Ohio History Journal

FAILURE IN inner - direction by CARL M. BECKER In David Riesman's brilliant study of social character types, The Lonely Crowd, the "inner-directed" man appears as a typical--indeed the domi- nant--characterological product of nineteenth-century American civiliza- tion.1 His values implanted early in life by adult authority and then internalized by the self and supported by "edifying print," the inner- directed man was rigidly individuated and self-oriented, measuring all of life by a personalized yardstick. This self-fealty, though implanted by a dutiful family circle, obtained seminally from a society which was experi- encing rapid political and economic changes hardly susceptible to manage- ment by tradition-directed individuals and institutions. Confronted with NOTES ARE ON PAGES 127-129

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novel problems, nineteenth-century America required and rewarded com-

mensurately the individual who could exploit the opportunities around

him; and its great exploiter-hero was the inner-directed man.

Marking a special age for him in the century of opportunity were the

years reaching from the 1820's through the Civil War. The ferment of

Jacksonian democracy and the proliferation of public offices as the nation

moved west were enlarging the base of political preferment. Science and

technology, conjoined with the emerging corporate capitalism, were ex-

panding entrepreneurial vistas. And the Civil War was a dimension for

the achievement of political, economic, and martial status. But even in

an environment conducive to success in war or peace, enterprising men

inevitably and even repeatedly failed.2 While continuing failure must have

been painful for any man who moved in a society infused with a "room-

at-the-top" ethic, it probably was most devastating in its effects on the

inner-directed man. His standards might allow him, as Riesman puts it,

 

a certain freedom to fail in the eyes of . . . others without being

convinced by them of his own inadequacy. . . . But this holds only

up to a point. If repeated failures destroy his hope of future ac-

complishment, then it is likely that his internal strengths can no

longer hold the fort against the external evidence. Overwhelmed with

guilt, he will despise himself for his failures and inadequacies.3

 

A man whose life of chronic failure validates and gives substance to the

abstract sociological and psychological image of the inner-directed man

was John William Lowe. As a lawyer, a politician, and a soldier, he

unsuccessfully sought to gather position and prestige from the flux of

national life. Coming to him at every turn, his failures overwhelmed him

and eventually destroyed him.

It was the discipline of tragedy and poverty that early gave Lowe a

sense of the sternness of life. He was born in 1809 at New Brunswick,

New Jersey, to James Barenhuysen Lowe and Katherine Keenon Lowe,

both Presbyterians of Scotch descent.4 Once a man of some means, his

father had been reduced to near poverty by illness and financial reverses.

His mother died when young Lowe was four years old, leaving him and

a six-year-old sister to the father's care. Soon remarrying, the father

brought to his children a stepmother with two small girls of her own.

The family, numbering seven after the birth of a boy to the second Mrs.

Lowe, moved to Rahway, New Jersey, in 1817. There young Lowe, then

only nine or ten years old, went to work in a woolen factory to help his

father support the family. Despite his age, he assumed a protective role

on behalf of the children in the factory, on one occasion striking a fore-

man who had abused them. From Rahway the family went to New York

City in 1820. After the father died there in 1821, the entire responsibility

for the support of the family devolved on the son. He worked in the

printing office of a Bible publishing house, initially earning $2.50 a week,

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JOHN WILLIAM LOWE                                               77

 

which somehow was stretched to sustain the family and to return to it

the youngest child, who had been placed in an orphanage at his father's

death.

For more than ten years Lowe the boy maintained the family, his labors

relieved only by participation in the activities of a local thespian society

and a cadet company. Childhood for him was a traumatic experience that

permanently scarred the psyche. Writing to his son nearly forty years later,

he recounted that his youth was "destitution, poverty and labor.... With-

out friends--without education--without necessary food and clothing, for

years I struggled, not for myself but for my brothers and sisters, it weas

hard."⁵ Though praiseworthy, his support of the family was not primarily

motivated out of a sense of duty to others; it was, rather -- so a reading

of his reminiscent letters indicates -- an act of responsibility to himself,

an egocentrism characteristic of the inner-directed personality. And his

acceptance of paternally-inculcated standards, as implied in his ready

performance of the breadwinner's role, was a hallmark of the formation

of inner-direction.

