The Civil War, here?

Ira Wesley Kitmacher

With President Abrahm Lincoln’s birthday approaching on Feb. 12, it feels timely to discuss connections our region has with the biggest American event of the 19th century — the U.S. Civil War.

Federal law (the Oregon Territorial Act of 1848) prohibited slavery in the Oregon and later Washington Territories. However, in 1855 new Washington Territorial Surveyor General James Tilton arrived in Olympia from Maryland (a “border state,” on the Union-Confederacy border, which allowed slavery). With him Tilton brought his 8-year-old Black slave named Charles Mitchell (born 1847 at Marengo Plantation on Chesapeake Bay, Talbot County, Maryland).

In 1857, the U.S. Supreme Court, in its Dred Scott decision, ruled that enslaved people brought to free territories remained enslaved. In what has been called the “Maritime Underground Railroad,” mirroring the Underground Railroad used to smuggle slaves out of the South, on Sept. 24, 1860, Mitchell was smuggled out of Olympia by a group of free Black men onboard the Eliza Anderson sidewheeler, to Victoria, Canada.

Mitchell was caught by the ship’s captain and first officer on behalf of Tilton. However, when the ship arrived in Victoria, it was met by a writ of habeas corpus (an action protecting against unlawful and indefinite imprisonment), demanding Mitchell be freed. In what became an international incident. the men holding Mitchell turned him over to Canadian authorities and he was freed.

In June 1862, the U.S. Congress outlawed slavery in the territories and President Abraham Lincoln signed it into law. Charles Mitchell was lost to history, and his movements following the incidents in Washington and Canada are unknown.

President Lincoln profoundly impacted the Pacific Northwest through key legislation that spurred settlement and development. The 1862 Homestead Act encouraged settlement by offering land. The 1862 Pacific Railway Act authorized the construction of the transcontinental railroad, a critical supply link to our region.

Lincoln supported legislation to provide land and funds to universities like Oregon State and Washington State. In 1864, he pushed the Telegraph Act, which extended lines to the Pacific Northwest (most of the U.S. already had service). Lincoln appointed many Oregon and Washington officials and helped create the Oregon Republican Party. In return, Oregon sent gold east to help finance the Union and the war effort, and the region generally supported pro-Union policies, although there was dissent and divided loyalties.

U.S. military forts were built in the Pacific Northwest to protect the Columbia River from possible Confederate attack. These bases, part of the “Triangle of Fire,” included Oregon’s Fort Stevens and Washington’s Fort Canby, both built in 1863, joined in 1896 by Washington’s Fort Columbia. No Confederate attack came; however, Fort Stevens was the first continental U.S. military base attacked by a foreign power since the War of 1812 when a Japanese submarine attacked it in June 1942.

The region reacted, like the rest of the country, with great sorrow at news of Lincoln’s death on April 15, 1865.

A little-known connection between the Confederate States of America and the Pacific Northwest was President Jefferson Davis’ brother-in-law Captain Jefferson Davis Howell, a Civil War veteran, captained the ill-faced SS Pacific, which was the region’s worst shipwreck on Nov. 4, 1875. It had collided with another ship, the Orpheus, while traveling from Victoria, Canada, to San Francisco and sank off Cape Flattery, Washington.

Between 275 and 325 (some said as many as 500) people may have been on board, with only two survivors. Also on board was a significant amount of gold from the Cassiar gold rush in British Columbia. The wreck was located in late 2022 with recovery plans set for 2026. There is a monument to Howell in Seattle’s Lake View Cemetery (formerly the Masonic Cemetery).

In another Civil War-related story, the privateer (Confederate government-sponsored piracy) ship CSS Shenandoah patrolled the Pacific Coast during the period 1864-65, disrupting Union trade routes and aiming to steal gold and silver for the Confederacy’s war effort.

The Confederacy eyed the Pacific Northwest as a possible “Pacific Coast Republic,” a new country fashioned on the South. The Confederacy-supporting Knights of the Golden Circle (KGC) also wanted to form a new country called “Golden Circle” consisting of the southern U.S., Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean and parts of South America. In one KGC conspiratorial plan, the group planned an assault on Washington’s Fort Vancouver arsenal. The plan never came to fruition.

Ira Wesley Kitmacher is an Olympia-based historian and author, writing “Haunted Puget Sound,” “Pacific Northwest Legends and Lore,” and other published books. He leads tours based on his books. Ira is a speaker at various public venues.  He is featured on television, radio, and other media. Ira is a Commissioner on the Thurston County Historic Commission. He is a professor, having taught at Georgetown University and other colleges. Ira is a retired senior federal executive and attorney.