User:MinorProphet/Charles Gano Baylor Article

Charles Gano Baylor also Charles Goethe Baylor (1824–7 June 1907) was a prominent white advocate of Free Trade for the cotton- and tobacco-growing Southern slave states of the USA before the American Civil War. He was US Consul to Amsterdam (1850-1853) and Manchester (1857-1858). During the American Civil War war he was appointed Trade Commissioner to Europe for Georgia but switched sides in 1864, undertaking an unsuccessful personal peace mission to the Lincoln government. After the war, as a scalawag Radical Republican he testified to the Reconstruction Committee which drafted the new constitution of Georgia and introduced the 14th Amendment.

He disappeared from the mainstream political world after the resurgence of the Democrats in 1878(?), later joining the Socialist Labor Party of America. Baylor stood for Governor of Rhode Island in 1894 aged nearly 70. Baylor was an outspoken critic of US involvement in Cuba during the Spanish–American War.

Early life
Charles Gano Baylor was born in Kentucky in 1824, possibly in Paris, Bourbon Co. His father was John Walker Baylor (1784- ??30 January 1836), who was for many years assistant surgeon in the 7th U.S. Infantry. Charles Baylor's mother was Sophie Marie Weidner (1784-1862), daughter of Heinrich Weidner of Hessen Cassel, Germany and of Sophie Marie Christine Chastelle, of Baltimore, MD. She came from an old Huguenot family.

His father was posted with the 7th U.S. Infantry to Fort Gibson, Oklahoma some time before March 1829. The whole family went by keelboat from Louisville, Kentucky down the Ohio river and the Mississippi to the mouth of the Arkansas river; and this boat was then hauled by soldiers up the river to Fort Gibson.

So I clicked Random Article and lo and behold! Captain Benjamin Bonneville, 7th US Infantry, French-born soldier, fur trapper and explorer, was stationed at Fort Gibson from 1824-25, 1826-28, and 1829-31, 1836‑37, 1837‑38. So Dr. Baylor would have known Bonneville at Fort Gibson. Bonneville then was posted as commandant at Fort Fillmore until 1861. Charley Baylor's older brother Confederate Colonel John Robert Baylor would capture Fort Fillmore and the entirety of the US 7th Infantry in July 1861 during the Civil War. The 7th was under the command of Major Isaac Lynde, who had also served at Fort Gibson at the same period, and thus would have known Col. John R. Baylor when he was much younger.

Baylor's father left the Army in 1833, and the family moved to Second Creek, near Natchez, Mississippi. He died in 1836 when Charles Baylor was about 10. It is possible that CGB attended the same school as his some of his brothers, Woodward College in Cincinnatti, Ohio.

Around 1839-40 CGB lived a boarding-house for army officers in Little Rock, Arkansas at the Old Ringold home with his mother Sophie Marie Baylor (nee Weidner) and his siblings, and his widower aunt Mary Jane West (nee Baylor) at the house of James L. Dawson and his wife (CGB's aunt) Sophie Elizabeth Dawson (nee Baylor), and her children, and servants and slaves. Baylor's youngest brother, George Wythe Baylor remembered Charles's exquisite flute playing in overtures etc. in an ensemble with other members of his family.

In October 1845 Baylor was briefly defense attorney in the preliminary stages of a murder trial near Fayetteville, Arkansas. After the defendants were indicted by a grand jury, he asked to be relieved and was replaced. Baylor's uncle, R.E.B. Baylor, was a judge and an adherent to the ?? ?? of Andrew Jackson. Another uncle, Jesse Bledsoe was a politician, and maybe there was some string-pulling that enabled CGB to get a job in the civil service.

In September 1849 he was working in Washington, DC as a clerk in the US Treasury Department, working under the Auditor of the Treasury of the Post Office. His salary was $1,000.

In 1850 a song of his was published in Baltimore, entitled Imogene. You can hear it when I have written it out.

US Consul
From 1850–1853 Baylor was U.S. Consul in Amsterdam. As was common in those days, less important positions didn't command an government salary, and asked for one.

For many years the US Gulf States had been suffering from lack of investment. Much of the trade from England and Europe arrived in New York, and tariffs imposed by the government were resented. From the 1850s (really?) the Southern states tried to set up their own trade routes independent of Washington interference, and there were moves towards tax-free imports and exports.

Stuff about Trade and tariff problems in the South. There wasn't even a decent big port. Many schemes to start up a fleet of transatlantic cargo steamers, sailing direct to the Southern states to. CGB went to Holland as a trade consul. He attempted to set up a partnership with merchants from the Netherlands Trading Society with cotton traders and planters from the US Gulf States. However, he was not very well received by the Dutch, who felt that he was more interested in his own affairs than the cotton planters and shippers who he was representing. A lack of official salary for bungs meant that he was seen as a "man of little substance", and he was unsuccessful in setting up any trade partnerships.