His pecuniary obligations ending as the children married or became

self-supporting, Lowe left New York in 1833. For reasons unrevealed in

his personalia, he moved to the village of Batavia in Clermont County,

Ohio, near Cincinnati. There he set himself to the task of achievement.

He first worked as a printer but apparently with little success.⁶ Then he

sought employment as a "House, Sign & Ornamental Painter, Gilder, &

Glazier" in the nearby community of Georgetown, in Brown County, point-

ing out in his advertising notices that he had served as a regular appren-

tice in one of the "first shops in the city of New York."⁷ Next -- probably

sometime in late 1834 or early 1835 -- he began to study law in the office

of Thomas Hamer, who was then serving the first or second of his three

consecutive terms in the national house of representatives.⁸ He soon knew

many people in the area -- some well -- including young "Ulyss" Grant

of Georgetown, for whom Hamer would secure an appointment to West

Point in 1839. After admission to the bar in 1836, Lowe practiced law in

Batavia and the hamlet of Bethel. His practice did not flourish, but it did

associate him with the legal and political elite of the vicinity. He gained

some degree of social recognition in 1837 when he married Manorah Fish-

back, a daughter of Owen T. Fishback, one of the outstanding lawyers

and politicians in Clermont County in the 1820's, 1830's, and 1840's.9

Despite this affinity and occupational tie, it appears that Lowe practiced

his profession alone -- and still unprofitably. The union gave him little

political advantage in Batavia, where his bids for several town posts in

the 1840's were rejected by the voters. It did bounteously present the duties

of parenthood to him, as three children -- two boys and a girl -- soon

adorned the household.

The futility that Lowe's life was in Batavia, hardly suggested by the

bare-boned description above, impelled him to take part in the Mexican

War, itself a chapter of failure in his life. He was first drawn to the

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78                                                OHIO HISTORY

 

Mexican conflict, coincidentally, by Grant, a man whose own lot would

long be failure. Lowe had kept in touch with him in the years after his

departure for West Point, and young Grant apparently felt his friend-

ship with Lowe was worth keeping. Anticipating on one occasion his

failure to write to Lowe, the busy cadet asked his father, Jesse Grant, to

assure Lowe of his good intentions: "If you see Mr. Lowe, tell him if I

neglect to write to him, I will not forget to call & see him on July

next."¹⁰ Shortly after the Mexican War began, Lieutenant Grant wrote to

Lowe from Matamoras, vividly describing the Mexican country and the

battles there.11 Evidently believing that Lowe could be of value to the

army, Grant suggested that he seek command of a volunteer company for

service in Mexico. Grant's words were laconic but held promise for Lowe:

"I should like very much to see you here in command of a volunteer com-

pany."¹² As Lowe's letters from Mexico indicate, the appeal came to him

at a critical juncture in his life. Heavily in debt, he saw in the income

assured by military service a way to satisfy his creditors; at the same

time he envisioned the achievement of personal glory.13 He wavered a

while, though, as he considered the logic of volunteering while standing

as a Whig opponent of the Polk administration. The onset of some disease

-- probably an enteric disorder -- caused, Lowe felt, by the Batavia

environment but perhaps psychosomatic in its origins settled the question

in favor of a siren call offering martial fame and economic salvation. He

joined the Second Ohio Infantry Regiment with a captain's commission

and in September 1847 left for the sunny climes of Mexico. Such an act

of folly -- as it appeared to Lowe later -- was not incompatible with the

nature of an inner-directed man. To retain a sense of autonomy -- a

freedom of behavior -- in the face of unrealized goals, he needed a frontier

for escape -- in Lowe's case a war.

Much to Lowe's disappointment his Mexican service was quite undis-

tinguished. He found that the Mexican War, like most wars, took many

more hours of routine duty from its soldiery than it gave them in moments

of exulting combat. On the long river and gulf voyage to Mexico he spent

hour upon hour attending enlisted men ill with dysentery and malaria,

though sick himself. As he put it, "the blue above and the blue below, and

the sicker I get the further we go."¹⁴ Seldom did Captain Lowe face the

enemy, and then only from afar as guerrillas harassed his troop train on

its way to Puebla from Vera Cruz. He faced instead, during his frequent

court-martial duty, American officers and men who had run afoul of mili-

tary regulations.

