My Old Confederate Home (14 page)

As the number of inmates in residence grew—sixty-six ex-Confederates were living in the Home at the end of December—Salem Ford found himself overwhelmed by administrative and management tasks. During any given week, the cumbersome grocery purchasing process left him short of some staples and ruinously overstocked on others. He was trying to manage the day-to-day activities of ten employees while seeing to the medical needs of dozens of elderly men. His administrative paperwork was a mess, and to cap it all, the steam heating system was threatening to give out, forcing him to rely on expensive coal to heat the Home. At the same time, disciplinary problems were beginning to crop up among the inmates, problems the soft-spoken Ford was ill equipped to deal with.

The executive committee may have been sympathetic to Ford's difficulties, but they had a bigger problem to deal with: the Home was deeply in debt and sinking deeper every day.

Part of the problem was the committee's own doing. “Quite a large sum of money has been spent in procuring furniture and making outlays which will not be required again,” Bennett Young admitted. Among other things, the board had voted to spend $2,500 to provide uniforms for poorly clad inmates. The cash reserve was gone.
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Another issue was the way the state appropriation was calculated—paid quarterly and based on the average number of residents during the previous quarter. With a skyrocketing inmate population, the ex-Confederates would be paying to house more inmates than the number for which the state would reimburse.

But the biggest issue appeared to be runaway costs, and due to Ford's spotty record-keeping, it was difficult to determine exactly how far away those costs were running.

Just after New Year's, Young did what executives for the rest of the twentieth century would do when they were in trouble: hire a consultant.

George Milliken was a Louisville businessman who had been elected to several terms on the Kentucky Board of Prisons. He knew how state institutions worked; he came with an unsentimental, independent point of view; and he could write a good report. By the time he completed his investigation and reported to the executive committee on January 27, seventy-eight inmates were in residence at Pewee Valley.
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“The figures show an expenditure $7.23 in excess of the monthly appropriation per inmate,” Milliken told the committee. The state had agreed to pay $10.41 per month—$125 annually—to feed and care for each Confederate veteran housed in the Home; the Home's management was spending $17.64 per month per inmate.

“The monthly bills deserving especial notice are for fuel, $275, for servants, $231, and for subsistence, $444.”

Milliken felt the winter coal bill could be cut in half if Superintendent Ford would switch to the cheaper (but dirtier) furnace coal and contract by the carload at wholesale prices. He also recommended restricting the hours of heating certain areas of the Home.

The $231 monthly for “servants” paid the salaries of the cooks, waiters, and laundry helpers; Milliken suggested “employing a different class of servants.” He noted, “At present the Home employs two men to do the cooking at a cost of $48 per month.” According to Milliken, “Three Negro women could be employed to do the same work, with equal satisfaction, for $30 per month, thereby saving $18 per month.” He also recommended that the male waiters be replaced with women (“Man's labor invariably costs from one-third to one-half more than a woman's labor”).

Milliken found that Superintendent Ford's “present system of bookkeeping, duplicating, receipting and purchasing are quite irregular and wholly unsatisfactory.” He advised a wholesale overhaul in the way staples were purchased, accounted for, and stored.

After listening to Milliken's report, the executive committee voted to implement every recommendation. They also directed Fayette Hewitt to seek $5,000 in short-term loans and asked Bennett Young to hire several commission-only professional fundraisers. The committee decided, reluctantly, to ask the Kentucky UCV camps and UDC chapters to step up their cash contributions.

Another result of that January 27 meeting may have been the resignation of Superintendent Salem H. Ford. Absent any written evidence, it is possible that the unflappable former druggist from Owensboro found the job of superintendent too large for him, or that, at almost seventy years old, he was simply tired of the constant struggles. But it is more likely that Bennett H. Young, lacking confidence that a man as good-natured as Ford could make the tough decisions necessary to turn around the Home's fortunes, asked the superintendent to fall on his sword.

The executive committee met again on February 10 to accept Ford's resignation and elect one of their own as commandant of the Kentucky Confederate Home: board member and state senator William Oscar Coleman.
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William O. Coleman was a man who never quite achieved in life what he felt he deserved.

At the start of 1903, his term as state senator was ending, and it was clear he wouldn't win reelection. He had hoped for an appointment to the Kentucky State Prison Commission, but he had irritated too many of the governor's friends for that to be a reasonable possibility. Free room and board and $75 a month to manage the Kentucky Confederate Home looked pretty good to the former sheriff of Trimble County. He needed the paycheck.

