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Page 18 THE VILLADOM TIMES I • July 16, 2014 Can history survive the flag-wavers? “History Detectives” is one of the top shows on PBS -- and on all television. A recent episode broke windows in American history as taught in the schools and cited at various public events in a way that will excite just about everybody and may please nobody. A brief account of the “History Detectives” version has already made its way onto Wikipedia and the episode is available online. On April 27, 1865, a few weeks after the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia and the end of the Civil War in the East, the “Sultana,” a wooden paddlewheel steamboat had been chartered by the U.S. Government to carry passengers -- including many sick and half-starved survivors of Confederate prison camps -- from Vicksburg, Mississippi to Cairo, Illinois, where they could hopefully take the trains home to their families. In the middle of the night, the “Sultana” was rocked by an internal explosion that killed some passengers outright. The boat then began to burn, and ultimately sank within sight of land on both shores of the Mississippi. The 76 passengers, including some women and children who booked cabin space and more than 2,000 Union soldiers on deck, were left with a sudden choice: swim for it or burn. Most jumped into the dark river. Those who could seize a plank from the ship were sometimes able to make it to shore or climb to semi-submerged trees until they were rescued. Of the 2,427 people known to be on the “Sultana,” an estimated 1,800 were either killed in the explosion or drowned. This was the worst single-ship maritime disas- ter in U.S. history, worse than the “Titanic” or the now- forgotten Battle of the Java Sea in 1942, more than half as bad as Pearl Harbor or the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center. Descendants of survivors and victims told the show’s principal researcher, auctioneer-historian Wes Cowan, that only abut two percent of the Americans the descen- dents had spoken to had ever heard of the “Sultana” disas- ter. From the viewpoint of professional orators at patriotic rallies or textbook publishers, this could be the only good news to come out of the sinking of the “Sultana.” Cowan and his fellow researchers, Kajama Glover and Tukufu Zuberi, both U.S. college professors with exten- sive research experience, tackled the story from three directions. Cowan interviewed the families of the survi- vors and victims. Zuberi toured the site of the sinking with engineers and historians, and with the help of a wild but peaceful drone aircraft that looked like a combination of a big Frisbee and an electric-powered black bat, they found and scanned the wreckage of the “Sultana” beneath a soy- bean field, but did not excavate. Glover went through the list of Civil War courts-martial and political jobbery at the National Archives. There was the shocker. I had written published stories about the “Sultana” twice: one for Dennis Smith’s “Firehouse” more than three decades ago and once about five years ago for “Michi- gan,” the state magazine, based on firsthand accounts taken down by “Sultana” survivor Chester Berry. Berry said afterward that his life was saved when, half-drowned, he heard his mother’s voice praying for him. He started swimming again, and later became an ordained minister and a published expert on the “Sultana” sinking. Berry was a primary source for “History Detectives” as he was for me, but Kajama’s work at the National Archives, Tukufu and the mechanical bat and other leads, and Cow- an’s interviews turned up a lot I missed. The “History Detectives” found out -- as I had -- that a boiler on the “Sultana” had been given an emergency patch in a way that R.G. Taylor, an engineer, said was probably defective -- the night before the lethal voyage. They also found out that Major Reuben Hatch, the Union officer in charge of arranging to ship prisoners home, had been court-martialed for kickbacks and graft late in 1861, but had been reinstated despite protests from his military superiors that he was a worthless officer. Hatch had turned away another steamboat, the “Pauline Car- roll,” which could have carried 600 to 800 soldiers and former prisoners, and booked everybody on the “Sultana” instead, so much so that the upper decks started to buckle and had to be reinforced with portable stanchions. The most probable theory is that the overcrowded passengers on the two upper decks moved around from side to side on the ship, causing the boat to rock so the water sloshed around inside the boilers, exposed the defective patch job to excessive pressure -- and wham! Two other facts cropped up on PBS. A group of Con- federate agents known as “The Boat Burners” claimed credit for sinking 60 steamboats on the Mississippi during the Civil War by means of stealth -- many with civilian or invalid passengers. Their leader, Thomas Courtney was -- fee fie fo fum -- an Englishman! He was out of the country when the “Sultana” blew up, but he had devised a weapon called the Coal Torpedo -- a cast-iron irregu- lar hollow lump filled with black powder and bored with touch holes for ignition, with the touch holes covered with resin -- that may have done the job. PBS almost never says anything bad about Britain, which admittedly provides most of its better