If his Mexican tour gave Lowe no opportunity for the attainment of

martial glory, at least it was an interlude for retrospection and intro-

spection. To his letters home he brought the fears, recriminations, and

frustration that he had been accumulating for years. His decision to go to

war was itself, as suggested earlier, a subject for regret from almost the

day of departure from Ohio. He was disappointed by the drab routine of

army life; he was dismayed by his recurrent illnesses; and he was ap-

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JOHN WILLIAM LOWE                                               79

 

palled by the brutal treatment he saw accorded American soldiers by their

officers.15 So burdensome was his duty that he thought of the possibility

of resigning his commission on the grounds of his chronic dysentery. But

he could not resign, so he wrote his wife, for several reasons. It was neces-

sary to avoid the "pecuniary embarrassment" that would be occasioned

by a premature return to his practice; only when he had saved enough

money from his army pay to satisfy his creditors and support his family

for a while could he risk reopening his office.16 What gave him greater

concern was the harsh reception he could expect in Batavia if he retreated

home before a successful conclusion of the war had been obtained. Such

an inglorious deed would tarnish his good name there. And that name was

"more dear to [him] than life"; he would rather die than dishonor it.17

His enemies and "pretended" friends who had treated him so shabbily in

Batavia would particularly subject him to unbearable attacks. Unidenti-

fied by name or offense, these men were remorseless creatures who villified

him from afar. "As to [the] Hyena and Jackall of which you spoke," he

confided to his wife, "I have long been aware of their existence as I have

heard their snarls and barking even away here across the water of the Gulf

but I despise them and defy their efforts."¹⁸ His fellow Whigs, he was cer-

tain, had ostracized him for joining in the war effort; and the Democrats

cursed him for depriving them of the charge that the Whigs opposed the

war. Indeed, he believed that every man's hand was set against him. It was

a pleasurable, if unrealistic, posture for the inner-directed man to find,

as did Lowe, hosts of enemies arrayed around him. The men menacing

Lowe were not mere personal adversaries, though; in them he discerned

a dark star hovering over his life.

Though pride ruled out return to Batavia, it also made Lowe's continu-

ance in Mexico all the more painful. To stay there was increasingly to

lose control over the direction of his children, particularly his older son,

Tom; and to implant standards of behavior in sons was necessary to the

psychic health of the inner-directed personality. Lowe persistently re-

proached himself for his flight from family obligations.19 Admitting to

his diary dereliction of duty to his wife and children, he lamented, for in-

stance, that "their father has acted unwisely and now must suffer the

consequences. Accursed be the hour he left home." He just as persistently

justified to his wife his act of taking up arms. In despair over the pain

he had inflicted on the family, he recalled for her the events leading to

his unfortunate decision:

 

You know how I felt then--that I was smarting under my defeat for

the clerkship; was suffering from dyspepsia and that other disease

which prostrated my proud spirit to the dust, and then the prospect

before me of business was very dark and very dreary: when trouble

came upon me in health, I could bear it, but when sickness and all

together it was more than I could bear.20

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80                                                OHIO HISTORY

 

Fearing in another moment of despair that his wife was in a position

of humiliation because of the loneliness he had caused her, he gently re-

minded her of her acquiescense in his departure: "Do not let a reproachful

thought arise -- what I did, we both thought for the best."²¹ Besides, as

his intermediary instrument for direction of his children, his wife could

not permit personal sorrow to interfere with the discharge of duties

momentous: she must "tell Tom to be a good boy"; she should urge the

boys to "improve" all they can; she must "take care of my jewels."²² To

be "good" or "great" was standard counsel set before children by inner-

directed parents.

Also a thread in the fabric of inner-direction was Lowe's attitude that

sex was right only in its "proper place" and that one ought to adhere to

correct norms of conduct in any setting. Though ostensibly intended to

set his wife's mind at ease, his repeated assurances of fidelity were a kind

of ego-building exercise. Other men might stray, but not Lowe. The Mexi-

can girls were pretty, and some officers might take them to wife or worse;

but they did not offer him the slightest temptation.23 He had not even

committed "adultery of mind" by looking on any woman with a wrong

desire; in fact, the thought of his wife did not permit him to look at a

Mexican woman.24 (When he described the women as "ugly" and "lice-

infested," his protestations of fidelity must have seemed less meaningful.)

