February, 2015

Some clown named Donnie Johnston (who can take someone named Donnie seriously anyway? It raises memories of Donny Osmond….) writes a regular column for the Fredericksburg Free-Lance Star newspaper. He was born and raised in Culpeper County, Virginia, where numerous major engagements occurred, and where the Army of the Potomac spent the winter of 1863-1864. This unenlightened troglodyte also is a fierce opponent of battlefield preservation. He has a long track record of it.

On December 29, 2001, he declared his enmity to battlefield preservation in his column:

Avoid getting bogged down in swamp or historic land
Posted: Saturday, December 29, 2001 2:30 am | Updated: 8:47 pm, Fri Jan 30, 2015.

“Possible Civil War battlefield site,” it said.

I suppose the owner figured that this was a valid selling point, but knowing that a Civil War battle might have been fought on that property would surely have dissuaded me from investigating further.

In this day and time, there are two types of acreage the average working man should avoid like the plague–historic land and swamp land. Either can wind up costing you money and causing you grief.

Now your old pappy may have warned you to stay away from deals that involve swamp land, but I doubt that men of his generation would have put historic land in the same category.

My, how things have changed.

We live in an area so Civil War conscious that sometimes it is hard to make people believe that we actually have history that predates that conflict.

Many act as if some mysterious land bridge magically appeared in 1861 and civilization began when men wearing blue uniforms walked down from the North to confront men in gray uniforms walking up from the South.

What happened after that is considered so sacred that one historic preservation group has declared that nothing so seemingly innocent as a game of softball should be played on the hallowed Civil War battlefield ground it owns.

That’s fine for big preservation groups, but, increasingly, government wants to restrict how small landowners use their historic property, too. And a man who has his life savings invested in a few acres of ground that are declared historically significant can suddenly find himself behind the eight ball.

Now I have nothing against preserving our history, but every site on which a Civil War soldier slept cannot be kept inviolate forever.

Given the thousands of soldiers that marched through Central Virginia, there is hardly a square foot of ground between Richmond and Washington that didn’t figure in the Civil War in some way.

And every acre between the Blue Ridge Mountains and Fredericksburg was most certainly used by either one army or the other between 1861 and 1865.

It can’t all be declared hallowed ground–not if we want our children and grandchildren to build homes and continue to live in this area.

But as open land dwindles, no one can be certain which parcels will be preserved and which will not.

And if you happen to own land on which a Civil War battle was fought, you just might get caught in a costly squeeze someday and your property rights severely restricted.

Increasingly, historic land is more of a liability than an asset–especially for persons who are not wealthy.

The same holds true for swamp land, which has become an even greater liability than historic land.

No one seems to know what you CAN do with swamp land, but there are two things that you almost universally CAN’T do with it.
You can’t use it and you can’t clean it up.

And if you can’t do either of those two things, a swamp is about as useless as a pregnant chad on a Florida ballot.

So why own it? Why pay taxes on land that is absolutely no good to you?

If you are buying land that has a swamp on it, ask the seller to deduct that acreage from the parcel.

And if you own swamp land, consider deeding it to the government so you won’t be taxed on that part of your property.

Even if the government owns your swamp, you can still enjoy the beavers that flood it and the ducks that swim in it. But you won’t be responsible for that land and you won’t have to pay taxes on it.

Let the government figure out what to do with it!

A donation of “valuable wetlands” to the government should even earn you a big tax break.

If you’re rich, you might not worry about owning a few acres of unusable swamp or a battlefield site whose use might be severely restricted one day.

But if you’re just an old working Joe, you might want to look the other way when someone tries to sell you land that is either swampy or historic in nature.

And if someone tries to interest you in a marsh where a Civil War battle was fought, run for your life!

The government probably wouldn’t even let you look at property that sacred–let alone use it!

DONNIE JOHNSTON is a staff writer with The Free Lance-Star. He can be contacted by mail at The Free Lance-Star, 616 Amelia St., Fredericksburg, Va. 22401; by fax at 373-8455; or by e-mail marked to his attention at gwoolf@freelancestar.com.

Note that he updated his angry rant on January 30 of this year, more than 13 years later.

Then, on February 21, 2015, he fired this unenlightened cheap shot.

Nothing ‘hallowed’ about war

Posted: Saturday, February 21, 2015 12:00 am
BY DONNIE JOHNSTON/THE FREE LANCE-STAR | 6 comments
DonnieJohnston
Posted on Feb 21, 2015by Donnie Johnston

I am so sick of hearing people cry about “hallowed ground” I could scream.

