Controversial Monument: Gen. John B. Castleman, ex-Confederate Tells Soldiers it is Their Duty to Salute Black Officers

The New York Times
November 12, 1917

SALUTE NEGROES IN SOUTH.

Gen. Castleman, ex-Confederate, Tells Soldiers it is Their Duty.

LOUISVILLE, Ky, Nov. 11- Louisville, in which much of the spirit of the old South still lives, putting aside racial feeling and personal prejudice, has settled for itself, patriotically and unreservedly, the question of the propriety of white soldiers saluting negro officers. This question, which came to the fore recently, was on the first thought answered to reconcile inherent convictions with military regulations.

The solution was that an officer should not be regarded as a personality toward whom the salute homage to the country's uniform and to the things it typifies should be accepted.

An exposition of this viewpoint was voiced by General John B. Castleman, a Major of the Army of the Confederacy, later Colonel of a Kentucky National Guard regiment and a Brigadier General of Volunteers who saw active service in Porto Rico during the Spanish-American War. He said:

"The discipline of the army must be maintained, and non-commissioned officers understand little of the spirit of the army when they refuse to salute a negro officer. I have held several commissions in the military service, and I unhesitatingly say that I would or will, at any time salute an officer, superior or inferior, who salutes me without regard to the color of his skin. The regulations, the laws, and the fundamentals of courtesy and discipline upon which these regulations and laws are based prescribe this. It is no time to stand against them. I want to urge every soldier to be a soldier in the full sense of the term. We are at war, and soldiers are under the rules of the American Army. We are all one under the flag. We salute the rank, not the individual."

The incident which brought forth General Castleman's statement occurred here recently when two white soldiers refused to salute Captain Glass, a colored officer.

Controversial Statue: John B Castleman on Slavery, Lincoln, and the Union

"In Louisville today the remains of General John Breckinridge Castleman lie in state. General Castleman's story is not without significance in these troubled times. As a youth of nineteen he rushed into Confederate service at the outbreak of the war. He was opposed to the institution of slavery but he was a hot-headed advocate of the principle of state's rights and to him every state was a republic unto itself. He was the dashing kind of soldier who would naturally be drawn to the audacious trooper, Morgan." 

"At the entrance of Cherokee park which is the product of his generosity and constant care and watchfulness stands a modest little frame cottage in a spacious park-like yard where arching trees abound. That little house for nearly half a century has been General Castleman's home. In the large central window of this home, facing the thorofare, there has always hung an American flag.The flag was General Castleman's passion. In the days of his youth on his return from exile he, like General Gordon of Georgia, became a great reconstructionist. He went among the people of the south, telling them what the flag meant, how wrong their war was, how the lost cause was a wrong cause, how they should rejoice in their defeat tho never losing their love and enthusiasm for their hero dead who gave their valor for that which they thought to be right but which they now found, to their sorrow and to their gladness, was wrong. He was the sympathetic southerner who love the South so much that he could love North and South more."

When the Lincoln Memorial at Hodgenville was dedicated a few years ago General Castleman with President Taft was an honor guest of Kentucky. When all the services and exercises were over, and the 17,000 spectators on the grounds had dissipated, gone on their way and the Presidential train was standing on its siding with impatient engine three mile distant from the isolated shrine, General Castleman expressed the wish to return to the Memorial that he could see it in the silence of its setting, with the multitude away.

When, with a few friends present, he paid this second visit to that shrine that day he said, "“ I cannot describe my feelings. Here from a home of lower birth than that which I knew, the humblest hut of a cabin, came a man who lived to have the power to save my life. Had Lincoln lived, I always knew that I would have returned from exile not two years after but at the close of the war In giving me my life this man gave me the light to see the wrong cause I had championed, the right cause that he battled for. I have given my ...

"...life in a humble effort to carry on his work, to bring his divided people once more,” then pointing to the inscription on the pediment of the building, he read “ into union, peace and brotherhood among these United States.” A few years ago in front of his own home at the entrance of the park which was the result of his own generosity and handiwork, Louisville unveiled in his presence, Kentucky ’s great man on a horse, GENERAL CASTLEMAN.

General Castleman lived the repentance of a mistake against a just cause and a flag that was borne into battle for liberty and for a government that stood for both freedom and fellowship. No one ever worked more faithfully to correct a wrong against his country's flag. No one ever learned to love his country's flag more than did Kentucky s great horseman. He was one of the rebuilders of the South, and as a rebuilder he became one of the builders of the nation.