Similarly, he shrank from the scenes of riotous drinking and gambling

that enlivened -- and degraded -- camp life. His whole way, he assured

his wife, was one of righteousness. At least compared with the conduct of

his fellow-officers, it was exemplary. Even his friend Grant, whom he had

met during a visit to Mexico City, was not above reproach. "I saw Lieut

Grant," he reported to his wife. "He has altered very much: he is a short

thick man with a beard reaching half way down his waist and I fear he

drinks too much but don't you say a word on that subject."²⁵ Lest his

wife believe him to be "too good," Lowe facetiously admitted to some

slight indiscretions: "I will make you my confessor and say to you that

I drink beer, one or two glasses everyday."²⁶ He explained seriocomically

that he drank the beer for medicinal purposes. He also admitted to playing

some cards and chess; Mrs. Lowe would simply have to forgive him for

being "human."

Seriously Calvinistic on another occasion as he weighed the burdens

of his Mexican service, Lowe sought like a Job to allay all his wife's

anxieties and his own, too, by a submission to the will of God. "God," he

asserted, "has led us in a way we know not of, and to His guidance we

must submit."²⁷ He could not divine that way, yet he felt that it was one

of safety through all of life's perils; did not Scripture say that His eye

was on the sparrow? In any case, Lowe and his wife must act to meet

the approbation of God.

With the final success of American arms, Lowe returned to Batavia. He

could not boast of deeds of glory, but he had endured. He reopened his

law office and dabbled in town politics, becoming mayor in 1853. Still his

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JOHN WILLIAM LOWE                                               81

 

practice did not flourish. Nonetheless, he did find the wherewithal to send

his older son, Tom, to Farmers' College near Cincinnati in 1851. The boy,

evidently straining to satisfy a demanding father, sent a steady stream of

reports home detailing his accomplishments large and small. By 1854

Lowe's financial position had become so acute that he had to withdraw the

boy from the college. Resolving to lift himself from his Micawber-like

existence, he shook the dust of the inhospitable Batavia off his feet and

took his way to the growing city of Dayton, Ohio, where he hoped a larger

clientele might be found. The Dayton Daily Journal reported that he came

to the city with a reputation for talent and industry, and experience in

"other affairs," noting, too, his service "in the tented field."28

His roseate hopes were soon put aside as he sat in his office awaiting cli-

ents who did not come. Tom, who had joined him after leaving Farmers',

was discouraged by his father's lack of progress. He urged his mother, who

had remained in Batavia, not to come to Dayton, explaining that he could

not stand the shame of her staying with him and his father in the "little

shanty" they shared.29 She did not come, and then without even saying fare-

well to his father, the son suddenly left Dayton to accept a position as a

clerk with the W. B. Shepherd banking firm in Nashville, Tennessee; later

he moved to the Bank of Middle Tennessee in Lebanon.30 His decision was

prompted, in part at least, by a deteriorating courtship of a young lady

in Dayton. Shortly after his son's flight, Lowe moved his office again,

this time to Xenia, Ohio, in Greene County.

The son's sojourn in Tennessee brought the father to an agonizing

emotional crisis. As the boy wrote of his new life there -- one of variety

and financial attainment -- Lowe focused his view, by contrast, on his

own shortcomings and on what his life might have been. That he was an

economic failure Lowe certainly did not doubt. His son's apparent mone-

tary well-being made it even more distressing at times. At the Nashville

firm, the boy -- then but seventeen years old -- received an annual salary

of $800, at the Bank of Middle Tennessee $1,000.31 Enviously, the father

acknowledged to his son that he had never earned as much as a $1,000 in

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAany year and that his practice currently would realize at best a third of

his son's salary.32 Moved to self-examination, he deprecated himself: "I

am inclined to charge myself with a want of well-directed effort and to

distrust my own judgment in my affairs."³³ His "effort" in Xenia was

only too soon confirming the correctness of his self-evaluation. His busi-

ness was slow, barely keeping the family at a subsistence level. So press-

ing did his position become that, despite his belief in self-reliance, he

accepted the financial aid offered by Tom.34 Wormwood and gall it was

to live by a son's labor, even though he was certain that he would need

Tom's help but temporarily. Only to his son, he admitted, could he even

begin to reveal the "mortification" he felt at his poverty and obligation

to others. The pride that would be shattered by the admission of insuffi-CETIECES

ciency alone prevented his leaving Xenia for a new beginning in Indian-

apolis, where his wife's lawyer-brother, John Fishback, might lend some

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82                                                OHIO HISTORY