Everywhere a Union or Confederate soldier set his chamber pot is now declared “hallowed ground.”

You can’t build a store because there may be a Minié ball somewhere in the ground. Housing developments get axed because some farmer once plowed up a rusty bayonet in that field. You can’t construct a road because some soldier once fired a cannon from that spot.

This is all getting absurd.

Yes, the Civil War figures prominently in our country’s history, but the surrender at Appomattox was 150 years ago. Get over it and let’s get on with life.

Why people are so adamant about glorifying war—any war—is beyond me. Ask anybody who ever fought in one and they will tell you that war is indeed hell.

People kill other people in wars. They blow their heads off—literally. They disembowel fathers and sons and brothers with cannons and mortars.

Soldiers lose their arms, their legs, their feet and their hands in wars. You want to glorify that?

I’m not a fan of war and I certainly don’t celebrate killing. As Jimmy Stewart once said, the only people who win wars are the undertakers.

We talk of the soldiers who fought the Civil War as if they were holy vessels sent down by the Almighty to purify the Earth. These were people like you and me—some good, some bad.

Few fought because there was some holy cause involved. Most of the Confederates fought mostly because they resented being invaded by the Yankees. Most of the Federals fought because they wanted to teach Johnny Reb a lesson.

The Civil War began because big landowners in the South wanted to keep black people enslaved. You can sugarcoat it all you want, but slavery was what that conflict was all about. You want to glorify slavery?

Those big landowners—the aristocracy—were the political leaders of the South and they developed political policy. The average guy who had never owned a slave just got caught up in the excitement and the politics of the day.

Yes, the slaves were freed as a result of the Civil War. But then America proceeded to treat black people like dirt for another 100 years. It was only after the Civil War centennial that black children were even allowed to sit next to white children in many public schools.

Civil War soldiers killed, looted, stole and burned homes and outbuildings. If you see glory in that, you’ve got better vision than I.

Six miles from where I live, a wounded Union soldier was executed in the bed where he was convalescing—shot in the head at point-blank range—as a means of revenge. You want to glorify that?

My great-grandfather went off to war on a lark, leaving his wife and children to almost starve to death. He came home and wasted away with dysentery. That was some glorious death.

Now we want to save every inch of ground trod upon by every Federal and Confederate. Why? Well, partly so that re-enactors can line up, fire blank shells and show us what the war was like.

If these people want to show us what the war was like, let them fire real bullets and cannon and then accept only the type of medical help that was available during the Civil War.

Let us watch a few limbs being amputated with hacksaws and without anesthesia or antibiotics. Let’s see how romantic that is.

Enough is enough. We don’t glorify World War I or World War II or even the Revolutionary War, where we won our independence. It is only the Civil War that seems to excite us.

Yes, we should honor our history, but we can’t save every inch of soil that was part of the Civil War. If we did, most of Virginia would be an empty field.

As for this “hallowed ground” business, no war is a holy war. War is an atrocity, no matter which side is in the right.

We can respect the men who fought in the Civil War without stripping landowners of their rights 150 years after the fact. The re-enactors can still play soldier and have a high old time, but let the people have homes and let the roads pass.

Like we do with most everything else, Americans take history and run it into the [hallowed] ground.

The Civil War is over. Let’s move on. The good earth was put here for us to use, not to glorify because one man killed another man at some particular spot.
?
Donnie Johnston: djohnston@freelancestar.com

This ignoramus clearly doesn’t get it. Which is a tragedy.

Mike Stevens, president of the Central Virginia Battlefield Trust, which does a magnificent job of stewarding battlefield land in and around Fredericksburg, wrote this excellent letter to the editor of the Free-Lance Star that rebuts the ignoramus:

To the Editor:

Donnie Johnston’s recent column, “War shouldn’t be hallowed,” made clear his antipathy toward, and opposition to, preserving our remaining Civil War battlefields. He was direct, forthright, and pulled no punches.

I am President of our local preservation group, Central Virginia Battlefields Trust (CVBT), and would like to respond. (For a more complete picture of why we preservationists do what we do, please check the paper’s archives for my past op-ed articles.)

–We of CVBT don’t wish to preserve the ground of a Civil War battlefield in order to glorify war or to enable reenactors to “play soldier and have a high old time.” Rather, we do so in order to commemorate this most important and defining event in the history of our country, to preserve the memory and meaning of what took place on that ground, and to remember and honor the men in both blue and gray who fought and fell there, to ponder what they did and why they did it. There are lessons to be learned by having such special ground to walk upon.

