other representatives as well, to King George I railing against the harsh rule of the Lords Proprietors.

The elder Logan left behind two children, Helen and George. George married Martha Daniell, the daughter of a close friend and business associate, Robert Daniell, later Governor of South Carolina. George Logan and in turn, his son, George, both became doctors. Muldrup, named for his Danish great grandmother, chose to study law when his brother, Samuel followed in his father’s footsteps to the field of medicine. In one of the recurring oddities of 19th Century America, there was an older Thomas Muldrup Logan, a cousin of the younger Muldrup.

Naming one’s children for ancestors was common practice; since death was common in younger years for a variety of reasons, it was not uncommon for brothers and cousins to have identical names and for sisters and aunts to have the same. Dr. Thomas Muldrup Logan became a prominent physician, practicing in New Orleans. Logan’s father became a prominent judge and Southern plantation owner of Mellbrook in the Low Country outside of Charleston.

Mully had seen the all too common tragedies of life in 19th Century America: His mother, Anna D’Oyley died at Mellbrook in 1850 at the age of forty-two when Mully was ten; his sister, Margaret Polk Logan, died a few months later at the age of five. Judge Logan, disconsolate at having lost his wife and one child of his fifteen, moved to New Orleans for a change of scenery and to be close to a brother and his family.

However, tragedy followed the family to Louisiana: Two of Mully’s brothers, Francis and Joseph, were swept to their deaths in a river crossing accident on the Mississippi River when the skiff they were riding in struck a submerged raft and swamped. Mully nearly also drowned in the accident, saved only by being dragged ashore by his hair.

Judge Logan now moved the family back to Charleston in 1854. Mully began attending classes at the Lessesene School in Charleston. He did well enough that at sixteen, he was accepted as a sophomore at Charleston College. Transferring to what would later become the University of South Carolina in Columbia, Mully graduated first in his class of forty in December of 1860 as talk of secession from the Union grew heated throughout the South.

Kate Virginia, meanwhile, grew up on Clover Hill, enjoying the relatively sheltered life of a young Southern belle. She evidently loved to read and her writing is embellished with a leaning towards the romantic. All of the women in her writings were beautiful and virtuous. All of the men were handsome and dashing cavaliers. Born the same year as Muldrup, in 1840, she had studied French and Latin and sprinkled her writing with phrases in those languages and literary references to popular works of the time.

A trip she made to Macon, Georgia in the fall of 1860 was evidently something of an education in the wider world beyond Clover Hill and the approaching storm. While she had visited Richmond, Philadelphia and Petersburg, the staid antebellum homes of Macon caught her romantic eye. Her hostess was Mrs. Mary Jones Towns, the widow of the former governor of Georgia, George W. Towns. Mrs. Towns was also a Cox cousin.

Figure 2: Kate Virginia Cox

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Source: My Confederate Girlhood

During her three months in Macon, one of the people Kate met and socialized with was Abraham Lincoln’s former political rival, Senator Stephen Douglas, traveling through the South with his wife. While Judge Cox had maintained a pro-Union stance, passing on that sentiment to his daughter; Kate found herself surrounded by talk of secession. She spent a week during this time in Milledgeville where the Georgia legislature was in session debating the issue of secession.

While some modern revisionists question the issue of slavery as the cause of secession, cloaking their arguments with veiled references to States Rights, the documents of the time provide the inherent proof that slavery was indeed the match to the flame. The Georgian legislature’s own record provides the rationale:

"For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery. They have endeavored to weaken our security, to disturb our domestic peace and tranquility, and persistently refused to comply with their express constitutional obligations to us in reference to that property (emphasis added), and by the use of their power in the Federal Government have striven to deprive us of an equal enjoyment of the common Territories of the Republic."¹

The Georgian legislature went on to argue that Northern interests, i.e. the Abolitionist movement, after the United States victory in the Mexican War and the admission of Texas into the Union, had sought to prevent slavery from being permitted, especially after American blood had been shed in that war to ostensibly (and ironically) secure freedom. Their argument was if slavery was prohibited in newly acquired territories, it would prohibit slave owners from migrating to the new lands with their property, because legally, that is what slaves were. This acquisition …opened them to the settlement of all the citizens of all the States of the Union. They emigrated thither with their property of every kind (including slaves). In addition, the secessionists alleged Northern goals had the:

…fixed purpose to limit, restrain, and finally abolish slavery in the States where it exists. The South with great unanimity declared her purpose to resist the principle of prohibition to the last extremity.²

Further, the argument went, the election of the Lincoln administration was an exclusive victory for Abolitionists and would thus be directly refuted by Georgia. The racial element was integral to the argument as well; calling for the equality of the races was heretical. The legislature pointed out that even as the Constitution was being written by the Founding Fathers that the subordination and the political and social inequality of the African race was fully conceded by all. There is also a taste of sour grapes here; since they did not agree with the results of the election, they refused to acknowledge the outcome:

"The prohibition of slavery in the Territories, hostility to it everywhere, the equality of the black and white races (emphasis added), disregard of all constitutional guarantees in its favor, were boldly proclaimed by its leaders and applauded by its followers. With these principles on their banners and these utterances on their lips the majority of the people of the North demand that we shall receive them as our rulers. The prohibition of slavery in the Territories is the cardinal principle of this organization. For forty years this question has been considered and debated in the halls of Congress, before the people, by the press, and before the tribunals of justice. The majority of the people of the North in 1860 decided it in their own favor. We refuse to submit to that judgment, and in vindication of our refusal we offer the Constitution of our country and point to the total absence of any express power to exclude us."³

Slave labor was the economic engine of the South. Slaves were considered property and had an acknowledged economic value and benefit. If there was ever a strictly monetary price tag placed on that engine, then Georgia gave it.