 

beneficial influence to Lowe's practice.:35 Moreover, "something" in Xenia

would surely "turn up to [his] advantage."36

Surveying the evident progress of his son as his residence in Tennessee

continued, Lowe was torn between pride and envy. His own great efforts,

resulting in "Nothing, absolutely nothing," were hampered by burdens

his son had not known. Besides, his son had received education and other

"advantages" denied to the father. But his labors had been rewarded. His

children were happy and contented. And particularly in Tom his life

had new meaning: "In you, I commence a new life -- you have received

all that was denied me and you are what I might have been had your early

advantages been mine."³⁷ Seeing Tom's friends in Batavia who had

achieved little made him even more aware of his son's "high destiny." He

feared, in fact, that his pride in Tom appeared almost unbecoming as he

answered inquiries in Batavia about him: "I am almost afraid that I am

becoming like Jesse Grant of Bethel who is always talking about his

son 'Ullysses' [sic] with this difference -- I have something to be proud

of."³⁸ The inner-directed man as a father inevitably viewed a son's ac-

complishments as a criterion of his own worth. Pride in a son was pride

in the self. For the moment Lowe thought himself a success.

His pride thus dictated continued direction of the son. But his mone-

tary dependence on him, humiliating as it was, could well have deterred

him from lecturing the son on how to get along in life. It was, of course,

a difficult and incongruous role for Lowe to fulfill. He clearly wished to

treat his son as an adolescent in need of guidance; yet the boy, miles

away, was daily functioning as a man who had achieved more materially

than his father had. In a typically inner-directed ritual, he strove to im-

plant or fix adult values in his son, refusing to be deflected by evidences

of filial resistance. The father, in fact, sensed his ineffectuality, his counsel

often taking on the tone of a soliloquy. What was more difficult, he in-

creasingly recognized that the values he sought to deliver to his son had

served him to little effect; and he found himself doubting their validity

without yet abandoning them. He felt, for example, a kind of ambivalency

as he warned the son of the dangers of forming a close relationship with

southern boys -- or with any person. He cited his own experiences to

support his case. Seeking the good opinion of others, he had in earlier

years, he recalled, confided in other men only to have his trust in them

shattered by their double-dealing.39 "I have more caution than you," he

wrote in another instance, "and am now disposed to be more suspicious

of my fellow man [;] you are young and sanguine [;] I am old and cau-

tious."⁴⁰ He thus had learned to be sought after rather than to seek, and

he knew few men for whom he cared a "pin."⁴¹ Self-containment and

self-dependence should be his son's badge. To insulate himself against

life's buffets his son should rely on his own integrity and perseverance:

"The great point then is, Tom, to be true unto yourself."42 Independence

of men, secured by confidence in one's own powers, did not, however,

justify independence of God or defiance of fate. "Defy not your Fate,"

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JOHN WILLIAM LOWE                                             83

 

he advised the son, "but rather await your destiny with calmness and

resignation." Lowe could acknowledge, too, that his aloofness from men

had hindered his advancement, reflecting that "had my disposition been

more pliant I might have had something more than beggary in the eve-

ning of my existence." It might be better for his son to be deceived than

to go through life, "as I have doubting and distrusting everyone." Keep-

ing his father's experience in mind, the son should make friends of all

men and avoid wounding any man's "self-esteem."43

In his instructions to the son on social and political behavior, Lowe

further revealed a willingness to come to terms with the world around

him. Alarmed by the boy's accounts of his relations with southern "co-

quettes" and hard-drinking southern lads, he called on him to keep his

honor above reproach: "Let no spot or blemish tarnish its lustre -- let

not even the breath of suspicion rest upon it for a moment."⁴⁴ The son

had to control his passion and remove from his mind any anxiety about

"affairs de la cour."⁴⁵ Yet his words tacitly permitted the sowing of some

wild oats. Warning him that he could hardly reach lofty goals once he

took a wife, the elder Lowe confessed that he would rather see him

"make a fool of [himself generally" with women than "specially" with

them.⁴⁶ The boy's active support of the American party in the 1856 presi-

dential campaign was a source of paternal consternation. Association with

that party by the son signified his acceptance of southern racial views

which were objectionable to the father. Worse yet, it showed his son to be

incredibly naive. Fillmore, the party's candidate, had only the slightest

chance of winning the presidency, insisted Lowe; and even if he should

win, he could not resolve the growing sectional dispute. Lowe's son, said

the father, ought to be a man of political principles which would serve

some practical purpose.47

During his son's stay in Tennessee and after his return to Dayton in

1857, Lowe remained in Xenia. His practice, as noted above, hardly sup-

ported his family; but he could not reconcile himself to his wife's sug-

gestion that he move to the greener field she knew Indianapolis to be;

it would be an intolerable admission of another failure, not escape to a

frontier. He was, moreover, gaining some stature in the community.

