Author Archives: Matthew C. Hulbert

Pappy’s Pappy: Liquor, Law, and the Origins of a Legend in Civil War Era Kentucky

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By Matthew C. Hulbert

On November 2, 1865, a petition arrived on the desk of Governor Thomas E. Bramlette. Two men from Wayne County, Granville Ingram and Levi Baker, each faced a $100 fine for “tipling.” (That is, for dealing in unlicensed liquor.) Relative to modern legal standards, it’s common to assume that alcohol restrictions were lax in the 1860s—if not altogether nonexistent. In fact, before proceeding with our story, it’s worth taking a moment to note that the production, sale, and consumption of distilled spirits in Kentucky were heavily regulated in the 1860s, almost as much as they are today. Even as the Civil War raged around them, scores of civilians found themselves in court for various liquor-related offenses: unlicensed distilling, unlicensed sale, selling in the wrong unit or quantity, selling liquor to minors, being drunk on duty, and a wide array of more violent, booze-fueled crimes ranging from arson and assault to homicide. (More on this in next week’s blogging.)

It would be easy, then—and admittedly more exciting—to imagine Ingram and Baker as something like the Popcorn Suttons of their day; small-time operators who defied the law to provide their customers with the oldest variety of old school Kentucky whiskey. In reality, though, they were legitimate salesmen; they had a pretty good excuse for their fines and, more important still, a very influential lawyer on their side.

As Bramlette scanned the petition, he would have immediately noticed that Ingram and Baker had “applied to and obtained from the Government of the United States a license in due form and paid the tax thereon.” Reading further, it would have become evident that the state’s own inability to function properly at war had contributed more to the conviction of Ingram and Baker than any true criminal mischievousness.

That they would also have obtained a license from the Trustees of Monticello and paid the tax thereon to the Corporation and to the state, but during the time they operated under the license from the general government, there were no trustees in Office, and Consequently they were unable to procure Corporation license. They state that they had no intention of violating any law or defrauding the state or Corporate authority, And moreover they carried on the business at the time of the invasion of this portion of the state by Rebels, and at the time law and Order was unknown in this section of the County.

In layman’s terms, Ingram and Baker had obtained the license required of them to sell whiskey by the federal government—but they also needed local and state licenses. (This likely means they were selling to the Union army; federal customers required federal licensing.) Owing to the aforementioned “invasion,” those local and state licenses were not readily available for purchase. As you can imagine, county clerks didn’t tend to hold fast and defend their posts when enemy forces, regular or guerrilla, arrived in town.

These things considered, Ingram and Baker implored Bramlette to “release them from the payment of that portion of the fines to which the State is entitled. In return, they even promised “not [to] annoy your Excellency with such importunities for the future.” Several citizens of Wayne County supported the petition, but none were more important than John Sallee Van Winkle, an attorney in Wayne County and the brother of Ephraim L. Van Winkle (then Kentucky’s secretary of state). Toward the end of the document, J. S. Van Winkle signed and insisted that “there can be no doubt but the remission asked is proper & should be granted.” Bramlette heeded his advice; the fines were remitted on November 13, 1865.

Ultimately, this case underscores how difficult it was for the state to maintain its civilian responsibilities during the war, but should also remind us that life didn’t simply pause on the homefront until the conflict concluded. The wheels of local and state government were expected to keep turning—which, as a result, should have allowed the whiskey to keep flowing. But the archive of The Civil War Governors of Kentucky Digital Documentary Edition is overrun with tippling and bootlegging cases. The real interest in this story has to do with John Van Winkle and the role his family would play in the future of legal liquor ventures in the Bluegrass State.

40846871_125067809566In 1866, when E. L. Van Winkle passed away unexpectedly, John was tapped to finish his brother’s term as secretary of state. When the appointment ended, he returned to his law practice, and worked there until his own death in 1888. Given that he and his brother were such luminaries of the state’s legal community, it’s more than a little surprising that John’s son, Julian P. Van Winkle, didn’t follow in their footsteps and study the law. To this day, whether they know it or not, bourbon enthusiasts reap the rewards of his decision.

This is because J. P. Van Winkle is better-known as “Pappy”; he is the bespectacled, cigar-puffing old gentleman on the logos of Kentucky’s—and maybe even the world’s—most sought after bottles of bourbon. Today, there are three labels bearing the “Pappy” moniker: Pappy Van Winkle 15 Year, Pappy Van Winkle 20 Year, and Pappy Van Winkle 23 Year. Generally impossible to find on store shelves, they’ve become the stuff of bourbon lotteries and an unprecedented heist in 2012 dubbed “Pappygate.”

