Grave 3346, in Section 27 at Arlington National Cemetery is simple, like those around it. The inscription? William H. Johnson, Citizen. William Johnson, a free African American, was Abraham Lincoln’s valet and and tended the sick president after his Gettysburg speech. This grave might, or might not be his final resting place. As with much of history, the details aren’t exactly clear, but it makes for an interesting story.

When Abraham Lincoln was elected president, he brought William H. Johnson with him to Washington DC in 1861. Johnson had worked as a freedman for Lincoln and his family at least since 1860. Originally employed at the White House as a valet, there was trouble between Johnson and the the other free African Americans who worked there. His skin color was quite dark and the other lighter skinned African Americans harassed him.

Lincoln tried to help solve the problem and wrote a “to whom it may concern” letter: “William Johnson, a colored boy, and bearer of this, has been with me about twelve months; and has been, so far, as I believe, honest, faithful, sober, industrious, and handy as a servant.” There were mixed results from the letter. Over the next three years, Johnson was listed as working for the Navy, a White House fireman, and a Treasury Department employee among other jobs. Throughout it all, he continued to work for Lincoln as a valet. He shaved Lincoln, shined his shoes, and took care of him in other ways, including carrying money for him.

In July of 1863, there was this little battle in Pennsylvania at a place called Gettysburg. You may have heard of it. Four months later, in November, Lincoln travelled by train to the battlefield for the dedication of the cemetery there, and took William with him. Lincoln went on to deliver his famed Gettysburg Address at the dedication. Those 272 words would become the most quoted of his entire presidency, although at the time, they weren’t particularly noticed. The address started – “ Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal…”. Written almost one year after The Emancipation Proclamation took effect, the wording was not accidental.

Fate then intervened. On the return trip to Washington, Lincoln showed signs of Smallpox and was quite ill. William Johnson is the person who nursed him back to health. Unfortunately, Johnson also caught Smallpox. Was it from Lincoln, or someone else? We’ll never know for sure. What we do know is he continued to worsen, and eventually died around January 28th, 1864.

Lincoln himself settled Johnson’s estate. The president followed his valet’s instructions as to how his pay was to be distributed. As Lincoln explained to a Chicago Tribune reporter,

⁃ “This is something out of my usual line; but a President of the United States has a multiplicity of duties not specified in the Constitution or acts of Congress. This is one of them. This money belongs to a poor negro who is … very bad with the smallpox…. He is now in hospital, and could not draw his pay because he could not sign his name. I have been at considerable trouble to overcome the difficulty and get it for him, and have at length succeeded in cutting red tape….I am now dividing the money and putting by a portion labeled, in an envelope, with my own hands, according to his wishes.”

Lincoln also paid off a loan he co-signed with William, and took responsibility for Johnson’s funeral. In fact, he paid for his coffin, grave marker, and burial.

We know all of this because Lincoln recorded much of the above in his personal papers. The next part becomes a bit murkier. That is, where is William Johnson actually buried? There are at least three different possibilities.

First, most black smallpox victims were buried in the Columbian Harmony Cemetery, in Northeast DC. Unfortunately, the cemetery was razed half a century ago for development.

Second, he may have been buried at the Congressional Cemetery. Although there is no direct record of this, some historians believe it to be the case.

Finally, many believe he may be buried at Arlington National Cemetery. Section 27 contains the graves of Civil War soldiers, a significant number of freedmen who resided in the District of Columbia, and probably formerly enslaved people from the Custis Lee Estate. There is the marker with the correct name and the man buried under the marker died in 1864. Despite this information, there are also doubts raised about the entire claim. The Custis Lee Estate (later Arlington National Cemetery) would not become an official cemetery for another few months. William Johnson was a common enough name at the time. Then there was the interesting epitaph “Citizen”. Was this Lincoln’s way of recognizing Johnson was a freedman? It turns out in the early days of burials at Arlington, civilians were also buried there. “Citizen” merely meant this was the grave for a person who was not a soldier.

I’m not sure why I have this mini-fascination with Mr Johnson, but I do. I first read about him a few years back in a book about the Gettysburg address. Since then, his name has popped up in a couple of other books about Lincoln. It’s always just a couple of paragraphs describing what he did for Lincoln, taking care of Lincoln when he contracted Smallpox, and then Lincoln settling Johnson’s estate when he died. He truly is just a minor footnote in history. And yet….. The Civil War still had well over a year to run. Here was Lincoln, during one of the worst times in our history, taking time out of his life and the national concerns to take care of this man and his affairs. Why? Did Lincoln do this because it was the right thing to do, or was there more to it?