Some young men there had formed a military company called "The Lowe

Guard" in his honor. An active member of the Republican party, he was

pleased to hear that his name was being mentioned for candidacy for

several county offices and even for the state office of attorney general.48

But this political potentiality was not substance. It was hardly enough

to erase the years of struggle and frustration, and Lowe must have been

resigned to live out his life in obscurity.

But with the beginning of the Civil War he found an arena for seizing

the glory that had escaped him in Mexico. A few days after Fort Sumter

received shot and shell, he began enrolling volunteers at Xenia.49 In short

order he enlisted two hundred enthusiastic recruits who were ready

to move to Dixie. First, however, they went to Camp Jackson in Columbus

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84                                               OHIO HISTORY

 

as Company A and there were mustered into service for ninety days as

Company D of the Twelfth Regiment, Ohio Volunteer Militia, with Lowe

elected as colonel of the regiment. The regiment then went to Camp Den-

nison for training and there was mustered into federal service for three

years. Lowe's days at Dennison were not propitious for his future. He

became involved in some sort of camp quarrel, which Tom feared might

portend a "scurvey trick" that fortune had in store for his father.50 Very

likely the quarrel stemmed from the reelection of officers by soldier-

constituents, whose reenlistment for the three years' service entailed

a regimental reorganization. Though originally elected colonel of the regi-

ment, Lowe found his rank and command threatened by Lieutenant

Colonel Jacob Ammen of the Twelfth, a West Point man who had sup-

porters among several companies determined to advance his candidacy,

even though it had a divisive effect on the regiment.51 The question even-

tually came to the attention of Governor William Dennison. Believing

that Ammen's transfer might restore harmony in the Twelfth, he appointed

Ammen colonel of the Twenty-fourth Ohio Regiment, thus clearing the

way for Lowe to retain his eagle's insignia.52 Ambitious and not content

with a colonelcy, Lowe tried to secure brigadier general rank while at

Dennison, but the bid failed because, so his son believed, Lincoln would

not appoint generals from adjoining counties, Robert C. Schenck of Mont-

gomery County and a strong supporter of Lincoln in the presidential

election of 1860 having recently received a brigadier general's commis-

sion.⁵³

By July of 1861 the Twelfth was in western Virginia near Scarey Creek

with Brigadier General Jacob D. Cox's Kanawha Brigade of the depart-

ment of the Ohio, then under command of Major General George B.

McClellan. With a great military event impending two hundred miles to

the east at a stream known as Bull Run, what happened at the rivulet of

Scarey would be unknown or seem unimportant to much of the nation.

But to the men there, Scarey assumed paramount importance. To Lowe,

a clash with Confederate forces could offer him a chance to achieve some

measure of martial renown and preferment. Yet, ironically, only a few

days after the skirmish at Scarey with Confederate elements on July

17, John Lowe faced public imputations against his personal and pro-

fessional conduct.

Unknown accusers, finding compliant news organs throughout Ohio--

the Cincinnati Commercial, the Perrysburg Journal, and Cleveland news-

papers, among others -- willing to air the charges, alleged that Lowe

had committed an execrable act of cowardice at Scarey. According to the

Commercial, which asserted that its account came from the lips of soldiers

recently returned from Scarey, Colonel Lowe had concealed himself behind

a house during the heat of battle and had refused to withdraw from this

shelter despite the expostulations of other officers. "He should be tried,"

wrathily declared the Commercial, "and if found guilty, shot."⁵⁴ Using

the testimony of supposedly reliable but unidentified eyewitnesses, the

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JOHN WILLIAM LOWE                                               85

 

Perrysburg Journal, a partisan of the locally-recruited Twenty-first Ohio

Regiment and its commander, Colonel Jesse Norton, charged that although

Lowe had received a request from Norton to come to the aid of his em-

battled regiment, he had refused to move his troops into supporting

action.⁵⁵ The Journal implied that Lowe's conduct had resulted in the

capture of Norton, who was wounded in the fight.