history shows, but wait, things get worse. Glover turned up letters from the National Archives which more than suggested that Hatch, the architect of the disaster with or without the fugitive Englishman and his Coal Torpedo, had been spared a U.S. court-martial where he faced sure convic- tion through the deliberate influence of -- this is tough even to write 150 years later -- by Abraham Lincoln. The embattled president needed political support from Oziah Hatch, the corrupt officer’s cousin, so he pulled some strings with the help of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton and the case against Reuben Hatch just sort of disappeared -- to the disgust of some Union officers who wanted him discharged. The inside story of the “Sultana” is that the greatest single-ship maritime disaster happened because of graft by a corrupt Union Army officer, sustained for politi- cal reasons by America’s most beloved president outside Dixie, and possibly augmented by an English master sab- oteur. The team asked Harold Holzer, a leading Lincoln historian who adores Lincoln, and Holzer said it could all be true, because Lincoln played politics a lot even while he pardoned Union soldiers sentenced for non-homicidal military offenses. What a nightmare! Of course it all makes sense. Many Union officers were woefully corrupt, and many Confederates were eager to kill Yankees by fair means or foul. They tried to start a yellow fever epidemic in Washington and New York, but failed to realize they needed anopheles mosquitoes and the contaminated clothes to start the outbreak. What happens when somebody crunches all the num- bers and discovers that Robert E. Lee’s Army of North- ern Virginia killed more Americans than both sides of the Axis, and that Confederate prisoner-of-war camps killed more American soldiers than the World War II Japanese prisoner-of-war camps? Does anybody remember that the “Sioux” -- actually Lakota -- were U.S. allies against other Indians and protected wagon trains until U.S. treaty- makers swindled them three times in a row, punctuated by a senseless attack augmented by howitzers that killed women and children when the Indians were trying to give up? This happened a second time at the Little Bighorn where 10 to 20 Indian women and children were murdered by Custer’s detached men before the men and boys came out of the tepees and started shooting with rifles they bought under government protection. Another missing number: U.S. military casualties at Custer’s Last Stand, 268 soldiers and scouts; Lakota and Cheyenne casualties, confirmed by Army and Indian sources -- 26 warriors, and 10 to 20 women and kids. This is the most famous small battle in American history, but you have to dig pretty deep to find those numbers --yet they are factual. If you men- tion them, Custer lovers get hysterical. Advice to future orators: Praise the men and women who served for their courage, devotion, and generosity of spirit. They are genuine national treasures! Please do not tell us that, were it not for them, we’d all be speaking German, Japanese, Spanish, Vietnamese, or Lakota. We largely picked those fights ourselves. Everybody involved in causing the “Sultana” disaster spoke English. Letters to the Editor Triathlon success depends on the work of many Dear Editor: On behalf of the Wyckoff Family YMCA and the Wyckoff-Midland Park Rotary Club, I would like to thank everyone who made our 32 nd Annual Wyckoff-Franklin Lakes Triathlon possible. Congratulations to Chris Gebhardt, Jeremy Kalmus, and Michael Rutherford, who were the top male athletes; and to Christine Kachinsky, Sarah Rodriquez, and Mar- garet Marbury, who were the top three women. The race consists of a half-mile swim, a 17-mile bike ride, and a five-mile run. The race would not be possible without the generous support of the Indian Trail Club, and the ongoing coopera- tion and hospitality of the Borough of Franklin Lakes. A special thank you to our sponsors: Excel Orthope- dic Rehabilitation, Kallman Worldwide, Kincade Group at Merrill Lynch, Railroad Construction Company, Inc., Specialty Orthopaedics-Dr. David Rudman, M.D., the Market Basket, Chiropractic Family Sports Injury Center, Columbia Bank, Dr. Alberta, North Jersey Orthopaedic Clinic, Jack Daniels Porsche/Audi/VW/Kia, Nicholas Markets/Foodtown of North Haledon, 3 Chicas Mexican Kitchen, Wyckoff Cycle, Ridgewood Cycle Shop, Belmar Spring Water of Glen Rock, Ardmore Consulting, Aldo’s/ Brick House, Atlantic Stewardship Bank, Aqua Pools, Boswell Engineering, Brick House Cigar Shop, High Mountain Presbyterian Church, John Monahan Family, Kamp Consulting Solutions, Kaylor Construction, Mary Orr & Family, May God’s Love Shine!, One Hour A/C and Heating Co., Paul Patek CFP, Stanley Family, and TNTMAX.com. I would also like to recognize and acknowledge our tireless volunteers. Along with the Rotary Club and Y vol- unteers, we would like to thank the Franklin Lakes, Oak- land, Midland Park, Mahwah, and Wyckoff ambulance corps; the Franklin Lakes, Oakland, Wyckoff, North Hale- don, and Pompton Lakes fire departments’ boat squads; and the Franklin Lakes Emergency Response, DPW, and police department. All proceeds benefit the outreach of the Wyckoff-Mid- land Park Rotary Club and the Wyckoff YMCA. We are looking forward to our 33 rd event next year! Joyce K.Vottero, Executive Director Wyckoff Family YMCA