Born in 1874 in Danville, Kentucky, Julian worked briefly as a store clerk before finding employ as a salesman at the wholesaling firm of W. L. Weller & Sons. (Yes—that W. L. Weller. He also shows up in the CWG-K archive, but that’s another story for another time.) Eventually Julian became a distiller himself and, after Prohibition, helped oversee operations at the famed Stitzel-Weller facility in Shively, on the outskirts of Louisville. A few years after his death in 1965, most of the S-W labels were sold, but Old Rip Van Winkle remained in the family and charge of the business has passed from generation to generation of Julian Van Winkle’s (Sr.) descendants.

pappy-van-winkle-23Now to argue that John Van Winkle’s defense of hardworking, but improperly licensed, whiskey peddlers inspired his son to become a bourbon icon would make for an incredible ending to our story. It would also be entirely apocryphal. Julian wasn’t born for a decade after the Ingram-Baker trial and odds are good that he never knew a thing about it. And even if he had, it wouldn’t have stood out. In those days, tippling cases in Kentucky truly were a dime a dozen.

But what he probably did know about, thanks to that wealth of tippling cases and his father’s legal work, was just how complicated and competitive the distilling industry could be, especially for someone just starting out in the business. So the truly remarkable point here isn’t that Julian “Pappy” Van Winkle eschewed a surefire (and no doubt lucrative) career in the family’s legal empire to make bourbon—it’s that in a family once known for powerful Civil War era litigators and secretaries of state, he transformed their empire into making bourbon.

Matthew C. Hulbert is an Assistant Editor of the Civil War Governors of Kentucky Digital Documentary Edition.

SOURCES: “G. C. Ingram and L. P. Baker to Thomas E. Bramlette,” 2 Nov 1865, Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives, Frankfort, Kentucky; 1860 United States Federal Census; 1870 United States Federal Census; 1910 United States Federal Census; 1940 United States Federal Census.

Homefront Hazards: Sexual Violence and the Court-Martial of Lt. Charles Helton

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By Matthew C. Hulbert

In January 1864, a court-martial convened in Lexington, Kentucky, to decide the fate of Charles Helton. As Second Lieutenant of Company I, 39th Regiment, Kentucky Volunteer Mounted Infantry (U.S.A.), Helton and the men he commanded had an inherent duty to protect civilians from all manner of Confederate assault. The events of December 14, 1863, however, underscored the extent to which those civilians often needed guarding from the very men supposedly paid to protect them.

According to court documents, on the aforementioned December 14, 1863, Helton went to the house of Thomas Russell, himself a Union officer (a captain of the 45th Kentucky Volunteer Infantry) and “did in a rude and ungentlemanly manner use threatening and insulting Language to the wife and daughter of Capt Thos Russell.” More startlingly, Helton also tried to persuade Russell’s daughter to “accompany him from the house” and, when the young girl refused, he drew his pistol and shouted “By god you shall go or I will kill you.” The victim, whose first name was not revealed in the proceedings, successfully fled from the scene and escaped Helton’s ultimatum. For this incident, he was charged with “conduct unbecoming an officer and gentleman,” though attempted kidnapping with the intent to commit rape might have been more appropriate given how the rest of the day would unfold…

Stung by his failure to lure off the young Miss Russell, Helton next went to the home of Emanuel Spence. There, he again hurled “insulting Language” and managed to fire his pistol in the house (fortunately not wounding anyone). Once more, he attempted to abscond with a female captive; having already displayed a willingness to use his gun, Helton employed “threats” of violence to “compel Mrs Zelphina Spence to accompany him one-fourth of a mile from her house, attempting to persuade her to go to camp with him, there to be as a wife to him.” She declined the invitation—and also managed to get away from Helton unharmed. This episode was added as a second specification to the “conduct unbecoming” charge.

Now smarting from two [un]romantic rejections, a more desperate (and almost certainly more inebriated) Helton returned to the Russell house and commenced to “rudely assault the wife of said Capt Russell.” Helton declared that he would “stay all night with her,” to which Mrs. Russell responded by telling him to leave. Not to be deterred, Helton replied emphatically, “By god. I will stay,” at which point Mrs. Russell wisely “ran into another room, and shut the door.” From there, the situation quickly turned violent.