–We of CVBT do not attempt to save every inch of battlefield ground where “there may be a Minie ball somewhere in the ground” or where “some farmer once plowed up a rusty bayonet in that field.” Rather, we consider the ground sanctified by the blood and bravery of thousands of Americans (ground almost certainly still containing the remains of many of those men) to be consecrated and special, to be as worthy of respect and preservation as is the consecrated and special ground of any existing cemetery.

–We of CVBT are not “stripping landowners of their rights.” We understand that a man’s property is his own, and we support this as a fundamental right of citizenship, as long as the corresponding responsibility to respect the historical stewardship of that property is taken into serious account.

–Finally, some of us might wonder about his comment that “the good earth was put here for us to use, not to glorify because one man killed another man at some particular spot.” It might be more respectful and honest to say that we are called upon to be good stewards of God’s created order, to use what we have been given not exclusively for personal profit and gain but with the acknowledgment that there are places touched by such suffering and sacrifice that they become special and Spirit-filled, worthy of being preserved forever. To us of CVBT, a Civil War battlefield is just such a place.

Mike Stevens
Fredericksburg, VA

Clark B. Hall, who has done more to preserve battlefield land in and around Johnston’s home, Culpeper County, writes:

There are many who are both shocked and surprised at Mr. Donnie Johnston’s provocative column asserting battlefield preservation is “absurd,” but as one who has labored three decades to help save Civil War battlefields in Culpeper County—from where Mr. Johnston hails—I am neither shocked nor surprised as his cynical insensitivity toward preservation is well known in Culpeper.

Back in the mid-80’s, a California developer arrived in Culpeper and deigned to build a commercial office park on the Brandy Station Battlefield. A group of local citizens—not including Mr. Johnston—directly aided by the Fredericksburg-based, Association of the Preservation of Civil War Sites, Inc. (today’s Civil War Trust)—opposed that proposal and the developer declared bankruptcy. Another developer successively purposed to build an automobile racetrack on the battlefield, but he was also beaten back by preservation advocates.

And today—directly supported by enlightened Culpeper citizens—the Civil War Trust owns, and has placed in easement, thousands of acres of historic landscape in Culpeper County. This protected, “Hallowed Ground”—a poignant term scorned by the censorious Mr. Johnston—incorporates portions of the Brandy Station, Cedar Mountain and Kelly’s Ford Battlefields.

It is a fact none of these Culpeper County battlefields would have been saved absent the direct support of Culpeper citizens. It is also a fact Culpeper County officials have inserted battlefield preservation in their “Comprehensive Plan” as a vital element the county must consider when rendering planning decisions.

And, by the way, Culpeper County now experiences a heavy visitor experience on its battlefields and Culpeper’s hotels, restaurants and stores can easily confirm “heritage tourism” directly conveys cultural and economic benefits. We can confirm, however, Mr. Johnston does not today join Culpeper student groups out on the battlefields while these young charges learn valuable lessons about the tragedy of war, along with the attendant components of courage, ultimate sacrifice, and the importance of tending our collective historical memory.

And please know battlefields now saved in Culpeper County are today protected despite the acerbic obstinacy of Mr. Donnie Johnston.

Clark B. Hall

My wise old father used to say, “opinions are like assholes. Everybody has one.” Mr. Johnston apparently has two, both of which are dead wrong.

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On January 9, 2015, I announced that I had made a deal with Savas-Beatie to bring out a Kindle version of my Ulric Dahlgren biography very soon, and a softcover version of it later this year. I am pleased to be able to tell you that the Kindle version is now available, as are all other digital formats. The cost is $9.99, and I hope some of you will check it out!

I will let everyone know when the book is back in print later this year.

And thank you for your support.

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Rand Bitter forwarded a link today to update the nonsensical theory that Col. Robert H. G. Minty, probably the best Union cavalry brigade commander of the Civil War, stole the Confederate treasury’s gold from Jefferson Davis and that said gold is now at the bottom of Lake Michigan.

This time, the reporter was responsible and asked Rand for his opinion. Rand has published an exhaustively researched book on Minty’s life, and there is nobody alive who knows more about Minty than does Rand. If Rand says it’s nonsense, it’s nonsense. And Rand says it’s nonsense:

Confederate treasure in Lake Michigan? Despite skeptics, divers pursue fantastic story

By Garret Ellison | gellison@mlive.com
Follow on Twitter
on February 23, 2015 at 8:35 AM, updated February 23, 2015 at 11:02 A.M.