Born in 1839 to a farming family, Coleman left home and a young wife to join General John Hunt Morgan in 1861. There was little to distinguish his military service as an enlisted man, but on returning to Trimble County, he managed to parlay a minor war wound into election as county sheriff in 1868.
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Sheriff Coleman was Trimble County's chief law enforcement officer at a time when white families feared the retribution of their former slaves and resentful freedmen. Many local lawmen earned reelection by protecting their white constituents, usually at the point of a gun and occasionally with a threat of the rope. Coleman earned a reputation as a toady, a man who sought to advance his career by the flattery of more successful men and the intimidation of less powerful ones.

Coleman's physical appearance alone could be intimidating. He was six feet tall, with broad shoulders and powerful arms. His eyes were deep-set, dark, and glowering, and his hair remained unnaturally black for most of his life. He wore a full beard that fell to the middle of his chest and served to hide his thin neck.

Though he kept a farm, Coleman had no interest in farming, preferring government work instead. Between terms in the state legislature, he sought appointment as collector of internal revenue and Indian agent, but the jobs never materialized, despite his elaborate promises to patrons.

Coleman had introduced the Confederate Home bill in the Kentucky state senate and, as a result, earned appointment to the board of trustees. Perhaps he hoped to make a little money off the real estate or the purchasing of supplies for the Home, but those opportunities hadn't yet presented themselves. Meanwhile, Bennett Young had offered to Coleman a healthy percentage of all Confederate Home donations he could scare up, but Coleman had not yet set to the task when it became apparent that Salem Ford would be leaving the superintendent's position.

Bennett Young and the executive committee needed a toughminded man who would do whatever it took to get the Home under control.

And William O. Coleman needed the paycheck.

“Therefore, we, the inmates of the Home, hereby express our implicit confidence in you as a man of irreproachable bearing and in your competent administration of the Home; and we must respectfully and earnestly request that you withdraw your resignation … believing that your continuance will be for the best interest of all concerned.”

Seventy-five inmates and nine employees signed a petition urging their respected superintendent to change his mind and withdraw his resignation. A copy of the petition was mailed to the board of trustees, and a delegation of inmates called on Salem H. Ford in his office. But it was too late.

There was no ceremony to mark Ford's departure. The kindly, bookish man was gone by the time Coleman arrived on March 1, and Coleman's first priorities were to bring some discipline to bear on the inmates and some new money in the door.

Chapter 7

The General's Sister and the Stockman's Wife

A
breakfast reception preceded the formal opening of the seventh annual convention of Kentucky's United Daughters of the Confederacy chapters in Owensboro on October 14, 1903. At tables decorated with roses, chrysanthemums, tiny Rebel flags, and hand-painted place cards, the 50 delegates representing 3,500 members of the state's UDC chapters exchanged social pleasantries over plates of sweet breads and toasted mushrooms. This was an event for mannerly conversation, but from time to time one woman might catch another's eye and share a brief glance and a nod to signal their support of The Motion.

The formal meeting opened at 2:00
P.M.
in City Hall with an invocation and speeches of welcome. Mrs. James M. Arnold, the state president from Lexington, responded to the welcome and was presented a bouquet of Winnie Davis roses, a new variety of climbing tea rose with a salmon-pink center and outer edges of cream. Songs, a poetry recitation, and the reading of a brief historical essay occasionally interrupted the afternoon agenda of reports by officers and chapter delegates, but there was no formal mention of The Motion.

An evening reception held at Owensboro's new public library, with pink punch and white cakes served on cobalt blue glassware, allowed for easier conversation among the delegates. Henrietta Morgan Duke, president of Louisville's UDC chapter and former two-term president of the state organization, spoke graciously with old friends and greeted the women with whom she had corresponded during the previous year. Mary Bascom, wife of Owingsville stockman A. W. Bascom and the delegate representing the Bath County chapter, circulated among the delegates from the small towns, exchanging news of fundraising activities, chapter membership, and local celebrations. The reception allowed ample time for shared compliments, gentle gossip, and informal discussion of The Motion.
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The women gathered in convention certainly knew that an affirmative vote for The Motion the following morning would be seen as nothing short of a declaration of revolution. Their husbands, brothers, and fathers would view The Motion as an act of outright defiance.

That's what made The Motion so irresistible to them.

Upon replacing Salem Ford just three months after the Kentucky Confederate Home's opening, William O. Coleman and the board of trustees scrambled to bring about some measure of fiscal and operational control.

