Portal:American Civil War

Eli Lilly (July 8, 1838 – June 6, 1898) was a soldier, pharmaceutical chemist, industrialist, and founder of the eponymous Eli Lilly and Company pharmaceutical corporation. Lilly enlisted in the Union Army during the American Civil War, he recruited a company of men to serve with him, and was later promoted to colonel and given command of a force of cavalry. He was captured near the end of the war and was held in a war prison until its conclusion. After the war, he attempted to run a plantation in Mississippi but failed and returned to his pharmacy profession after the death of his wife. After remarrying and working in several pharmacies with partners, he opened his own business in 1876 with plans to manufacture drugs and market them wholesale to pharmacies.

His company was successful and he soon became wealthy after making numerous advances in medicinal drug manufacturing. Two of the early advances he pioneered were creating gelatin capsules to hold medicine and fruit flavoring for liquid medicines. Eli Lilly & Co. was the first pharmaceutical company of its kind; it staffed a dedicated research department and put in place numerous quality assurance measures. Using his wealth, Lilly engaged in numerous philanthropic pursuits. He turned over his company’s management to his son in 1890 so he could continue his engagement in charity and civic advancement as his primary focus. He helped found the organization that became the Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce, was the primary patron of Indiana’s branch of the Charity Organization Society, and personally funded the creation of the city’s children’s hospital. He continued his active involvement with many organizations until his death from cancer.

Lilly was an advocate of federal regulation of the pharmaceutical industry and many of his suggested reforms were enacted into law in 1906, resulting in the creation of the Food and Drug Administration. He was also among the pioneers of the concept of prescriptions, and helped form what became the common practice of only giving addictive or dangerous medicines to people who had first seen a physician. The company he founded has since grown into one of the largest and most influential pharmaceutical corporations in the world, and the largest corporation in Indiana. Using the wealth generated by the company, his son and grandsons created the Lilly Endowment to continue Lilly’s legacy of philanthropy. The endowment remains one of the largest charitable benefactors in the world.

Mississippi was the second state to declare secession from the Union on January 9, 1861. It joined six other Cotton States to form the Confederate States of America in February. Mississippi’s location along the lengthy Mississippi River made it strategically important to both the North and South; dozens of battles were fought in the state as armies repeatedly clashed near key towns and cities.

Mississippi troops fought in every major theater of the war, although most were concentrated in the west. The only President of the Confederate States of America, Jefferson Davis, was a native Mississippian. Prominent Mississippi generals included William Barksdale, Carnot Posey, Wirt Adams, Earl Van Dorn, and Benjamin G. Humphreys.

For years prior to the Civil War, Mississippi had heavily voted Democratic, especially as the Whigs declined in their influence. During the 1860 presidential election, the state supported Southern Democrat candidate John C. Breckinridge, giving him 40,768 votes (59.0% of the total of 69,095 ballots cast). John Bell, the candidate of the Constitutional Union Party, came in a distant second with 25,045 votes (36.25% of the total), with Stephen A. Douglas of the Northern Democrats receiving 3,282 votes (4.75%). Not a single Mississippian voted for Abraham Lincoln, who won the national election.

Long a hotbed of secession and states’ rights, Mississippi left the Union on January 9, 1861, briefly forming the Republic of Mississippi before joining the Confederacy not a month later. Although there were small pockets of citizens who remained sympathetic to the Union, the vast majority of Mississippians embraced the Confederate cause, and thousands flocked to the military. Around 80,000 white men from Mississippi fought in the Confederate Army; some 500 white Mississippians fought for the Union. As the war progressed, a considerable number of freed or escaped slaves joined the United States Colored Troops and similar black regiments. More than 17,000 black Mississippi slaves and freedmen fought for the Union.

Katherine Jane (“Kate”) Chase (August 13, 1840 – July 31, 1899), was the daughter of famous Ohio politician Salmon P. Chase, the Treasury Secretary to President Abraham Lincoln and later Chief Justice of the United States. She is best known as a society hostess during the American Civil War, and a strong supporter of her widowed father’s presidential ambitions that would have made her First Lady.

In 1861 her father accepted the newly-elected President Lincoln’s offer to serve as his Treasury Secretary. He took up residence with 20-year-old Kate at 6th and E Street Northwest in Washington. At a White House levee shortly after the presidential inauguration, Kate, due to her beauty and charm, outshone Mary Todd Lincoln. From then on the First Lady was jealous and distrustful of her younger rival, all the more so because Chase openly thought himself more qualified than Lincoln for the Presidency. Chase had vied for the Republican presidential nomination in 1860 which Lincoln had won. Chase viewed himself, with some justification, as a more bona fide abolitionist.

Kate Chase set herself up as the hostess whose soirees were the most eagerly attended in the nation’s capital; she became, effectively, the “Belle of the North.” She visited battle camps in the Washington area and befriended Union generals, offering her own views on the proper prosecution of the war. She casually dated Lincoln’s personal secretary, John Hay (later Secretary of State under Theodore Roosevelt), who admired her for her beauty, wit and intelligence but accurately perceived her ambition.