FRANKFORT, MI — Sometime in the mid-1890s, a boxcar laden with gold bullion stolen from the Confederacy at the end of the Civil War was allegedly pushed off a ferry into the roiling waters of Lake Michigan during a storm.

Today, it awaits discovery on the lake bottom.

As far as treasure stories go, it’s a doozy. But is it believable?

Unfortunately, there’s only one way to know for sure whether the story advanced by Muskegon area shipwreck divers Frederick J. Monroe and Kevin Dykstra is anything more than a new entry in the encyclopedia of theories about what became of the fabled Confederate treasury after the war.

Based largely on a deathbed confession relayed to Monroe in 1973, Monroe and Dykstra have spent several years searching the waters off Northern Michigan’s Benzie County for the treasure, which they fully expect will be found this summer.

On board with the tale is Frankfort Superintendent Joshua Mills, who is excited by the economic prospects of treasure seekers descending on his coastal town en masse with a modern day version of gold fever.

“We’re pretty certain that gold will be found”

Less convinced are Civil War historians, who consider the story preposterous.

“It’s all a bunch of hogwash,” said Rand Bitter, author of a biography about the Union Army officer at the center of Dykstra and Monroe’s treasure theory.

One might expect nothing less when it comes to a gold story.

A tale of the tallest order?

The thought of Confederate gold sunk in local waters is an intriguing notion that’s sure to fire the kiln of interest among Michiganders. If true, then the answer to one of the country’s greatest mysteries has been in our backyard for more than a century.

The story bubbled into the public eye last fall, when Monroe and Dykstra announced the discovery of an unidentified Lake Michigan shipwreck bearing resemblance to Le Griffon, the yet-undiscovered “holy grail” of Great Lakes wrecks.

Amid the ongoing clamor around Le Griffon, the duo’s real purpose was almost rendered a footnote. Finding the shipwreck — which they did in 2011 but held back announcing for several years — was an accident, they said. The two were actually searching for sunken Civil War gold.

Wait… what?

Their story about how rebel gold found its way into Lake Michigan seems plausible — as plausible, anyway, as any of the other folklore based on the 150-year-old legend of the Confederate treasury, which vanished under fairly well-known circumstances in 1865.

There’s even an established Michigan connection. Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, was captured on May 10, 1865 by members of the Fourth Michigan Cavalry near Irwinville, Ga., about a month after the fall of Richmond.

Davis had fled Richmond with the rebels’ hard currency reserves. Accounts differ on the exact size and makeup of the treasure, but it’s generally thought to have been about $1 million worth of gold, silver and jewelry.

According to historical account, the treasure was gone by the time the cavalry caught up with Davis and his men, who had little money on them.

What happened to the treasure? Monroe and Dykstra have a theory. Here it goes:

A colonel with the Fourth Michigan named Robert Horatio George Minty went back down to Georgia more than a decade after Davis was captured and dug up the hidden gold.

Minty, who retired as a Brigadier General, was wrongfully court-martialed during the war. This, Dykstra and Monroe think, gave him motive to commit treason.

Minty, who worked as a railroad superintendent after the war, somehow managed to get the treasure onto a boxcar headed north for Michigan. His destination: Upper Peninsula copper country, a region with known gold deposits.

To get there, the gold needed to cross Lake Michigan. In 1892, the Ann Arbor Railroad began using coal-powered lake ferries to bypass congested Chicago train yards. From Frankfort, the ferries served ports in Wisconsin and the U.P.

In dire straits, rail cars were sometimes pushed overboard in rough seas.

During one side-scan sonar search of the lake off Frankfort in 2012, Monroe and Dykstra found a coal car on the lake bottom. The two divers consider it a signpost indicating the deathbed confession is accurate and gold is real.

“I believe the boxcar is out there and this spring we’ll find it,” Dykstra said.

Do the dots connect?

Many dots must connect for Monroe and Dykstra’s theory to hold water.

Rand Bitter, a former Ford Motor Co. design cost specialist who self-published an exhaustively researched 2006 book called “Minty and his Cavalry: A History of the Sabre Brigade,” thinks the theory is built on a shaky foundation.

Colonel Minty, Bitter said, was not present when Davis was captured by men led by a subordinate officer, Lt. Col. Benjamin D. Pritchard of Allegan.