Coleman immediately implemented changes recommended by the board's consultant. He installed temporary partitions at firstfloor stairwells, cutting off daytime heat to the upstairs bedrooms and limiting it to the first floor. Inmates found it necessary to leave their rooms in the morning and gather in the downstairs library and parlors in order to stay warm. Coleman fired the kitchen help and servers, replacing them with part-time black women from the area, in the process reducing the number of employees by half. Fearful that employees might steal food or supplies, he began a weekly inventory of the pantries, weighing every pound of sugar and beans, counting each pillowcase and box of soap, paring stores down to the bare minimum. Meals that had been varied and appetizing became grayer and more institutional.

Coleman's efforts received the full support of the board. They changed his title from “superintendent” to “commandant”—a title given the person in charge of a fort or other military institution—and the change allowed Coleman to take direct responsibility for hiring and disciplining Home employees. Commandant Coleman also intended to impose greater military discipline on his inmates.
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Beginning in February 1903, inmates were issued uniforms consisting of underdrawers, pants, shirts, jacket, a military-style waistlength dress cape, and a felt hat. Although the uniforms were originally intended for use during special ceremonies when visitors were expected, or to supplement everyday clothing, Commandant Coleman decreed that inmates should wear them at all times, whether they were strolling the grounds of the Home or napping in the library. Part of Coleman's reasoning involved increased efficiency: the Home's laundry staff could process standardized garments faster than they could wash, iron, and sort varied personal items of clothing. But the uniformity also served to reinforce a personal discipline that Coleman felt was slipping. Gone were the oddments of clothing; every inmate was expected to dress in full uniform at the morning inspection and remain so dressed throughout the day.

The new clothing was of top quality; it was supplied by Levy Bros. Department Store in Louisville. But it was the first time since leaving military service forty years before that these men had been required to wear uniforms. Bennett Young put a more positive spin on the uniform requirement: “It was thought,” he later wrote, “that the Confederate uniform which they had worn with much honor and credit should be used by them now, in the declining years of their life, when they had come to enjoy the benefits of this State institution.”
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Coleman also instituted a zero-tolerance policy for infractions of Home rules, particularly those involving the use of alcohol.

“Charges are hereby preferred against Stanford P. Ashford for drunkenness at Confederate Home on March 6 & 7,” Coleman reported to the board before an April executive committee meeting. He included the specifications and a list of witnesses. In addition, E. J. Sanders was reported to be drunk at dinner on March 16, and Matthew Little was caught with a whiskey bottle on March 17. Both men were brought up on charges.
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The board's executive committee was required to hold hearings on the offenses. The men admitted their obvious guilt, but charges were “dismissed upon their positive promise that they would not repeat the offense.”

Commandant Coleman wanted to make a special example of James Elbert, however. Elbert had been a whiskey drummer—a salesman representing local distilleries and bottlers to the retail trade. As the years went by, however, he spent less time selling his product and more time consuming it. By the time he entered the Home, he was long unemployed and practically homeless, nursing a mighty thirst for Kentucky's finest. On the evening of March 5 a drunken Elbert verbally abused Coleman, then staggered out of the Home before he could be restrained. Elbert made his way to Louisville for a four-day tear, and a county sheriff was dispatched to return him to Pewee Valley. At his hearing, he was unrepentant and, at Coleman's insistence, was expelled from the Home. The minutes of Elbert's court-martial by the executive committee state that “the Commandant was directed to furnish a railroad ticket to his former home and to give him lunch and $1 in money.”
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Within weeks of Coleman's arrival, the Home was transformed from a comfortable lodging place with bountiful meals and an accommodating household staff to a chilly military installation that was becoming increasingly crowded with bored and disgruntled old men.

Meanwhile, the board members were struggling to dig their way out of a deep financial hole. Coleman's operational changes had reduced the costs of running the Home, but the board faced additional, extraordinary expenses as well as repayment of the short-term loans they had taken out in January 1903.

