Book author regales Sotterley crowd with tales of Civil War in Southern Maryland

Donald Shomette addresses the crowd at Sotterley Plantation on Nov. 2.

Stories about the Civil War in Southern Maryland were on the agenda last week at Historic Sotterley in Hollywood.

The People and Perspectives series on Nov. 2 featured author and Calvert County resident Donald Grady Shomette talking about “The Civil War in Southern Maryland: The Forgotten Conflict.”

Shomette drew upon research used to write his book, “Anaconda’s Tail: The Civil War on the Potomac Frontier, 1861-65.”

Shomette, who was born in Washington, D.C., grew up in Upper Marlboro and moved to Calvert County later in life, gave multiple details about the war in a presentation that lasted well over an hour. He included details in addition to more commonly known items such as John Wilkes Booth’s escape through Southern Maryland and the infamous prisoner of war prison camp at Point Lookout.

Shomette included Prince George’s and Anne Arundel counties with Calvert, Charles and St. Mary’s in his definition of Southern Maryland. He noted there were 6,491 enslaved people in the area who were owned by 358 people.

“It’s one of the most intensive slave states in the Union,” he said.

Referring to President Abraham Lincoln’s controversial suspension of habeas corpus during the war, Shomette noted that Calvert County native and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Roger B. Taney criticized Lincoln’s writ in a ruling. Habeas corpus prevents the federal government from holding someone without showing cause.

Lincoln didn’t respond directly to Taney, but Taney’s ruling resulted in a softening of the federal policy, even though military officials continued to arrest suspected Confederate sympathizers, according to history.com.

Some 20,000 to 22,000 Marylanders traveled through Southern Maryland to join the Confederate Army during the war, Shomette said.

He noted that the Union forces came up with an idea, the Anaconda Plan, to strangle the Confederacy with a naval blockade. This was laughed at in the media, Shomette said, because the Confederates captured the Norfolk Navy yard early in the war.

The Potomac River became the de facto dividing line between the North and the South, he said, with Southern Maryland in question.

St. Mary’s County sent funds to the Confederacy and Southern Marylanders organized home guard units to protect against any uprising by enslaved people and to supply troops to the South, he said.

A steamboat in Port Tobacco in Charles County allegedly had a Confederate flag with 12½ stars, Shomette said, with the half star representing Maryland. It was never found, however.

Union forces learned of a Confederate plan to invade the North from Calvert County, he said. When Union troops arrived, the Confederate troops had left but the flag flying over the courthouse in Prince Frederick was Confederate.

Confederate weapons were later found buried in fresh graves, he said.

Confederate guerrillas from Virginia made raids into Cobb Island and Piney Point during the war after Union troops were stationed in the area, he said.

It was “unsafe to be on the Potomac River on either side” during the war, according to Shomette, noting that some Union ships were sunk by Confederate mines.

A hot air balloon was used near Mattawoman Creek in Charles County to view 10-15 miles into Virginia to see Confederate troop movements.

Lincoln declared some 2,000 enslaved people in Washington, D.C., free, and that resulted in a “slave stampede” through Southern Maryland, he said. However because the fugitive slave law was still in effect, slaveowners could still go into the district to retrieve the people they had enslaved.

Shomette noted that Secretary of War Edwin Stanton launched a program to allow enslaved people to serve in the army without Lincoln’s approval.

A base known as Camp Stanton was set up in Benedict to train U.S. Colored Troops. They were taught to read, write and fight over a six-week period. There were some 52,000 members of the Colored Troops in Maryland, he said. They fought in 32 engagements and sustained the highest casualty rate, 25%, of any regiment in the Union.

A hospital was set up at Point Lookout and was later converted into a prison camp.

“It becomes ‘Andersonville North,’” Shomette said, referring to the infamous Confederate prison camp in Georgia. “It becomes a death camp,” he said, citing “new data” that reveals more than 10,000 died at Point Lookout. At one time, 20,000 were housed there. There was a lot of fighting amongst prisoners, he said, noting food and clothing were scarce.

According to the National Park Service, approximately 4,000 of the total 50,000 Point Lookout prisoners died while incarcerated.

The Union later instituted a draft that enlisted refugees who escaped the Confederacy. A refugee office called “The Plains” was set up at Benedict.

Col. Alonzo G. Draper launched a raid into Virginia from Point Lookout, and some 10% of the enslaved people in the Northern Neck were freed, Shomette said.

St. Inigoes became a Union naval base, and by 1864 the Confederacy began to fall apart.

Lincoln announced an “amnesty draft” that resulted in some 2,000 Confederates being sworn in as Union soldiers, Shomette said.

After Booth shot Lincoln, crossed into Maryland and holed up in the Zekiah Swamp for a time, Union forces were moved from Charles County to Mechanicsville to engage some Confederates. A man named Buckler was assigned to lead the Union forces, but he later returned and said no engagement occurred. Buckler then disappeared from the federal record, Shomette said.

Stanton had essentially taken over control following Lincoln’s shooting because Vice President Andrew Johnson “walked away” and Secretary of State William Seward had been stabbed in the face by a former Confederate soldier and member of Mosby’s Rangers — Lewis Powell. Seward was saved by a splint he was wearing around his broken jaw, which was injured nine days earlier in a carriage accident, according to cbnews.com.

Boston Corbett, who had himself castrated because he believed God wanted it, shot and killed Booth in Virginia, Shomette said. Corbett put a gun in a plank in a barn where Booth was hiding and fired.

In response to a question following his presentation, Shomette said most of the Confederate arms came from England, although some came from various parts of the U.S. He noted there were pro-Confederate riots in New York, for example.

In response to another question, Shomette noted that the one person from Southern Maryland who voted for Lincoln for president in 1860 was tarred and feathered.