“If three tons of gold had been hidden away in a hurry by Prichard and his men, how would Minty have coordinated that from 150 miles away?” Bitter asked. “He wouldn’t have even known about it. They had to send a courier with word that Davis had been captured.”

Other elements of the Minty connection are suspect, Bitter said, who contends that Minty’s postwar railroad employment never put him in the right position to manage a secret boxcar all the way from Georgia to Michigan.

After the war, Minty’s first wife, Grace Ann Abbott, was apparently seen in Traverse City with a necklace made from a Confederate gold coin sovereign — a detail Dykstra and Monroe feel supports their theory.

Here, Bitter and the divers are almost on the same page. The coin necklace was real. Bitter thinks it was most likely given to Minty following Davis’ capture. The cavalryman also got Davis’ revolver and holsters, which are now on display in a Richmond museum. He never got any reward money for the capture.

But the hardest part for Bitter to reconcile is the family connection. Minty scandalously moved to Indiana in the 1870s and started a second family with his wife Grace’s sister, Laura Abbott. Minty essentially became persona non grata with the much of the Abbott family after that.

It’s an important detail because Minty’s brother-in-law, George Alexander Abbott, was the person who allegedly made the deathbed confession about a boxcar full of gold in Lake Michigan to a friend of Monroe’s grandfather.

From depositions taken after Minty’s death, Bitter said it’s quite clear George Abbott did not care much for Minty after the cavalryman’s affair.

“That’s supposedly someone who would know all about Minty’s gold?” he said. “Interesting he’d have all the details.”

Frankfort ready for gold seekers

Bitter and Dykstra have talked, but the divers and their chief theory critic didn’t connect before the gold-in-the-lake story hit the news.

If the deathbed confession turns out to be true and gold is found, Dykstra acknowledged the possibility that it may not be from the Confederate treasury. The Minty theory grew out of his early research. Dykstra was drawn to the Civil War angle when that was the only reference to missing gold from the time period he could find on the Internet.

He realizes it’s a “long stretch.”

Civil War experts aren’t the only skeptics. Shipwreck divers around the state are curious, but some question, privately, whether Monroe and Dykstra aren’t also angling for something like a reality TV show.

The duo isn’t tightly networked with the wider Great Lakes shipwreck diving community by choice, they said.

The two men met about 20 years ago at a wedding. Both have backgrounds as professional photographers. Monroe, 61, of Muskegon, is a scuba instructor who says he graduated from dive school in California in 1972. He taught Dykstra, 51, of Fruitport, to dive a few years ago.

“I’ve been treasure hunting pretty much my whole life,” said Monroe.

The divers have met with Michigan officials, but state archeologist Dean Anderson declined to take a strong position on the veracity of their theory. If gold is found, the state will likely claim it as abandoned material on Michigan bottomland.

“It’s not a story I’m familiar with,” said Anderson, who called the divers “forthcoming and cooperative,” particularly in recent discussions about a planned dive to the possible Le Griffon site this spring or summer.

“I’m not in any position to evaluate what they’ve had to say” about the gold, he said. “We only learned much detail about it very recently.”

More discussions between the divers and the state are possible, but not planned.

In Frankfort, city superintendent Joshua Mills is eager for something to happen.

Monroe and Dykstra have kept Mills in the loop since their initial dives began in 2011. The pair had a hand in helping outfit the Frankfort Fire Department with dive equipment paid for with some local private grants.

They’ve also done some training sessions with the dive team, said Mills.

If Frankfort gets an influx of treasure-seekers drawn to the gold story, it’s best the city be prepared for whatever could happen, said Monroe.

“We’re pretty certain that gold will be found,” said Monroe. “With all the people who come out, we think there’s a good chance it’ll be found this summer.”

If that happens, Mills wants folks to know there’s no monetary incentive in the treasure hunt. The state of Michigan would probably claim the gold, but, assuming there is gold down there, there could be other legal ownership claims advanced depending on the treasure’s origin.

“I think preserving the history and putting closure to the legend is something that could be a benefit to all,” said Mills. “We’ll see.”

Garret Ellison covers business, government, environment and breaking news for MLive/The Grand Rapids Press. Email him at gellison@mlive.com or follow on Twitter & Instagram

This theory is nothing but a flight of fancy. It’s a shame that such nonsense is even taken seriously.