Said Helton kicked the door violently, and said to her, “If you do not open the door, I will blow your God damned brains out,” and forced the door open, and followed said Mrs. Russell into another room; and caught hold of her and tore her dress open and thrust his hand into her bosom, saying, I have been on a scout fourteen days, and by God I must have you for my purposes now, and the said Helton did, by force, attempt to throw said Mrs. Russell on the bed.

As noted in court testimony, only the “timely appearance of two countrymen” stopped the assault and spared Mrs. Russell. For his final assault of the day, Helton was charged with “assault and battery with intent to commit rape.”

With regard to assault and battery, attempted rape, and conduct unbecoming, Helton plead guilty and was found as such on each charge. More curiously, he was not guilty of “drunkenness on duty,” despite the fact that liquor had clearly helped fuel his daylong “rampage” through Rock Castle, a community near the Kentucky-West Virginia border. The decision seems doubly odd in light of evidence showing that while on a scouting mission on the very morning of the day the assaults took place, Helton was deemed “intoxicated to such an extent that he was unable to command, and did permit his company to become demoralized and scattered in consequence of said intoxication.”

In addition to being stripped of his rank and pay, Helton was sentenced to three years of hard labor “with ball and chain attached to his leg.” At the end of his prison term, he was to be dishonorably discharged from the Union military. To modern eyes, Helton’s sentence appears rather light for an attempted rapist running around drunkenly with a gun—and even lighter for one essentially guilty three times over on the same day. But in 1864, three years of hard labor was a relatively harsh punishment for Helton’s crimes. In fact, the archives of the Civil War Governors of Kentucky Digital Documentary Edition are replete with cases of attempted rape and rape being downplayed, if not outright excused or justified, by male judges, lawyers, and jurors.

With this in mind, what probably provoked the firm sentence had less to do with justice for Mrs. Russell or Helton’s other female victims than it did with preserving support for the Union cause among civilians. In many parts of the state, the relationship between the Union government and civilians who wanted to remain in the Union but also to protect slavery was already rocky—and the military could scarcely afford to concede its ability to protect them from Confederate invaders or neighborhood bushwhackers, let alone from its own soldiers. Nor, for that matter, could it concede that civilians might be safer joining the ranks of the irregular war than relying on regular troops for protection.

In any case, as this story makes clear, we would be wise to remember that while Kentucky’s Civil War homefront was fraught with hazards—especially sexual ones for women—the danger didn’t always stem from contact with “the enemy” as we typically like to imagine him.

 

Matthew C. Hulbert is an Assistant Editor of the Civil War Governors of Kentucky Digital Documentary Edition.

SOURCE: “General Orders No. 89,” Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives, Frankfort, Kentucky.

Thomas Bramlette and “Guerrilla Law” in Civil War Kentucky

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By Matthew C. Hulbert

HOMICIDE, n. The slaying of one human being by another. There are four kinds of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable and praiseworthy, but it makes no great difference to the person slain whether he fell by one kind or another — the classification is for advantage of the lawyers.

– Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary

“Where you find the word Guerrilla, may be understood murder, rape, arson, or robbery…”

– Major Gen. John M. Palmer, U.S.A.

By winter 1864, Kentucky’s homefront was drowning in irregular violence. Pro-Confederate guerrillas like Jerome Clark (alias Sue Mundy), Henry Magruder, Bill Marion, Samuel “One-Armed” Berry, Jim Davis, Hercules Walker, and untold others terrorized Unionists throughout the state. In turn, Unionist bushwhackers and guerrilla hunters—men such as Edwin “Bad Ed” Terrell and his band of “Independent Kentucky Scouts”—wrought their own brand of havoc on suspected Rebel sympathizers. Raiding, murder, retaliatory assassinations, and arson quickly became commonplace as Union authorities struggled, and largely failed, to find a solution. Such was the perilous environment into which two brothers from Taylor County ventured one December morning in search of a stolen mule. This unfortunate duo, Merritt and Vardiman Dicken, wouldn’t survive the day.

The Dickens first stopped at the farm of a known horse thief named Rinehart; he wasn’t home, but while the brothers conversed with his wife, two strangers appeared on horseback. The unnamed men volunteered to help Merritt and Vardiman find Rinehart, and possibly their lost animal with him. Not long after departing, however, “the two Dicken brothers, having become suspicious of the intentions of their two guides, refused at this point to go with them any further.” The situation quickly turned violent.

They [the strangers] quickly turned upon the two Dickens, took from them their pistols—shot one of them (Merritt Dicken) through the body, and the other turning to flee was also mortally wounded through the back. Merritt Dicken also turned to run, and he and his brother made all speed in the direction of a point on the extension of the Louisville & Nashville Railroad where some Irishmen were at work, about ¾ of a mile from where they were shot.

