Most Americans are aware by now that during 2011-2015, we are marking the 150th anniversary of our Civil War. Saint Paulites are also hearing that 2014 is the 128th Anniversary of its Winter Carnival. But only a very few are familiar with the convergence of those two events.
The collective influence of Civil War veterans extended throughout American society for decades after the war had ended. These men were revered for their service preserving the nation. Even 50 years after the end of the Civil War, their inclination for peaceful solutions, born of the horrors of their battlefield experiences, delayed the United States’ entry into World War I by years. The impact of Civil War veterans was even felt in a number of little-known and surprising ways in the first Saint Paul Winter Carnival in 1886.
The lore and mythology of the Winter Carnival are familiar to Twin Cities residents. We’ve heard of the intractable opposition of King Boreas and Vulcanus Rex, the Queen of the Snows, the King’s Royal Court and his princes of the four winds and the inevitable triumph of Vulcan’s Order of Fire and Brimstone to usher in an end to winter’s grip.
But in that first year of 1886, the enthusiastic organizers were a harried group tasked with planning events to fill an ambitious agenda for an entire month, including the first ice palace ever built in the United States and the largest ever built in the world. It is understandable, then, that they had little time to perfect the Winter Carnival legend (for example, Borealis Rex was the name of the first Ice King, and Vulcanus was not yet known. Borealis’ first opponent was known only as the Fire King or Fire King Coal). Their conception included only the idea that Borealis would yield his domain; there was no master narrative of exactly how.
Those details were assigned to the fertile imagination of one Delos Monfort, president of the 2nd National Bank in St. Paul, and he embraced his task with the vision of U.S. Grant’s assault on Richmond.
The first Civil War connection to the Winter Carnival occurred shortly before it began.
On Jan. 14, there was a parade from downtown to Central Park, where construction of the palace was underway. A ceremony was to be held to lay two ice-block cornerstones. One had been donated from Stillwater, and the other from Fargo, N.D., indicating the eastern and western limits of Borealis’ Minnesota domain. Lucius Hubbard, the governor of Minnesota, gave the speech at the dedication. Hubbard had commanded the 5th Minnesota in its gallant charge at the Battle of Corinth, turning back a surging Confederate tide, and he finished the war as a brevet brigadier general. Attendance at this preliminary ceremony was estimated at 50,000, hinting at the enthusiasm then building for the coming Carnival. Owing to great advance publicity and being the major rail hub of the Northwest, St. Paul would receive thousands more visitors from around the country over the next few weeks.
The Winter Carnival Palace Grounds opened on Feb. 1 in Central Park bordered by Cedar, Robert and 12th streets and the hill on which the state Capitol is now situated. Along the foot of that hill ran a cart path named Aurora, which nearly 100 years later would be adopted as the name for the Queen of Snows. The palace grounds were ringed by a fence and hundreds of evergreens creating a defensive barrier. On the western edge a six-track toboggan slide descended Cedar Street, creating another hindrance for any potential attackers. The only practical entry to the compound was at the southern end, at the termination of Minnesota Street, through a massive 75-foot-wide ice arch flanked by two 40-foot ice towers that would be guarded by the King’s sentries when the Ice King arrived.
He came in style the next day.
Borealis arrived in St. Paul from the north aboard an ice-encrusted train and quickly made his way to City Hall, aboard a sleigh named “Nightingale” drawn by 12 white horses, where a demand was made for the keys to the city. Mayor Edmund Rice reluctantly turned them over, feeling he was powerless to resist the order of so powerful a sovereign (some in the crowd, however, resented the decree, showing their disdain by setting off a barrel of firecrackers along the route, and the seeds for an insurrection were planted). A parade then escorted the King to his glistening Ice Palace where he began his reign.
The second link to the Civil War will be found in the person who portrayed the first King Borealis.
He was Gen. Richard W. Johnson, one of the most prominent Civil War soldiers in the state. A veteran of the Regular Army, commanding a division at Shiloh, Stones River, superbly at Chicamauga, he was seriously wounded at Atlanta where the Union victory by Gen William T. Sherman secured President Abraham Lincoln’s re-election and made the defeat of the rebellion inevitable. Johnson had also been the unsuccessful Democratic candidate for governor in 1881, an instructor of military science at the University of Minnesota and brother-in-law to former Gov. Henry H. Sibley. Johnson’s 59th birthday occurred on Feb. 7 during the Carnival.
