Theodore Roosevelt Sr. and the Civil War
The Civil War placed a strain on the family, especially considering Mittie’s mother Martha and her older sister Anna were living with them at 20th street. Unlike the Roosevelts they were all dedicated southern sympathies. Sunday evening dinners at Theodore’s parents’ home were difficult. The Roosevelt’s had been Democrats, but became Republicans supporting Lincoln, the war and emancipation.
Mittie had three brothers serving for the Confederacy: James, Irvine and Daniel. While it’s often repeated Mittie didn’t want her husband on the battlefield aiming at her brothers, that would be an impossibility. James was a purchasing agent in England and Irvine was an officer in the CSA Navy serving onboard the Alabama. In 1861 Daniel had enlisted in the Georgia Volunteers but was found unfit for duty suffering from hemorrhaging due to pulmonary disease. He died on August 2nd, 1862.
At the beginning of the war Theodore was in Washington and got to know the Lincolns. He shopped with Mary Todd and became lifelong friends with John Hay. He attended the Grand Presidential Party and was in Washington 15 days later when Willie Lincoln succumbed to typhoid fever on February 20th, 1862. Rather than raise a regiment in defense of the Republic he became an Allotment Commissioner traveling camp to camp urging soldiers to send home a portion of their $13 monthly pay often spent gambling, or buying bottles of whiskey labeled “Oh Be Joyful.” To sidestep the 1863 draft Theodore became a $300 man buying the services of Abram Graf to take up arms in his place. He paid a broker $1,000 to seal the deal. Graf received $30.
Abram Graf was a German emigrant who originally joined Carl Shurz Division of the 11th Corps under Oliver Otis Howard. After the war Shurz would go on to become a Senator from Missouri and O. O. Howard would become Commissioner of the Freedman’s Bureau and founder of Howard University. At Chancellorsville they showed the white feather caving to Jackson’s flank attack earning them the nickname the “Flying Dutchman.” Graf was taken prisoner. He was exchanged and joined the 7th Veteran Infantry Regiment in time for Grant’s 1864 Overland Campaign. In 1865 he died of scurvy in a hospital at City Point on March 31st nine days before Lee surrendered to Grant. There was never any correspondence between Theodore Sr. and Abram Graf.
During his March to the Sea Sherman turned Bulloch Hall into a Union Hospital. Mittie’s bedroom became a surgeon’s ward for union soldiers recovering from battlefield wounds. Bulloch Hall survived Sherman’s campaign. After the surrender the brothers remained in England. At the base of James tombstone it reads, American by Birth, British by Choice. In 1869 touring Europe with his family TR met James and Irvine who influenced him to write the Naval War of 1812. In 1856 Irvine moved to NY and lived with the Roosevelts until the outbreak of the war. It was said he fired the last shot on the Alabama as it was sunk by the Kersarge off Cherbourg, France on June 12, 1864. Manet stood on the shore painting the battle. Denied amnesty, the brothers briefly visited Mittie under assumed names.