At the rail junction, things did not improve for Merritt and Vardiman. Because they approached “in a wild and excited manner on horseback at full speed” and both wore calico shirts with pistol belts, the rail men mistook the pair for guerrillas. And despite their story—and vows of Unionism—Michael Foley, a former private in the 9th Kentucky Cavalry, took it upon himself to arrest the Dicken brothers. They again fled for help, this time to the home of Charles Prewitt, where Foley caught up. With Vardiman resting inside the Prewitt house, Merritt twice refused to turn himself over to Foley peacefully, “whereupon Foley shot and killed him.” (Vardiman succumbed to his wounds a few days later, but not before relating the Dickens’ entire story to at least one witness.)

Foley was promptly arrested, charged with the murder of Merritt Dicken, and held on $5000 bail by Judge R. A. Burton of the Marion County Court. Before the trial had even concluded, area Unionists took to Foley’s defense; they argued that the circumstances of the case warranted full executive clemency from the governor, and told him as much in an official petition. After all, they claimed, the Dicken brothers had looked very much like guerrillas—heavily armed and thundering down on the rail junction at full gallop—and Foley only did “what he conceived to be his duty as a good citizen” to protect the community from marauders. Better still, the petitioners contended that the circumstances of the shooting, combined with “the impulsive nature [sic] characteristics of his race” should render Foley automatically innocent by reason of inferior genetics. In other words, who could really blame a stereotypically hotheaded Irishman for killing a guerrilla look-alike in a region infested with real guerrillas?

Even with such “creative” defenses, Foley’s prospects with the jury looked bleak. That is, until Governor Thomas Bramlette granted him a full pardon without even waiting to hear the jury’s decision. Perhaps even more remarkable than the act itself was the logic behind it:

The warfare of guirillas upon citizens of Kentucky and especially upon discharged soldiers justly condemns every guerrilla to outlawry and death whenever wherever & by whomsoever taken. It is a matter of self defence upon the part of every citizen who slays a guerilla at any time as well as defence of society … the facts in this case could not have justified any other belief in the mind of Foley … no man who kills a guerilla should suffer it I can prevent it and when an honest mistake like the present is superinduced by the imprudent conduct of the slain Executive Clemency is equally deserving.

Two points concerning Kentucky’s guerrilla war emerge from the Dickens’ story and Bramlette’s pardoning of Foley, the first explicit, the second inferred.

1. Irregular violence had become such a hopeless quandary by December 1864 that for Union authorities, it was safer to kill any potential guerrilla—at the risk of murdering innocent civilians like Merritt Dicken—than to chance any actual guerrillas escaping a just execution. (A little more than a week later, Governor Bramlette would issue a proclamation calling on Military Commandants to take “the most prominent and active rebel sympathizers” as hostages “in every instance where a loyal citizen is taken off by bands of guerrillas.” The “Summer of Burbridge” that followed was a disastrous misstep for anti-guerrilla operations.)

2. Though it probably didn’t dawn on Bramlette when he issued the pardon, in doing so, he effectively conceded that irregular violence had become so problematic as to necessitate still more irregular violence—in the form of vigilantism—to combat it. A vicious cycle, indeed.

Excerpt of Pardon from Gov. Thomas E. Bramlette

Spelling troubles aside, Governor Thomas E. Bramlette had very strong thoughts on Kentucky’s “guirillas” – see them in this excerpt from Foley’s pardon.

In this light, it really isn’t a stretch to say that the inability of Bramlette and the Union military to stamp out guerrilla activity simultaneously killed the Dicken brothers and justified freedom for one of their killers. Ambrose Bierce would have appreciated this irony on behalf of the murdered Merritt Dicken—especially considering Thomas Bramlette’s profession before ascending to the governorship: judge.

 

Matthew C. Hulbert is an Assistant Editor of the Civil War Governors of Kentucky Digital Documentary Edition.

SOURCES: J. M. Fiddler and F. B. Merrimec to Thomas E. Bramlette, 18 Dec 1864, Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives, Frankfort, Kentucky (hereafter cited as KDLA); Hill and Knott to Thomas E. Bramlette, 16 Dec 1864, KDLA; Proclamation by Governor Thomas E. Bramlette, 4 Jan 1864, KDLA; John M. Palmer to Thomas E. Bramlette, 18 Oct 1865, KDLA.