Within a few days after Scarey, the impugnment of Lowe's honor had

spread the breadth of Ohio's teeming cities and villages -- from Cleveland

to Cincinnati, from Perrysburg to Batavia. Against the power of the press,

the anguished father, still near Scarey, entreated his son for help.56 Tom

had anticipated his father's plea, having already called on M. D. Potter,

publisher of the Commercial, to publish a retraction of the charges. Potter

declined, maintaining that Colonel Norton had recently substantiated them

while in Cincinnati.57 Armed with more than a mere demand, Tom then

submitted to the Commercial exonerative accounts of officers and soldiers

who had fought at Scarey. The Commercial published the accounts but

failed to issue a retraction.58 Pressing his case, Tom sent to the Commercial

statements of the eminent geologist Colonel Charles Whittlesey of the

engineer's corps and Captain Ira Gibbs of Cox's staff, both of whom had

witnessed the action at Scarey. Lowe acted honorably there, declared

Whittlesey; Gibbs concurred and added that wherever he saw Lowe

longest, there was the point of the hottest fire.59 The Commercial, though

noting in its columns awareness of the statements and their substance,

did not publish them; and again no recantation was forthcoming.60 By

this time, the Cincinnati Gazette, a rival of the Commercial, had taken

up Colonel Lowe's cause and also was demanding a retraction, but to no

avail. The Commercial was equally indifferent to the defense of Lowe by

the Cincinnati Daily Press, which accused the Commercial of conducting

an ex parte hearing.61

Lowe himself became despondently resigned to the impossibility of re-

storing his name to its former reputation, instructing his son not to seek

publication of any more statements on his behalf: "I cannot bear to be

a 'certified' man. The charge has been made, and it cannot be lived down."62

He thought of retiring to private life, but his sense of duty required him

to remain in the field and accept the destiny God had appointed for him:

"I am in the hands of my God. Let Him do with me as seemeth Him good."

The Lowe understanding perceived a divine plan calling for his death

on the field of battle. Still, God might apportion him a few bittersweet

days. "I find myself hoping," he told his wife, "that I will be at home in

a short time a maimed soldier for you to nurse a little time and then lay

down to my long rest. Wait a little while dearest and see what it will be--

a week, a day may place the matter at rest and fix my destiny and yours.

We must remember that God rules over all things and will dispose of us

as He thinks best."63

Lowe's superiors saw no substance in the allegations of cowardice.

Though reprehending some of his general officers and in particular three

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86                                                OHIO HISTORY

 