"Because by their declared principles and policy they have outlawed $3,000,000,000 (emphasis added) of our property in the common territories of the Union; put it under the ban of the Republic in the States where it exists and out of the protection of Federal law everywhere; because they give sanctuary to thieves and incendiaries who assail it to the whole extent of their power, in spite of their most solemn obligations and covenants; because their avowed purpose is to subvert our society and subject us not only to the loss of our property (emphasis added) but the destruction of ourselves, our wives, and our children, and the desolation of our homes, our altars, and our firesides. To avoid these evils we resume the powers which our fathers delegated to the Government of the United States, and henceforth will seek new safeguards for our liberty, equality, security, and tranquility."⁴

So there it was: For Southerners, the issue of slavery was a three billion dollar one of property. And that was in 1861 dollars. They viewed themselves as under attack by Northerners whose economic success the Georgians alleged had been possible only through massive Federal subsidization, while the South had succeeded through their own work (the contribution of slave labor conveniently omitted): The material prosperity of the North was greatly dependent on the Federal Government; that of the South not at all.⁵ The State of Mississippi, albeit much more succinctly, put forward many of the same arguments, saying of the Federal government:

It refuses the admission of new slave States into the Union, and seeks to extinguish it by confining it within its present limits, denying the power of expansion. It tramples the original equality of the South under foot. It has nullified the Fugitive Slave Law in almost every free State in the Union, and has utterly broken the compact which our fathers pledged their faith to maintain. It advocates negro equality, socially and politically, and promotes insurrection and incendiarism in our midst.⁶

Texas seemed to go even further, calling the institution of slavery a beneficent and patriarchal one. The racial element is evident here as well: The Lincoln platform had …proclaim(ed) the debasing doctrine of equality of all men, irrespective of race or color-- a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience of mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations of Divine Law. In addition, the Texan proclamation declared that:

"…all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights (emphasis in the original); that the servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations; while the destruction of the existing relations between the two races, as advocated by our sectional enemies, would bring inevitable calamities upon both and desolation upon the fifteen slave-holding states."⁷

The Secessionist movement argued that the Federal government not only sought to prohibit the addition of any new slave holding states to the Union, thus effectively preventing the migration of slave owners for potentially better economic opportunities; but they also sought the eventual termination of slavery. By depriving the South of a three billion dollar economic engine, the prosperity of Southerners was now in question.

The argument was also made that because slavery had existed in most of the original thirteen colonies at the time of independence and when the Constitution was penned, that the peculiar institution was Constitutionally protected. However, the Southern argument went:

It is upon this gigantic interest, this peculiar institution of the South, that the Northern States and their people have been waging an unrelenting and fanatical war for the last quarter of a century; and institution with which is bound up not only the wealth and prosperity of the Southern people, but their very existence as a political community. This war has been waged in every way that human ingenuity, urged on by fanaticism, could suggest. They attack us through their literature, in their schools, from the hustings, in their legislative halls, through the public press, and even their courts of justice forget the puricial ermine to strike down the rights of the Southern slave-holder and override every barrier which the Constitution has erected for his protection; and the sacred desk is desecrated to this unholy crusade against our lives, our property, and the constitutional rights guaranteed to us by the compact of our fathers.⁸

Finally, and here the racial element raised its head, the social and political equality of former slaves would cause tectonic cultural shifts in the South. Southerners evoked the divine and revealed will of God attesting to the validity of the institution. There was much bitter irony, when, while Texas declared that the will of God was recognized by all Christian nations the majority of Christian nations including the mother nation, Great Britain, had effectively abolished slavery by 1834. Exactly how the servitude was beneficial to slaves was not defined.

In the end, the South seceded for economic and racial reasons; they also rebelled not because of anything the President-elect specifically said, much less did, they did so because of what they thought he might do. The comparisons with latter day politics are clear. Southerners projected all of their fears and hatreds on an unknown quantity in their new President, a man they distrusted, feared and felt had no experience qualifying him to be President. Fearing the loss of everything in a kind of predictive paranoid frenzy driven by emotional response rather than rational disposition, secession was deemed as the only alternative.

When Kate and her cousins returned to Macon, they were greeted with the news of Georgia’s secession from the Union. While other Southerners celebrated, Kate was not so sure. Her father was opposed to secession and had significant influence on his daughter.

During her remaining time in Macon, Kate’s hostess tried to play matchmaker to her cousin. Mrs. Towns introduced to her several eligible men, most of whom, as Kate related in her memoirs, were fated to die on distant battlefields in Virginia.

After Kate returned to Clover Hill, the issue of secession for Virginia was in full debate. Judge Cox had been chosen as the chairman of the Secession Convention. Judge Cox joined former Governor Henry Wise in advocating against secession and called for mediation instead. During the convention, he proposed that a coalition of the slave holding border states which had not already seceded, unify together and present their grievances to the Federal