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WARTIME STONEWALL JACKSON MEDAL IN BRONZE

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These wartime medals were made in France and brought in through the blockade. According to the best modern study, by Pete Bertram in Confederate Numismatica, they show up in white metal, bronze, silver and a gold wash. This is bronze, in very good condition, with crisp lettering and decoration, showing just some rubs to the finish on the highpoints and center of plaque with battle honors on the reverse. The engravers name is clear on the obverse. On the obverse at bottom left the manufacturer’s name MASSONET shows some losses to the raised letters.

Much about these medals is still uncertain or misrepresented, such as that they were somehow “authorized” by the Confederate government or intended for distribution to veterans of the Stonewall brigade or officers of Jackson’s corps, or that they were conceived of by Confederate expatriates in Paris on news of Jackson’s death. But, an 1878 letter from R.A. Brock, Corresponding Secretary of the Virginia Historical Society indicates that at least initially they were part of an 1863 fundraising effort for a statue of Jackson with the medals themselves financed by subscription for the purchase of cotton that was then sold in Britain with the money raised in turn used to finance the making of the medals in France. They occasionally appear in tin circular frames, glassed front and back, or in plush lined, spring-fastened leatherette cases, but many appear never to have been cased.

The medals feature a portrait bust of Jackson in profile on the obverse—though not exactly the most accurate portrait- and a list of 22 of his battles on the reverse, 13 in the center and 9 on a ribbon entwining a wreath of corn and tobacco leaves (said by some to be laurel leaves,) with a star at top, stand of arms at bottom, and shield with “DEO VINDICE” (“with God as our vindicator”) at bottom. Just as the portrait involves a mistaken portrayal of Jackson, and his birth date is wrong, some of the battle honors incorporate errors of spelling or terminology, the most notable being the use of “The Wilderness,” a correct period label for the region where the Battle of Chancellorsville was fought, but liable to misinterpretation as referring to the 1864 fighting, or the use of “Antietam” instead of the preferred southern name of Sharpsburg.

At bottom center of the obverse in raised letters is “CACQUE F.” which we take to mean “CAQUE FECIT,” referring to French medalist Armand Auguste Caque (1793-1881,) a prominent French medal designer and engraver, who was Assistant-engraver at the Mint of the Hague from 1817 top 1818, and from 1853-1868, under Napoleon III, was Engraver to the Imperial Cabinet. On the reverse, at bottom left is “Massonet” (with some of the middle letters missing) and at right “Editeur.” This, too, can designate a designer/engraver, but this was a family operation making, “prize medals, royal commemoratives, tokens, badges, etc., many engraved by other artists,” according to a helpful posting by R. Graves on the “Gentleman’s Military Interest Club” of the U.K. website, with the earliest such marking known dating to 1852.

The obverse lettering reads, , "LIEUT. GENERAL T. J. JACKSON, STONEWALL, BORN 1821, DIED 1863." The list of Jackson’s battle honors on the reverse at center is: "KERNSTOWN / FRONT ROYAL, MIDDLETOWN / WINCHESTER, STRASBURG / HARRISONBURG, PORT REPUBLIC / MECHANICSVILLE, COLD HARBOUR/ WHITE OAK SWAMP /  MALVERN HILL, CEDAR MOUNTAIN, MANASSAS. The battle honors on the scroll are: "BULL RUN” at top, followed by “SUDLEY / HARPERS FERRY/ SHEPARDSTOWN” down the left; “CHANTILLY /  MARTINSBURG / ANTIETAM”  down the right, with “FREDERICKSBURG” and  “THE WILDERNESS" on either side of the stand of arms and shield with motto.

These medals have a fascinating, if yet still untidy, association with the wealthy and well-connected Lamar family of Savannah, and are often said to be the brainchild of Charles Augustus Lafayette Lamar (1824-1865,) the morally repugnant, but more euphonious son of Gazaway Bugg Lamar (1798-1874,) who amassed a fortune in banking, cotton, insurance, warehousing, and shipping, but lost his wife and other children in the explosion and sinking of one of his steamships in 1838. In 1846, the elder Lamar set up additional operations in New York City, leaving his southern enterprises in the hands of his son, until returning to Georgia in 1861 to run an “Importing and Exporting Company,” i.e. blockade running, in cahoots with his son, sometimes also acting as agent for Georgia Governor Brown- see The English Connection, for some details. The younger Lamar was noted for his hot temper, love of horse racing, penchant for violence, fire-eating support of secession, and his vehement proslavery views that gave rise to efforts to re-establish the slave trade just before the war, a monomania his uncle thought would land him in jail or an insane-asylum. In any case, he made two unsuccessful efforts to import enslaved Africans, and the leader  in the notorious “Wanderer” affair, in which he and his partners refitted a luxury yacht as a slave ship, crammed 487 people aboard in the Congo and sold the 409 survivors on Jekyll Island off the coast of Georgia at the end of the voyage. Six trials brought no convictions due to his social standing, connections, intimidation and kidnapping of potential witnesses, merely paying a $500 fine and agreeing to temporary confinement to his office and home for breaking one of cohorts out of jail.

Lamar raised a company of volunteers in 1861, gained a commission in a Georgia regiment from which he resigned in April 1862 to join his father in the profitable business of blockade running. According to Bertram, he brought several of the Jackson medals back from an 1863  visit to Paris, and then arranged for the production and importation of more. Whether or not these were for his own profit or part of the fund-raising effort, and whether they can be distinguished from the initial run is unclear, though on the first point his business acumen is not as well documented as that of his father. In any case, Betram believes that up to 7,000 of the medals may have been struck and run through the blockade at the very end of the war in two different shipments, carrying them in barrels of 1,000 each, some cased and many in rolls. One of these barrels ended up in Richmond, where they were noted after the city’s fall being hawked by Yankee peddlers and sutlers. The other six apparently were diverted from Savannah to Wilmington, received by Antoine Poullain, a businessman of note in Augusta (or his son, of the same name,) never made it to Lamar and remained in Augusta until 1871 when Lamar’s son-law-law retrieved them and shipped them down to a Lamar warehouse in Savannah. Four were sold to an ex-Confederate soldier and entrepreneur named Pittman, but were not big sellers and subsequently vanished. The remaining two barrels were rediscovered in an office-turned-storage room in the Lamar warehouse in 1894 (something covered by newspapers at the time,) with some pilfered, others discarded as in poor condition, and the remainder donated by Mrs. G.W. Lamar to the Ladies Auxiliary of the UCV for sale to benefit Confederate veterans. Current estimates for surviving medals seem to float in the 300-500 range.

We note that the younger Lamar returned to the army after his blockade running ventures, gaining a spot of the staff of his cousin, Maj. Gen. Howell Cobb and was killed at Columbus, Georgia, on April 16, 1865- some say while leading a charge; others, shot by a jumpy guard when a gun went off near a group of Confederate prisoners who were being disarmed in the streets of the city. The elder Lamar, as typical, faired better, eventually receiving substantial compensation for cotton seized at the end of the war by Union forces on the ground that he had signed a loyalty oath.

Further information will undoubtedly come to light on these medals, which are a fascinating bit of Civil War history. This is a very good example.  [sr] [ph:L]

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