In another local tidbit, Shomette said two of his ancestors died at Point Lookout.

(Southern Maryland News)

Some tobacco holdouts keep plugging along in Southern Maryland

Mike Phipps holds some tobacco on his Owings, Md., farm. (Caleb M. Soptelean photo)

There’s not many tobacco growers in Southern Maryland these days, but there are some who keep plugging along.

That’s the word from Michael Phipps, an Owings farmer who didn’t take a buyout from the state in the late 1990s that was designed to ween farmers off what was known as the cash crop of the region.

Phipps notes that primarily Amish and Mennonite families are farming it in St. Mary’s.

There were a couple just across the county line in Charles County off Route 6, he said, but Charles County extension agent Alan Leslie said, “Those few farms still growing tobacco lately have been switching to other crops since Philip Morris stopped offering burley [variety] contracts a few years back. The alternative varieties of tobacco are too labor intensive and the markets are too volatile to make it work long term.”

Ben Beale, the St. Mary’s County extension agent, said there might be 30 farmers still growing tobacco in St. Mary’s County, which is down from 50 or 60 just a few years ago. Most of them are Amish with a couple of Old Order Mennonites and a few “English,” or non-Amish/Mennonite people, he said.

Beale, who has been the St. Mary’s extension agent for 22 years, noted the local farmers transitioned from Maryland 32 tobacco variety to an offshoot called Maryland 609 some years ago. Many moved to burley tobacco around 2012, but when the demand for that cigarette tobacco waned, many started growing Connecticut broadleaf tobacco for cigar wrappers about three years ago.

Phipps, who has a farm off Briscoes Turn Road and Route 4 in Owings, said he still grows the old Maryland 32, adding that he sells it to a middle man in Leola, Pa. In turn, the buyer sells it to a company in Virginia, said Phipps, who previously served a few years as Maryland Farm Bureau president.

He noted that some farmers in Pennsylvania are still growing Maryland 32.

The Connecticut broadleaf is a specialty type of tobacco that is graded to a much higher standard, Beale said, noting that it can’t have any holes, blemishes or green specks.

“It has to be handled very gingerly,” Phipps said.

The kinds of tobacco grown in Southern Maryland are air-cured as opposed to heat-cured, according to Phipps. He cuts the stalks and hangs them in a barn around the height of summer each year.

When asked why he didn’t take the buyout, which gave $1 a pound for the last three years of harvest, Phipps said, “I’ve been doing it all my life. It’s kind of in my blood.”

Today, he only grows less than an acre on his 100-acre farm, and primarily raises beef cattle and grows sweet potatoes.

Earl F. “Buddy” Hance, 66 — the Republican Calvert County commissioner president and a former state secretary of agriculture from 2009 to 2015 — said every farm in Southern Maryland pretty much grew tobacco when he was growing up.

Hance took the buyout in 2000. When he quit, he had cut back 50% from what he used to farm. “Labor was too hard to find,” he said, noting that many of the younger generation left farms for construction jobs in the 1980s.

Tobacco “really dropped off in the mid-’80s,” he said, noting there was a “bad drought” in 1983 that really hurt the crop.

Today, Hance said he still farms and grows corn, soybeans and pick-your-own strawberries.

Phipps explained that two tobacco auction warehouses were located in downtown Hughesville, along with some other places in the area.

One was owned by Gilbert O. Bowling Sr., 88, and another was owned by the Schultz family, according to Phipps. Bowling’s former building now houses the Bargain Barn at 8275 Old Leonardtown Road. Another is an antique store.

On Thursday, May 19, Bowling’s grandson, Gilbert “BJ” Bowling III, a Democratic Charles County commissioner, said he was the eighth and last generation in his family to farm tobacco.

“My father and I took the buyout,” he said, noting he then got into beef cattle on his farm in Allens Fresh.

For many, the buyout made sense, said Bowling, 42. “But it was hard for many,” he added. “It was a way of life. You could make a lot of money off a small acreage.”

He said, “The buy local, direct market for beef and pork has gone through the roof.”

He noted that a regional agricultural center, which will offer meat processing in Charlotte Hall, is on the way, and an Amish slaughterhouse is already open in the area. Both are located in Charlotte Hall in St. Mary’s County.

(Southern Maryland News)

Review: Swift Creek Mill spring musical well worth it

Olivia Mullins as Margo and Ian Page as Billy Cane in ‘Bright Star,’ playing at 17401 Jefferson Davis Highway. (Photo by Robyn O'Neill)

I don’t know if “Bright Star” would play well in Peoria, but I have an idea that central Illinois residents would love it.

The musical – which is based on the life of William Helms, a 5-day-old baby who was tossed from a train in a small valise in 1902 and survived, a sort of a modern-day Moses – is showing on Fridays, Saturdays and select Thursdays at Swift Creek Mill Theatre through May 11.

I watched the play with my daughters, 12 and 15, on March 23. In short, it was a delight.

I had only seen one professional play previously, that while on a date at the Cabrillo Playhouse in San Clemente, Calif., about 15 years ago. I do not remember what that play was about, but I can assure you I’ll not soon forget “Bright Star.”

Truth be told, I probably wouldn’t have gone if I hadn’t had my girls with me that weekend. However, I’m glad I went. My daughters and I enjoyed it, and my oldest daughter, Vida, cried toward the end.

“Bright Star” tells a sweeping tale of love and redemption. Check it out.
Reserved tickets are $40, but those on a budget might snag a seat for $10 to $20 as a “rush ticket” one hour before performances.

And the setting is neat too, located in an old mill next to Swift Creek with the sound of rushing water.

For more information, go online at swiftcreekmill.com.