Mary, a friend of mine helped some with my investigation. She is an amateur historian, particularly about slavery and the Civil War period (her ancestors owned enslaved people and she spends time trying to make amends for that). She found Lincoln’s census record for 1860.  There was a Johnson living in the Lincoln household, but it indicates a female, 18-years old, and no indication that she (or if mis-stated, he) was Black, and the initial appears to be “M” rather than “W.”  Nor was she able to find any William Johnsons in Springfield at that time. 

  Mary’s guess is that he was a fugitive from slavery and had renamed himself once he reached freedom in Illinois.  She also looked on Ancestry.com and cannot find a single person that claims a black William Johnson who worked for Abraham Lincoln as a relation.  Her words: “This is really, really strange.  I’ve never come across someone that NOBODY claimed in a family tree.”  

So, is Johnson buried at Arlington? Sometimes, we aren’t meant to solve mysteries, and I think this is one of those cases. The romantic in me hopes he is at Arlington. There would, perhaps, be some justice in that. No matter where he’s buried, I’m glad I learned about him, and his relationship with Mr. Lincoln.

Addendum:

• Virtually all references to William H. Johnson are from President Lincoln’s own comments, requests, or papers. There is little else known about him.

• Special thanks to my friend Mary Haak. Mary and I have had many thoughtful discussions about politics and race over the past year or two. She is a genuine human being, who quietly goes about doing the “right thing” in many ways. We should all be so dedicated.

• Lincoln gets credit for “freeing the enslaved people”, but he was also a product of his time, and by no means perfect. Here are three examples:

1. In August of 1858, in my home town of Ottawa, Illinois at the first Lincoln-Douglas debate, Lincoln said: “I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and the black races. There is a physical difference between the two, which, in my judgment, will probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality…I have never said anything to the contrary, but I hold that, notwithstanding all this, there is no reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

1. In August of 1862, Lincoln wrote to Horace Greeley, Editor of the New York Times, and famously stated: “If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union;”

1. In January of 1863, under The Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln did free enslaved people, but not all of them. The Proclamation only freed those slaves who were in States that had seceded from the Union. It did nothing about slaves in the border states that had not seceded. Those slaves were freed by state action, or by the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in December 1865.

My friend Ed Meagher, a Vietnam Vet, recently told this story. I asked him if I could clean it up a bit, and post it here on my blog. He readily agreed. As tensions ratchet up between us and Iran, and around the world, I think it’s good to listen to personal stories from our past wars and not just the official histories, or news articles. The voices of those who were there are always worth hearing. Here’s Ed’s story in his own words.

Whenever I hear a helicopter, I stop what I am doing and lookup. Nothing too unusual about that, except I am also hit by a momentary shot of adrenalin, the hair on my arms and neck stand up, and a feeling arises in my chest and gut I have trouble describing. It is quick, and after all these years it fades rapidly. I cover it by trying to identify the type of helicopter and unless it is an old “Huey” or “Chinook”, the whole episode is over before anyone notices. If it is one of those, it is another matter and it brings back memories.

I arrived in Vietnam about 3AM on January 30th, 1968. By coincidence, or poor luck, it was the same day the Tet Offensive started. I was a recently promoted Air Force Staff Sergeant (E-5) radio operator. I was assigned to a Comm Squadron and detailed to a place called “Paris Control” where we coordinated air strikes up and down III Corps. I worked the night shift from 6 PM to 6 AM every day. We would eat breakfast or dinner, depending on your preference, about 6:30 AM and then try to sleep in the hot, noisy barracks before getting up and doing it all again.

During daytime, they often needed warm bodies for crap details like sandbag filling, or riding shotgun on convoys, or just about any gritty, shitty job you can imagine. They would send a runner to wake you and tell you where to go and when to be there. It was a royal pain in the ass. As an NCO, I usually had to lead the details.

One time around May of ‘68, after being woken, I show up at the head-shed and am told to simply load the assembled troops into two pickup trucks and take them to the mortuary at Ton Son Knut. It is a large aluminum Quonset hut at the end of a taxiway on the northside of the runways, and away from the main base. We arrive at the mortuary and it is hot and miserable and all I am told is to “standby”.

Time passes and a fire truck shows up and they know even less than we do. Finally, over the tower radio, we hear a helicopter being cleared to land near the Quonset hut. It is a big helicopter known as a Chinook. It is a twin-engined, tandem rotor, noisy beast, that throws up dirt, pebbles and small rocks in every direction.

Over the tower radio, we hear a request for the fire engine to move closer to the helicopter. After the fire truck moves, nothing happens for a while as the exhaust fumes from the JP4 fuel mixes with the hot humid air. It can overwhelm you, but strangely I have always loved that smell.

In the military, you learn to do a lot of standing around waiting for your orders. You learn patience and to deal with a lot of ambiguity. Time passes. Finally, and slowly, figures emerge from the Quonset hut a couple at a time. They are dressed in various colored medical scrubs and are all wearing scrub hats and masks. Some have rubber aprons and gloves on. They walk slowly, very slowly. They are not in any hurry to get to where they are going and are in fact meandering. I haven’t been told anything yet and the rest of my little detail knows better than to ask what is going on. We wait some more.