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Today is the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Ailken, South Carolina, wherein the still-feisty Confederate cavalry of Maj. Gen. Joseph Wheeler set a trap for, and nearly destroyed a brigade of, Judson Kilpatrick’s 3rd Cavalry Division. Kil himself barely escaped being captured. As a long-time student of Sherman’s Carolinas Campaign, this small but important battle has always fascinated me. It only lasted a few minutes, or I would have done something substantive with it years ago as a companion to my study of the Battle of Monroe’s Crossroads.

My friend Craig Swain has an excellent post on the Battle of Aiken on his blog, which I commend to you.

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Robert H. G. Minty plays a critical role in my current book project, which is a detailed tactical study of the first day of the Battle of Chickamauga, September 18, 1863. Consequently, I have spent quite a bit of time studying him and his role in the Civil War since I decided to tackle the September 18 project, and was interested in him before the thought of tackling this project ever entered my mind. Minty is a fascinating fellow who had more than his share of foibles, but who nevertheless was one of the finest cavalry officers of the war. After the end of the Civil War, he abandoned his wife Grace and took up with her younger sister Laura in a very scandalous relationship. That tawdry story factors into the nonsense addressed in this post.

In a story that appeared on the website of WZZM, the ABC affiliate located in Grand Rapids, Michigan, two Michigan men make the outrageous claim that Minty stole $2 million in Confederate gold at the time that Minty’s cavalrymen captured Jefferson Davis:

Confederate gold treasure may be in Lake Michigan

ROOTS TO A CIVIL WAR MYSTERY – CONFEDERATE GOLD TREASURE – MAY BE IN LAKE MICHIGAN

Brent Ashcroft, WZZM

MUSKEGON, Mich. (WZZM) — Could there be roots to one of the Civil War’s most enduring mysteries in Muskegon, Michigan? That’s what two local treasure hunters strongly believe and they have four years of research that they feel proves it.

Kevin Dykstra and Frederick J. Monroe were diving in northern Lake Michigan in 2011 and found the remains of a shipwreck, they believe, could be “Le Griffon”, which sank in 1679. The funny thing is, the pair weren’t searching for shipwrecks at the time of their 2011 find.

They were searching for a much bigger treasure – lost Confederate gold from the Civil War.

Both Kevin and Frederick have decided to go public with their research, which reveals West Michigan could be home to this 150-year old mystery.

The beginning and the ending of this story starts and ends in Evergreen Cemetery in Muskegon. What unfolds in-between could lead to solving one of our country’s greatest mysteries.

“It’s a great treasure story,” said Frederick J. Monroe, an accredited scuba diving instructor and treasure hunter from Muskegon. “All the evidence is pointing toward right to what I’ve been told.” He first found out about the take from a friend in 1973.

“He brought to my attention about his grandfather on a deathbed confession,” said Monroe, who added that the individual offering up the death bed confession then said, “There’s $2 million of gold bullion sitting in a box car (at the bottom of Lake Michigan) and there’s only three people that know of it, and two of them were already dead.”

Monroe says that story has stuck with him for over 40 years and when he connected with Kevin Dykstra, he shared the story.

“I started to search and search,” said Dykstra.

His searching triggered a massive research project, which Dykstra believes reveals how the lost Confederate gold treasure found its way to Michigan nearly 150 years ago.

Civil War Gold Theft

STEALING $2 MILLION IN GOLD BARS
Dykstra says his research began when he learned that in 1892, boxcars were beginning to go across Lake Michigan on car ferries. He then discovered that some box cars were pushed off the ferries, during bad storms, to keep the ferries from sinking. At that point, he felt the death bed confession may have some merit, but more research was needed.

“If there was $2 million of gold bullion at the bottom of Lake Michigan, it had to be missing from somewhere,” said Dykstra. “I needed to figure out where this gold was missing from.”

Dykstra started digging into the Confederate gold with Confederate President Jefferson Davis moving towards the south into Georgia after fleeing the Union troops in 1865.

“Some marauders got a hold of the gold at some point and stole it,” added Dykstra.

As he was researching this poignant moment in American history, Dysktra came across a name.

“I started focusing on one particular colonel; his name was Colonel Minty, who was actually in charge of the 4th Michigan Cavalry, who caught Jefferson Davis down in Irwinville, Georgia,” said Dykstra. “If Robert Minty had anything to do with the Confederate gold, he would have had to commit treason to take it,” added Dykstra.

Dykstra then uncovered that Colonel Minty was wrongfully court-martialed in 1864, ending his advancement in the military.