Bennett Young's plea to the UCV camps for additional financial help was bearing fruit. Members of the camp in Paducah voted to pledge 25 cents per member per month in 1903 to help the Home out of its financial jam, and the Confederate veterans of Lexington reinstated a $500 pledge that had been withdrawn a year earlier. W. J. Stone, an active veteran from Kuttawa, stood up at a meeting of the Little River Baptist Association to speak on behalf of the Kentucky Confederate Home. He raised $35, telling Fayette Hewitt he thought it was a pretty good sum, “considering that the crowd had been so thoroughly drummed for money for missions.”
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With the board's approval, Young retained five independent financial agents, promising them a 25 percent commission on the money they raised. Florence Barlow, editor of
The Lost Cause
, was one of the agents, and she collected donations while speaking at UDC luncheon meetings around the state. J. W. Bird and Alexander Lawson traveled around Kentucky seeking donations, while C. C. Cantrell looked for big donors in Cincinnati, Cleveland, Chicago, and New York. (In April 1903 the
New York Times
reported that Cantrell was at the Broadway Central Hotel, “having come to New York to secure contributions for a fund of which the [Kentucky Confederate Home] is in immediate need.”) William O. Coleman also drew a commission for any financial contributions he could raise, but Bennett Young said Coleman's duties as commandant had “prevented him from further pursuing these collections.”
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The financial agents collected $4,600 during the spring of 1903. Those funds, added to other monies squeezed from here and there, allowed Young to report on May 6 that the executive committee had been “extraordinarily successful in raising money to pay off the deficit.” Further, Young said, we are now “satisfied that the State appropriation will pay the running expenses of the institution.”
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Confident as Young may have sounded in public, however, he had to have been aware that this financial stability was only temporary.

The Kentucky Confederate Home was operating at near capacity. By the end of June 1903, just eight months after the formal opening, the board of trustees had approved more than 140 applications for admission. Of those, 125 needy ex-Confederates had arrived at the Home and signed the register. The first winter in the Home had been hard on the old men: fourteen died and nine were under temporary care at various hospitals.

A hundred men were living in the Home that summer, and they were putting a strain on the facility. Water wells were barely keeping pace with the daily needs of the laundry and kitchen; a pump used to fill roof cisterns with water for storage and fire protection was failing, causing the wooden cisterns to dry out in the summer heat and develop leaks. Many of the inmates who came to the Home had no familiarity with indoor toilets, and plumbing clogs were a constant problem. (Commandant Coleman was forced to enlarge the septic beds and dig two outdoor privies to handle sewage.) In addition, the old resort hotel was constructed for genteel vacationers, not a hundred idle old men; spots of tobacco juice stained hardwood floors, heavy boots frayed the delicate carpets, and pocketknives whittled away sections of the wooden porch rail. Repairs and maintenance weren't immediately necessary, but they were imminent, and they would be costly.

Despite overcrowding at the Home and its precarious financial situation, there is no evidence that Bennett Young or the board of trustees ever considered limiting applications for admission. To do so would have broken faith with every UCV camp in the state, every Kentucky Confederate veteran who had pledged a dollar for the care of needy comrades. Suspending admissions would also betray the Home's political supporters, legislators who voted the Home's appropriation and who might be counted on to provide some future financial relief.

Winter was coming, and dozens more old veterans would need the warm beds and hot meals they were unable to secure for themselves and that had been promised to them. So the men responsible for managing the affairs of the Kentucky Confederate Home chose to squeeze every penny possible out of the operating costs while continuing to pack their indigent comrades into the strained facility.

And it was just this kind of stubborn male nonsense that led the United Daughters of the Confederacy to The Motion.

One of the earliest speeches in support of establishing a Kentucky veterans' home urged the men of the state's United Confederate Veterans camps to accomplish the hard work of financing, building, and running the home. “If we do our part in this,” the (male) speaker said, “the noble women, the Daughters of the Confederacy, will see that [the indigent veterans] do not lack for ministering angels.”
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But the women of Kentucky's United Daughters of the Confederacy didn't wait until the hard work was done before commencing their daughterly duty.

When the Committee of Twenty-Five first announced its goal of $25,000, the clubwomen organized bake sales, flower fairs, fetes, and market-day lunchrooms to raise funds. They encouraged other clubwomen to donate, then put the touch on husbands and friends. The women of Carlisle collected $100; the Newport UDC chapter pledged $500; the Louisville chapter raised $1,500 toward the purchase of the Pewee Valley property and another $1,000 intended for furnishings. Funds raised by Kentucky UDC chapters, sent directly to Fayette Hewitt or reported through local UCV camps, likely accounted for as much as half of the $10,000 originally used to purchase and improve the Villa Ridge Inn.

When Bennett Young and the board of trustees needed fast cash to close the purchase of the Pewee Valley property, UDC chapters paid more than $2,200 for room naming rights, then expended thousands more to paint, carpet, refixture, and furnish those rooms.
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