There are small conferences taking place, first with the crew chief, then the fire truck driver and then with the helicopter crew. Still not a clue. Then several of the folk from the Quonset hut wander back to the building at no better than a stroll. It is at least 100 degrees outside. We stand and wait for orders.

Finally, the folk reemerge from the hut pushing wagons and gurneys. The crew chief waves me over to the helicopter. I bend down even though the blades are 20 feet above my head. The noise up close is even worse and the crew chief screams in my ear. Something to do with my men and what is on the helicopter. I give him the classic palms up “what did you say” sign and he registers disgust and grabs me by the arm and takes me to the back of the helicopter.

The Chinook has a very large rear door/ramp. The crew chief is wearing a bulbous helmet and is tethered to the aircraft via a long cord plugged into the helicopter near the front access door. He keys his microphone and talks to the crew in the front, and suddenly the ramp starts to come down. He again grabs me by the arm and pulls me to the side.

I am not prepared for what happens next. Nothing could prepare anyone for what happens next. As the ramp touches the ground, multiple streams of liquid pour off the helicopter into the grass and dirt. I stare at it for a few seconds, before I realize the liquid is a dirty reddish-brown color. It still doesn’t register with me, when the crew chief grabs me again and pulls me further away from the aircraft. Two of the firemen, in full battle rattle, move in with a small hose and start to spray the ramp with a high-pressure stream of water.

The crew chief pantomimes to me to get my detail and bring them over. As I trot over to our pickup trucks, it begins to dawn on me what the red liquid might be. The troops are curious and have questions, but I put on my best “the NCO knows all, and does not need to explain himself to the troops” look, and tell them to just form up and follow me. When we get back, the firemen are exiting down the ramp from inside the helicopter and one of them takes a massive, both feet in the air, pratfall. We all instinctively laugh.

The crew chief grabs me again and screams directly into my ear, “Careful. It’s slippery in there. Just two guys to a bag, one bag at a time“. The guys in scrubs inch closer to the side of the helicopter with their gurneys and carts, but stop short of the back of the helicopter. I return to my waiting crew and not knowing what to say or how to give the order, I grab the first two guys and indicate to the rest to wait where they were. Again in an unneeded crouch, the three of us approach the ramp and start up. There are two corrugated metal tracks running up the ramp and they are wet. The first few steps make it clear there is no traction, so we step onto the inside of the fuselage and there it is only marginally better.

We make our way up the ramp grabbing hold of each other and anything else we can reach. It is comical and the crew chief calls us off and brings the firemen back. There is a long discussion and it is decided they are going to use a bigger hose and mix the water with some fire-retardant foam. There are pros and cons back and forth about the wisdom of this, but they decide to try it. The pressure from the larger hose is truly impressive and maybe the foam helps, or maybe it doesn’t. After 10 minutes, the fireman come out and we go back in.

We reach the top of the ramp and it takes several seconds for our eyes to adapt from the bright sunshine to the dark inside the ship. Then we see the body bags. They are piled like cords of wood on the deck and secured with brightly colored canvas straps connected to pinions in the deck. The crew chief brushes by us and begins to release the straps. The bags settle and spread out as each strap is released. There are probably six or seven bags to a pile, and there are multiple piles.

The three of us just stand there, staring with our mouths agape. The crew chief comes back to me and hits me on the shoulder and indicates I need to get started. My two guys grab the first bag and lift it. The body inside the bag is still warm and flexible and slides into more of a ball, which they have to lift higher. They raise their arms to near shoulder height for the bag to clear the ground. I watch as the two troops, who should have been asleep in bed, slither and stumble down the ramp. The crew chief hits me between the shoulder blades and indicates I am to take the other end of the next bag and we start out of the aircraft.

The first body is hoisted onto one of the gurneys and I get angry none of the folks in scrubs offer to help my guys. They just stand there. When we get close to the next gurney, I am ready to say something, then notice the look in their eyes. It dawns on me they are gearing up for the horror awaiting them, when they have to open these bags inside the Quonset hut. To us, they are still just messy bags, but to them, they would soon become bodies, soldiers, dead people.

I go over to my guys and tell them to follow me. We quickly set up an assembly line of sorts and it becomes clear we have to operate methodically so that every team takes the exact number of turns into the ship, grab the body bag, and then returns down the ramp. One trip for each of us and we became experts at this macabre parade. I wish I kept better track of how many bags we offloaded. My best guess is it was over thirty, but I can’t be sure. Some of the bags were suspiciously light. Was a small soldier inside, or was it just body parts? One of the guys later mentioned he thought one of the bags contained a dog.