“Now, I have motive,” said Dykstra. He believes that Colonel Minty and his accomplices buried the Confederate gold treasure near Lincoln County, Georgia, which is where legend states it was buried.

Dykstra then began to research Robert Minty’s career after his military court-martial. He found that the colonel retired to Jackson, Michigan where he resumed working for the Detroit Railroad. Dykstra then followed Minty as he accepted several positions with other rail companies, leading him to eventually become superintendent of freight for the Atlantic and Gulf Railway, which was down in the southeastern corner of Georgia.

“The Atlantic and Gulf Railway passes right by where the gold was taken; I feel at this point, I have this man on the run,” added Dykstra.

So, in 1876, eleven years after the gold was stolen, Dykstra believes while working for the Atlantic and Gulf Railway, Minty dug the gold treasure up and began heading north with it, using the rail system. And then…

“I uncovered a horrible train accident in Ashtabula, Ohio,” said Dykstra.

Moving the Gold to Michigan

GOLD GOES MISSING AGAIN

On December 29, 1876, a railroad bridge in Ashtabula, Ohio collapsed, causing eleven boxcars to fall into a river gorge. 159 passengers aboard the train plunged into the river below. 92 were killed.

Dykstra says he found a newspaper article that stated that one of the box cars in the Astabula disaster was carrying $2 million in gold bullion.

“People flocked by the thousands to try to find that gold,” said Dykstra. “No gold was ever found.”

Dykstra found that Robert Minty may have been connected to this accident.

“Sure enough, [Robert Minty] was the superintendent of construction on that railway [at the time of the accident]”, said Dykstra. “I believe that Minty needed a diversion, so with his credentials, I believe that he started a rumor of the $2 million at the bottom of the river gorge to keep everybody away from the gold that was en route at the time.”

And then he discovered Confederate gold had been seen in Michigan.

“I came across another newspaper article that talked about a piece of Confederate gold that surfaced at a coin show in Traverse City; three experts looked at the piece of gold and confirmed that it only could have come from the Confederate gold that was taken down in Lincoln County, Georgia,” said Dykstra.

His research never led him to being able to place Colonel Minty, himself, in Traverse City, but Dykstra says he discovered the next best thing.

“Robert Minty married Grace Ann Minty,” said Dykstra. Her maiden name was “Abbott.”

The Abbott brothers and sisters were living in Traverse City when the Confederate gold showed up at the coin show. Minty would eventually also marry Grace’s sister, Laura Abbott, and had four children with her. These facts led him to one final connection, that he believes, points the finger at Robert Minty as the man who stole the Confederate gold treasure and was able to get it up to Michigan.

“[Robert Minty’s] mother-in-law’s name is Thomas-Ann Sutherland, and Thomas-Ann had a son named George Alexander Abbott,” said Dykstra. “George’s sister, Grace Ann Abbott, was married to Colonel Robert Minty.”

This means that George Alexander Abbott was Robert Minty’s brother-in-law.

“George Alexander Abbott died in 1921 and was the person who did the deathbed confession to the friend of Frederick’s grandfather,” said Dykstra. “The story goes complete full circle.”

Wow. Tawdry, shocking stuff if true. Too bad it’s all supposition and bears no resemblance to reality. I asked Rand Bitter, who published a biography of Minty that compiled Minty’s many articles that he wrote for publication in The National Tribune, a popular veterans’ newspaper, to comment on the article that appears above. Nobody knows more about Minty and his life than does Rand. Here’s his response, which Rand has given me specific permission to share with you here:

This has generated quite a bit of back & forth amongst some of the “Minty group.” Some in the family are quite upset with the slander and poor research supporting it. For your amusement (if interested), I will cut & paste below some of my own commentary on the matter from those other emails.

But first, before that, I calculated that “$126 million” of gold today, in their “sunken box car full” conclusion, calculates out to about 6,250 lbs -or over three tons. I just wonder how many wagons Jeff Davis was dragging along behind him (never mentioned in the accounts) just to flee with over three tons (or a box car full) of gold. And how long did it take, and how many of Minty’s (Pritchard’s) men were needed to unload and bury that much gold before they could set off for Macon with their prisoners that morning? Accounts only mention some gold coins found in the holsters of the escorts – and unlikely to account for three tons worth. Finally, why didn’t Davis himself ever complain of Pritchard’s appropriation of so much value???