In 1851 (exact date please) while on a visit from the Netherlands, Baylor made a long speech at a Cotton Planters' Convention in Macon, Georgia, entitled "Free Trade". He also delivered the speech to the Georgia senate. It was published along with the Proceedings of the Cotton Planters' Convention in 1851, and also separately in 1852.

Newspaper activity
In 1852 CG Baylor founded, edited and published Cotton Plant, a weekly journal devoted to the interests of the cotton trade 1852-1855? (ceased publ. 1857) Later he joined with two business associates to form Baylor, Umbaugh and Freaner.

The Cotton Plant began publication April 24, 1852 [v.1, no. 1] and ceased in 1857. It was published weekly. It was also published as the American Cotton Plant and the Cotton Plant and Southern Advertiser. "American" appears within the title ornament, January 8-[June 27], 1857. It was published simultaneously in Washington DC and Baltimore [1853]-1857. Publishers: (Washington [D.C.]: C.G. Baylor, [1852]; Baylor, Umbaugh & Freaner, [1853]; Baylor & Co., [1853]; M. Herbert Umbaugh, [1855]-1857)

Vincent Henry Freaner (1829-1918) and M. Herbert Umbaugh (c1832-1862) were both born in Hagerstown, Maryland. Umbaugh studied law at Louisville University, KY, graduating in 1852. Baylor was born (possibly) in Paris, KY, just down the road from Louisville.



The publishing office of Cotton Plant were at 164 Baltimore, Baylor, Umbaugh and Freaner had an office in the Fountain Inn, Light St., Baltimore (torn down in 1871? to make way for the Carrollton Hotel), and later in Barnum's Hotel. In 1852 Baylor co-founded and published the Daily American Times 1853-4 in Baltimore. His business associates in the venture were Captain Roswell S. Ripley, an army artilleryman, and W. Brush, an accountant from NY who moved to Baltimore - when? to start the paper??? who was also a manager for the American Colonization Society which founded (Liberia) for freed slaves. Ripley may have gone to school with CGB's brothers, and they all served in ?Florida? during the Second Seminole War.

In March 1853 He married Louisa Denison Wadsworth (b. 1833-5 August 1910) of Washington. She was the daughter of Alexander Scammel Wadsworth (who had died in 1851) and Louisa Denison. Her cousin was Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, through her mother's brother.

He was in Europe in 1855

He was in Virginia in 1856. He was made US Consul to Manchester, England, 1857-9. His wife and children went with him, and a son was born there in 1858. Also letters from HW Longfellow to his half-sister Anne Pierce, re Louisa's sister possibly going to England with the Baylors. Anne Pierce mistrusted Baylor, and thought it was just an opportunity for CGB to get his grubby hands on her income.

He was appointed US consul in Cologne in June 1860, but never went there; Baylor resigned his position before the start of the Civil War, aligning himself with Georgia and the Confederate States. Child born in Marietta, Georgia in 1862.

Civil War
By 1863 the economic situation of the Confederacy was becoming worrisome, since the shipping blockade of Charleston Harbour imposed by the North was beginning to bite. The Confederacy+- badly needed to export cotton, and in April 1863 Baylor resumed his antebellum role as European trade Consul for Georgia. He had spent some time in New Orleans, making preparations for his upcoming journey to the Continent. New Orleans was captured early in the war in April 1862. He made contact with representatives of a trade consortium of merchants backed by the crown prince/dauphin/Heriteur du Throne, Duke of Brabant who later became Leopold II

Find out about TB King whom Baylor succeeded.

Christopher Memminger was Confederate Secretary of the Treasury.

However, Baylor's previous reputation counted against him (maybe?), and negative reports of his character and financial status reached the Netherlands. It is possible that he realised he wasn't going to make any headway. At any rate, he sailed for Europe via Bermuda in August 1864, ostensibly to catch a blockade runner ship to Europe.

However he didn't get to Europe, but instead travelled to Union territory on a personal peace mission to President Lincoln. I imagine this didn't turn out too well.

Family
Charles Baylor was one of eight children. His brothers were:
 * John Walker Baylor (c1813 - 1836): fought in all the major battles of the Mexican War
 * Captain Henry Weidner Baylor (1818-1854): fought against Comanches; medical & literary degrees from Transylvania University; fought in the Mexican War, regimental surgeon, died after war in Independence, TX? 1854. Baylor County, Texas is named after him.
 * John Robert Baylor (1822 – 1894) Knight of the Golden Circle and Civil War Confederate colonel
 * "Indian Killer" George Wythe Baylor (1832-1916), also colonel in the Confederate Army.


 * His great-uncle was Colonel George Baylor (1752–1784)
 * His uncle was R.E.B. Baylor, who co-founded Baylor University
 * Another uncle (through his maternal grandmother) was Jesse Bledsoe
 * His niece (through his sister, Sophie Elizabeth), was the novelist Frances Courtenay Baylor