It is all over in two hours. No one dismisses us, they all just leave. The firemen go back on the helicopter and spray the inside for a long time. When they are finished, the helicopter simply takes off. The firemen set out a canvas tub about 8 feet across and half-fill it with water and what looks like detergent. They step in it with their rubber boots and invited us to do the same. We step in and stomp around in our canvas jungle boots which immediately soaks our socks. After a few moments, one of the firemen releases a latch and the pool collapsed and empties. They throw it on the top of the truck and off they go.

We are now alone with no one to tell us what to do next. I’m 21 years old and the rest of the guys are about the same age, but I have one or two more stripes, so they looked to me for guidance, for direction, for orders. I have nothing.

We stand there for a few long seconds and then I say something like “who wants to go back to the barracks and who wants to go to the chow hall?”, and we split the two trucks up by destination.

The last thing I remember about the day is that as I prepared to go to work for my 6 PM shift, I took a shower and noticed my feet were pinkish. I had to wear those boots for quite a while before I could get a new pair and no matter how many times, I soaked them, they always seemed to have a stiffness to them.

–

I haven’t shared this story with too many people because it is normally not a place I want to go and it is still is a deep scar on my soul. But recently, because of my criticism of President Trump and my view that he wants to start a “wag the dog” war, a person questioned my love for my country and my unwillingness to support another war in the Middle East. All I know is someone has to stand up for all the PFC’s who will pay the price of old white men’s bloodlust, and who will end up in body bags.

Addendum:

Ed is the real deal. After his time in Vietnam, he eventually went to work for the VA, and helped his fellow veterans there for several years. After leaving the government, he continued to support veterans in other ways. 16 years ago, he and two other Vietnam vets started a charity to support veterans returning from Afghanistan and Iraq. It eventually became the Aleethia Foundation. You can find out more about it, and it’s mission at: https://www.aleethia.org

Feel free to share this blog…… https://mnhallblog.wordpress.com/2020/01/08/after-his-patriotism-is-questioned-a-vietnam-vet-reflects-on-war/

I saw the pears in the grocery store a week ago, and on impulse, bought them. I don’t usually buy fruit out of season, but as I was looking at them, a phrase popped in my brain – “These are perfectly imperfect”, and I put them in my basket. They looked pretty good, although there were some blemishes on them.

At home, I started thinking about the phrase “perfectly imperfect” and what did I mean. And then I thought about “perfectly imperfect” and why did I use that instead of “imperfectly perfect”, and what was the difference. It was time for Google.

Google, of course, had an infinite number of things to say about perfectly imperfect as it pertains to pears, fruit, vegetables, lifestyles, and people. I explored a number of these rabbit holes. It turns out there are companies selling “perfectly imperfect” fruit, appealing to people against food waste, or people looking for a bargain, depending on the ad. There was another blog site titled “perfectlyImperfect”, with the goal of helping people with branding and home decor. These links didn’t seem to get at what I was thinking.

Then came links focused more on people. There was a HuffPost piece about “perfectly imperfect” and self acceptance. Several Psychology Today articles explored the idea, including – “We are designed to be perfectly imperfect.” Music explored the phrase, with John Legend singing “…Love your curves and all your edges, All your perfect imperfections…”. And finally, the Urban Dictionary provided: “when someone has feelings for you, they may tell you you’re “perfectly imperfect”, basically saying they accept your flaws, they like you enough that they see past your faults, a way of saying that you’re perfect to them.”

Now we were getting somewhere and I started thinking about perfectly imperfect more broadly.

I left the internet and looked back at my pears and realized what I really meant was the pears looked real, not artificial or plastic. They had experienced some bumps and bruises in their brief life. They may not look perfect, but they looked the way pears are suppose to look.

I sat there thinking about perfectly imperfect pears and people. I thought about how much time gets wasted looking for perfection, whether in food, friends, or ourselves. New Year’s Eve was almost here, and while I don’t normally make New Year’s resolutions, three immediately popped in my head and I wrote them down.

• First, I will continue to look for the “real”, in life, and try to avoid the artificial.

• Second, I will strive to do better in accepting people as they are, rather than trying to project my view of what “perfection” is on them.

• And finally, I will try and do better in accepting myself the way I am, warts, spreadsheets, to-do lists, and all. I’ll still try to improve, but I’ll also cut myself a bit of slack here and there.

I don’t know how I’ll do with these resolutions, but I’m going to give it my best.

When I first looked at those pears at the supermarket, I didn’t realize they would take me on a small journey of self assessment and awareness, but they did. As we know, insight can come to you from any number of different sources. You just need to be open to it.

All the best for 2020….

Addendum:

I didn’t go into “perfectly imperfect” versus “imperfectly perfect” in this blog. There’s a whole other discussion there. If you have a couple of hours to wander around the internet on a rainy day, go for it.