Below are excerpts of some of my earlier email comments:

… I found two videos on USAToday site. Guess they have an ear for the sensational. That group surely did jump to some spectacular conclusions based on a collection of random and faulty “facts.” Indeed, RHG would have most certainly have made a leap for his pen, had he ever encountered such allegations and fabrication of history. Perhaps you should go ahead and advise Mr. Ashcroft that he is free to contact Minty’s biographer to “verify” some of them. He probably won’t though, and he will probably get a big raise for landing such a scoop.

I watched a second slightly different version of the video on the USAtoday site, and have to laugh at Mr. Dykstra saying “At this point, I have this man on the run” (referring to RHG and this scheme).

One more interesting question comes to mine. how do they know the gold is “in a box car” and why on earth would the box car have been on a ferry out in the middle of upper Lake Michigan (off Frankfurt)? That is not even on a route to any major destination across the lake, and nowhere near or towards anyplace that RHG had any interest in. And why would they push it off into the lake – just so the state of Michigan can “go and get your gold?”

… Decided to take a closer look at the video again this evening, pausing to look closer at the “research documents” shown therein and find it interesting that the image of Thomas-Ann Abbott shown in the groupings at video points 1:56 and later at 5:30, is a direct lift of the lower quarter of page 533 from my Minty book with my exact text caption. So the researchers must have come across a copy of the book somewhere and perhaps know of me.

… Thanks for the amusement for the day. It would be interesting if Mssrs. Brent Ashcroft, Kevin Dykstra and Frederick J. Monroe would pursue their research a bit further, and perhaps contact me to add some significant information. Thanks, Dani, for sending the articles and attachments [obituary, portrait, bio]. Let me add a few of my own comments and reactions:

1) Evidently [Minty brother-in-law] George A. Abbott made a deathbed confession [per his obituary] when he “died suddenly. “Mrs Abbott [being] in another room when she heard her husband fall, death having occurred instantly.” Interesting.

2) I believe that George probably held a grudge against Minty ever since [his sister] Grace was abandoned and they learned of the Laura situation in 1877. None of the Abbotts were too happy about the general or Laura thereafter.

3) The stories associated with Davis and the CSA gold never mentioned “bars” but rather coins. One account says Davis paid out some of the gold when he dismissed his confederate cavalry escorts a few days before his capture. Several other accounts mention that the renegade private James Lynch, who “possessed most of the coin” and took Mrs Davis’s valice and Pres. Davis’s horse (which he later shot when confronted by an officer) [see pgs 365, 370]. Several men mention Lynch as the thief of such things. One mentions Minty receiving a gold sovereign coin, from which a descendant says Grace had a necklace or pin made of it.

4) Court martial as a motive? Minty never really mentioned it much after acquittal – indeed he was later given brevet promotions to brigadier and major-general [not ending his military career], of which he seemed to care more about. To state “now we have motive” as the interview states, is pretty presumptive.

5) The Florida Atlantic & Gulf Railway (later Florida Central after 1868, then Jacksonville, Pensacola and Mobile in 1870s)? Minty was never employed by such a railroad, much less as “supervisor of freight.” In 1876 he was general superintendent of the SL&SE RR between Nashville and St. Louis. It is interesting, however, that during that time he was working with former General Wilson, under whose command Minty operated when Davis was captured. Also, Minty was never on a railroad that ran track through Georgia, Lincoln county or otherwise.

6) Ashtabula RR bridge disaster? That was in the far NE tip of Ohio in December 1876, the same time Minty was with the SL&SE in Nashville. He was not a construction superintendent with that Ohio RR (named Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway). Again, the researcher’s railroad data is quite faulty.

7) Confederate gold coin found in Traverse City? Well in late 1906, after Minty’s death, Grace was indeed in Traverse City, where several of her Abbott sisters were also staying. It may well be that Grace sold the gold coin necklace/pin due to poverty and needing the money. No descendant has mentioned seeing that item or knows of its disposition, so the story seems possible. In that period, Grace had very little means, and even all of her other children were still struggling financially.

8) If Minty had any access to the gold, it seems in light of his continuous financial difficulties, that he would have put some interest and effort into reclaiming it. The only really prosperous period in his life was the late 1860s in Jackson, where he was busy with several key railroad positions. There is no evidence that he ever had or knew anything about $2 million of gold in those days ($126 million today)! [the calculated 3.125 tons]

In light of what struck me as a flight of fancy when I first read the article–before consulting with Rand Bitter–and then in light of Rand’s comments, it seems clear to me that this claim is, at best, irresponsible and atrocious history and, at worst, libel. Whichever it is, anyone who runs across this nonsense should disregard it.

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