General Castleman is dead. His mortal remains lie in state in Louisville today. Kentucky honors in this hour the memory of one who was more than her son; he became a great, soldier son of America. This was his pride. The flag that always made brilliant the big window of his home he loved better than life itself. The spirit of General Castleman is one that cannot be laid at rest. In the words ; of Webster it will march on and on in the cause of “ union, one and inseparable now and forever-”THE WISCONSIN STATE JOURNAL. SATURDAY, MAY 25, 1918.

Abraham Lincoln saves John B. Castleman

Regarding the above letter, John B Castleman wrote:

"I did not know until 1877 that in November, 1864, Judge Breckinridge had, in my behalf, made a visit to President Lincoln."

After talking to Samuel for awhile Abraham Lincoln said, "In fifteen minutes we have a Cabinet meeting and I will give you now in the strictest confidence a note only to be used in case of emergency. Meantime, from what I learn, it would be best to have that boy's attorneys endeavor to postpone the trial, for those young Confederates have caused the government annoyances and expense."

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Abraham Lincoln
16th President of the United States of America

(Letter transcribed)

Executive Mansion, Washington, November 29, 1864.

Major General Hovey, or Whomsoever may have charge:

Whenever John B. Castleman shall be tried, if convicted and sentenced, suspend execution until further order from me, and send me the record.

A. LINCOLN.

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General Castleman, wrote "Abraham Lincoln was tolerant and tactful, and unflinching. It is of small public interest that the writer owes his life to this great man. This will be mentioned further on, and is of no importance other than as exemplification of the greatness of Lincoln in dealing always with the smallest detail which involved the welfare of individuals, even midst tremendous public responsibilities."

The John Breckinridge Castleman Statue, Louisville Times, November 7, 1913

(From the Louisville Times, November 7, 1913.) 

THE CASTLEMAN STATUE. 

Life is very short. Must we then wait until the next generation discerns the proper judgments and rewards? Must all recognitions be tardy? Surely not, and it is the happy realization of that truth that prompted the graceful tribute, which, on Saturday next, is to be paid to General John Breckinridge Castleman.

General Castleman's monument was secure, even though it were never raised — it stood firm in the hearts of his friends and the memories of his fellow- citizens. Fame would still be busy with his name if no visible remembrance existed; but, in bestowing upon him honor and recognition while yet in full enjoyment of a vigorous and useful life, a noble impulse has received its legitimate fulfillment. It has been said that the love of a few faithful ones, the personal devotion of those who know you best, is all that any man deserves; we cannot accept so narrow a view, and we could never understand why those who are censorious and critical throughout all the changing vicissitudes of a man's career should be so generous with flowers when his heart is still and his eyes closed forever.

It is not a little thing that this gallant soldier, this urbane, courtly gentleman, has done for a city and a state that delights to distinguish those who distinguish them; hi these later days we cannot disassociate him from those wonderfully beautiful parks that are his pride and in great measure his 'creation, and, when the history of the nation was being written in the lifeblood of its best and bravest, where shall we find pages more inspiring than those that tell the deeds of this lateborn cavalier, this knight sans peur et sans reproche?

The secret of a man's charm is an elusive and indefinable as the secret of a writer's style; the hold he has on us, the place he fills, the loyalty he arouses — how explain them? General Castleman is a man of the world, the big world; there are few experiences that are foreign to him, no activities in which he takes no interest, no traditions of breeding, of manner, of gallant bearing that do not center in him. It is inconceivable that such a man should sit in the shadow. He could not be commonplace if he would. His character has been touched with bold, broad touches, generously, lavishly even, and he brings with him the sense of a spacious outlook. Geniality is of his essence; children know that he is not un fathomable, and it is peculiarly fitting that the school children for whose welfare he has been so solicitous, so intelligently providing, should join in the exercises of the day. It was a pleasant thought pleasantly carried out. There at the entrance to the park whose beauty is so much his work, will stand, appropriately, an equestrian statue, attracting and arresting attention by the sweep of its lines, the vigor of its pose, the evidence of its truth. For felicity of situation as of design it stands alone among our memorials; it has succeeded in catching something of the irresistible verve of its delightful model — more cannot be asked of any artist; it denies forever and to all men that "the days of our youth are the days of our glory." To have caught this veteran of two wars young and eager has been the happy idea of Mr. Charles F. Grainger; to him and to Mr. Marion Taylor, his industrious colleague, the community owes a debt of very real gratitude.