I have been digging a bit more into a letter from my great-great-grandfather, Samuel Morris Wickersham (1819-1894), to his wife Fanny, dated 25 October 1866, so a year and a half after the end of the Civil War. The letter says, simply,

I have just been tendered the appointment of Asst. Secretary of War & asked for my acceptance. What say you? Mr. Stanton retires & Gen. Sherman takes the position of Secretary of War & ’tis under the new Secty that the offer is made to me.

History records, however, that Edwin Stanton, appointed Secretary of War by Abraham Lincoln in 1862, continued in that position under Andrew Johnson after Lincoln’s assassination until 1868; and the Assistant Secretary of War, Thomas Eckert, who had been appointed only a few months earlier in July 1866, continued to serve until February 1867 and was not replaced when he resigned, and the post of Assistant Secretary was then abolished for over 20 years.

In fact, there was a major clash between President Johnson and Secretary Stanton, with Johnson taking a more accommodating attitude to the defeated South and Stanton taking a harder line on Reconstruction. July 1866 saw temperatures rising, with 46 African-Americans massacred in Memphis, Tennessee, at the start of the month, three of Johnson’s cabinet resigning, and then another massacre of dozens of African-Americans demonstrating for their rights in New Orleans on 30 July.

Congress was dominated by Radical Republicans who supported Stanton as Secretary of War and suspected Johnson (correctly) of being too soft on the Southerners. Johnson fought back by holding a National Union Convention in August, trying to forge a new political movement which would support his presidency, and then mounting a campaign tour, the “Swing Around the Circle“, from late August to mid-September, which took in most of the industrialised North (except, I note, New England).

The Swing Around the Circle backfired. Johnson’s stump speeches were portrayed in a hostile media as undignified and irrational; his well-known problem with alcohol fed the image of a President who had lost the plot and needed to be restrained and constrained by Congress. It must have looked different to Johnson himself; he enjoyed public speaking, he was normally good at it and he was surrounded by sympathisers. As the mid term elections of 1866 drew near, he anticipated a groundswell of public opinion in his favour which would weaken the Radical Republicans and enable him to get rid of Stanton.

Election Day was staggered across the states in those days, and in the early returns it was not obvious that Johnson’s position was going to be weakened. Five states went to the polls on 9 October, and while Johnson lost three of his supporters to the Republicans in Pennsylvania, he actually picked up a seat in Indiana. Twelve more states were to vote on 6 November, and to us psephologists looking at the early trends, the result looks pretty obvious in advance, but the phenomenon of wishful thinking by a doomed leader is not unique to that particular time and place.

So, the idea that Johnson might have hoped to get rid of Stanton and replace him with General William T. Sherman is not at all surprising – indeed it is part of the standard narrative of the period, which culminated in Congress passing a law forbidding Johnson to fire cabinet members without its approval, Johnson going ahead and firing Stanton anyway, his impeachment by the House of Representatives and survival of the trial by the Senate by a single vote.

But the idea that he would also have wanted to replace Stanton’s Assistant secretary, the super-competent telegraph expert Thomas Eckert, with Samuel Morris Wickersham, an iron broker from Philadelphia whose military service during the war consisted of chasing the defeated rebels back south from Gettysburg, is a bit more surprising. However, I have one important piece of evidence that supports this narrative.

As it happens, the last stop on Johnson’s Swing Around the Circle was Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, which is remarkable for only one thing: it is the state capital. The governor since 1860 was Andrew Gregg Curtin, who was term-limited as governor and was campaigning for the U.S. Senate (in those days, senators were elected by the legislature). Samuel Morris Wickersham was friendly with Curtin, but also not a fan of the radical Republicans; I wonder if it was Curtin who put a word in the president’s ear about a potential Assistant Secretary? Or indeed if the entire affair was in Curtin’s own head, and he mentioned it to Wickersham without Johnson’s knowledge?

In any case, it didn’t matter; when the election results came through the following week, Johnson’s authority was dealt a fatal blow by the voters, who gave the Radical Republicans two-thirds majorities in both houses of Congress, and left him in office but not in power until he was replaced by Ulysses S Grant in 1869. This was probably a Good Thing, and although Reconstruction was brought to a halt in 1877, if Johnson had prevailed it never have got started. So on the whole I am glad that my great-great-grandfather avoided being on the wrong side of history in 1866.

Four decades later, his son became Attorney-General of the USA under President Taft, but that’s another story.

My great-grandmother’s sister, born Frances Belt Wickersham (1862-1949), married the Sheffield steel man Sir Robert Hadfield (1858-1940) in 1894. The Hadfields had no children, but informally adopted my grandmother (after her own mother’s early death).

Frances, known as Bunnie to the family, was very active in wartime nursing. In the first world war, she established the Anglo-American Hospital, also called No.5 British Red Cross Hospital or just “Lady Hadfield’s Hospital”, at Wimereux in northern France in December 1914. It provided 100 beds, and closed on 10th of January 1919 having treated over 16,000 patients. She was appointed a CBE in the 1919 Birthday Honours.

In the second world war, she again established the Hadfield-Spears Ambulance Unit, which started work in France in 1940 but ended up travelling with Free French forces in the Middle East, North Africa, Italy and finally France again in the course of the war. In both cases, Sir Robert put up the money but Lady Hadfield did the actual setting up, and she was reputedly fairly hands-on in running the Wimereux hospital.

Lady Frances is buried together with her husband Sir Robert, her sister, her mother and her niece (my grandmother) in Brookwood Cemetery near Woking. I found them in 2022.

In April last year I visited Sheffield for David and Fred’s belated wedding celebration, and went in search of the Hadfield legacy. The Department of Metallurgy and related bits of Sheffield University are housed in a building which is named after Sir Robert, which is fair enough given that he invented manganese steel and so on. There’s a portrait and a rather striking bust in the Sir Robert Hadfield Meetings Room.

I noticed also that there is a Hadfield Wing at the Northern General Hospital in Sheffield, so I ventured out to look at it. I was really quite shocked to see that only Sir Robert was commemorated in the building; there was no mention whatsoever of his wife.

There are in fact nine distinct buildings of the Northern General Hospital, all of them named after men, of whom I find precisely one whose professional career had any connection with medicine (Bev Stokes, a former Chairman of the hospital’s Board). I find no record of Sir Robert Hadfield ever taking a direct interest in medicine, other than his own health and supporting his wife (their marriage was rocky, but he was ready to help here).

So I wrote directly to the Chair and the Chief Executive of the Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, which runs the Northern General Hospital, and requested that they consider renaming the building, or at least acknowledging Lady Frances’ work. (Incidentally, both the Chair and the Chief Executive are women.) This eventually got me into courteous correspondence with the Chief Nurse, Professor Morley, who politely pointed out that renaming a building cannot be done casually or quickly, but added that they would look into the options.

In the last few days, I have heard that the Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust will install a permanent display about Lady Frances Hadfield in the atrium of the Hadfield Wing. So at least there will be one woman commemorated across the various buildings of the Northern General Hospital, and my great-great-aunt’s efforts will be recognised in her husband’s home city. It’s always worth raising your voice.