colonels who had amused themselves by undertaking a reconnaissance

beyond enemy positions, McClellan did not censure Lowe in any way in

his report on Scarey.64 General Cox believed the declarations of Whittlesey

and Gibbs to be sufficient defense of Lowe and urged no further publicity

on his behalf because it would "imply consciousness of the truth of the

charge."⁶⁵ In his later years Cox criticized the regiment for withdrawing

from its advanced position as its ammunition supply ran low, saying that

it might have held on and asked for help. He noted, though, that as was

common with new troops, the men of Lowe's regiment had passed rapidly

from confidence to discouragement as soon as checked by the enemy.66

If he believed, as he may well have, that Lowe had failed to exercise effec-

tive command, he declined to single him out for his inadequacy. Cox's step-

son and sometime amanuensis, William C. Cochran, was more specific and

critical. Lowe had abandoned a position, Cochran wrote, when he should

have asked for reenforcements and ammunition and held fast, "as he

could readily have done."67

Even more condemnatory than Cox was an "Old Soldier," who recalled

for the Toledo Commercial Telegram in 1885 his service under Colonel

Norton at Scarey. The anonymous warrior remembered Colonel Lowe,

too. In his memory Lowe was a high-minded, patriotic man who was

"wholly unequal" to the task of skillfully leading a regiment in battle.68

At Scarey, as he further reminisced, Lowe had been timid and hesitant

when a bold and prompt attack at the first sighting of the Confederate

forces would have gained a notable victory. According to the chronicler,

Lowe afterwards realized that he had permitted an opportunity for

achievement to slip through his fingers; then, stung by the criticism of

soldiers and the press, Lowe seemed to blame Cox for not sending reserves

to him when he could have. But Lowe vowed that the next time he met

the enemy he would give a good account of himself and the Twelfth --

or die. The "Old Soldier's" narration provoked a response from a "Private

Soldier," memorializing Lowe as a resolute man who had wisely withdrawn

his regiment from the field in the face of a superior force.69 No less con-

tradictory in testimony than the two warriors was one man, the noted

journalist Whitelaw Reid, who had known Lowe in Xenia before the

war; in his writings Lowe's performance was routine, wise, and irrespon-

sible. As "Agate," the war correspondent of the Cincinnati Gazette,

Reid suggested no failure of field command at Scarey, reporting simply

that the troops had fired until their ammunition gave out.70 In his vade

mecum of Ohio's military efforts, Ohio in the War, Reid acknowledged

that Lowe had been "first censured for the withdrawal, in some quarters;

but on fuller knowledge of the facts his course was justified."⁷¹ But in

the same work Reid arraigned Lowe for having failed to give support

to Norton as requested.72 If some judgment of Lowe at Scarey may be

inferred from these conflicting accounts, one may suggest that Lowe

was cautious and prudent to the point of indecisiveness -- but not to the

point of cowardice. Within the context of inner-direction, perhaps his

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JOHN WILLIAM     LOWE                                           87

 

was a failure to act in accordance with the demands of the self, a failure

guaranteed by the insufficiency of past action actuated by the needs of

the self.

The post-Civil War discussion of Lowe's role at Scarey was meaningless

to Lowe. His need for defense, whether for honor or preferment, suddenly

had ended on September 10, 1861, at Carnifex Ferry. There, leading an

attack, he fell with a ball in his forehead, the first field officer of Ohio killed

in the Civil War. Now a melancholy poem he had written some months

earlier bore a tragic meaning for his family:

 

My day of life is over,

And here I lay me down

In the hot, red field of battle,

In the arms of high renown.

 

 

By the shaft of death I'm stricken

In my upward flight to fame,

And I give my life to nothingness

To win a warrior's name.

 

For the rest of his life Tom Lowe believed that his father had boldly

and unnecessarily exposed himself to danger in order to refute the

allegations of cowardice. The official report of the action lends some

credence to the son's belief. According to his commander, Brigadier

General Henry Benham, Colonel Lowe made his death attack in an ex-

posed situation without orders.73 Reid saw in Lowe's death circumstances

glorious and almost fitting: "He died a soldier's death, bravely, gloriously

leading his men forward; and he would himself have desired no other

end for a life that of late had been too much embittered by the carpings

of the ignorant and the sneers of the malevolent."⁷⁴ Even the Commercial,

now properly contrite, paid tribute to Lowe. Lowe's bravery in combat

could not be doubted, even at Scarey; officers passing through Cincinnati,

the Commercial lamely explained, had seemed to corroborate the reports

of cowardice which initially had grown out of "certain differences of

opinion, of little importance" between Lowe's and Norton's regiments.75

So died a man whose life was a chronic failure. Not surprisingly, even

his death, which gave him but a brief moment of posthumous glory,

failed Lowe in a sardonic sense. It served as a justification -- or ration-

alization -- for Tom to declare openly his opposition to northern use

of force to keep the South in the Union. Though clearly moving to such

a position even before his father's sacrifice, the son evidently had con-

cealed his peace views from the father, to whom they would have been

anathema. In life Lowe might have exercised a restraining hand; in

death he certainly could not. But perhaps the death which merely helped

set the son on a course he had already been contemplating spared the

father from an agonizing realization that his last source of inner strength

-- pride in an honest and dutiful son -- was after all only an illusion.

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JOHN WILLIAM       LOWE                                                89

 

Whatever might have been had his death been stayed, John William

Lowe was in life a failure by his own standards. As soldier and civilian

he would have inscribed on his shield, Fama semper vivat; but he lacked

the capacity or the good fortune to fulfill the vows to the self which he

took. Accordingly, his life was beset with pain and frustration. His inner-

direction was ineluctably his "tragic flaw."

 

 

THE AUTHOR: Carl M. Becker is an

assistant professor of history at Sinclair

College, Dayton. He has written several

articles on Thomas Lowe, including "Pic-

ture of a Young Copperhead," which ap-

peared in the January 1962 issue of Ohio

History.

• 15