The official Winter Carnival history, as it has been told for at least the past 75 years, relates that the first Borealis was William Hamm Sr., founder of the Hamm’s Brewery, but this is mistaken.
Rather, Hamm portrayed the Prince (King) of the German festival of Karneval (Mardi Gras in France) a traditional pre-Lent celebration dating back hundreds of years in Germany and continuing even today. The sizeable German population of St. Paul moved their normal Karneval celebration up a few weeks to be included as part of the St. Paul Winter Carnival celebrations. Karneval included foolish costumes, a parade and a masquerade ball held on Feb. 9. At some point over the years, Hamm’s role as King of Karneval was confused with King of the Winter Carnival, and the error has been repeated ever since. The first Queen of the Snows, Mrs. L.L.C. Brooks, has also been overlooked since Hamm’s Queen of Karneval, Mrs. Albert Scheffer, has been historically misrepresented as the first Queen of the Snows.
Organizers had extended invitations to notable Civil War Generals William T. Sherman, Philip Sheridan, Alfred Terry and John Scofield. Representing her father was Rachel Sherman, 24-year-old youngest daughter of Gen. Sherman. On Feb. 2, the first day the primary tobbogan slides had opened around the city, Rachel was being escorted on a sleigh ride down Summit Avenue. Her party came to the slide constructed at the intersection at Ramsey Hill. A 20-foot-tall platform had been built to provide momentum to start the sleds on their quarter-mile run down the hill. Miss Sherman was fascinated, and apparently possessed of the same dash and daring of her father. She soon alighted her sleigh and, to the dismay of her escorts, requested a ride from one of the toboggan drivers. After receiving an assurance of safe passage from an unnamed 15-year-old St. Paul boy. they were launched. She returned intact a few minutes later on the young man’s arm, completely delighted.
Carnival directors quickly accelerated their story line of the eternal conflict between the Ice King and Fire King by scheduling their first confrontation for Feb. 4. The Fire King would assault the Ice Palace, seat of Borealis’s power. On this occasion, Monfort performed the duty of Commander in Chief of “all arrangements connected with the assault on the Ice Palace on the evening of February 4 and all forces engaged either in the attack or defense on that occasion,” according to reports from the St. Paul Dispatch.
While Borealis directed the defense with 1,000 men inside the castle, the attackers, numbering more than 2,000, most of them uniformed members of the various Carnival toboggan and snowshoe clubs, were directed in person by the Fire King (Monfort himself), who arrived at the palace grounds riding a Fire Chariot float equipped with a throne and pillars spouting flames from each of the four corners. Borealis refused demands for surrender, and the Fire King sent his forces forward armed with more than 15,000 Roman candles.
As the fireballs arched upward against and over the palace walls, the castle answered with mortars launching fireworks into the sky, while the walls of the shining palace flashed alternately between white, blue, crimson and emerald electric lights within. The shouts of the combatants and smoke from their weapons rent the air. The crowd of 100,000 spectators roared its delight. Such an event had never been seen in America before.
After half an hour, the battle subsided, an armistice was arranged and the combatants paraded back into downtown to celebrate. The Ice King retained his throne, and the Carnival received universal praise for the performance in newspapers around the country. They would soon top it.
A final assault was planned for the following week, when Borealis would be defeated and forced to release his grip on his St. Paul realm and return to his arctic home. But if the Fire King could not defeat him, then who?
There lived in the country a group of men the people had turned to for salvation 25 years earlier while the very existence of the nation was in peril. They had not failed then and, as President Lincoln himself said, had developed into the mightiest force on Earth. They were the men of the Union Army of the United States of America. After the war, they had continued their association in a veterans group known as the Grand Army of the Republic. They maintained posts throughout the country including at least a half-dozen in the Twin Cities, and were a beloved presence at local parades and civic events. The men before whom Richmond, Vicksburg and Atlanta had fallen would now be called upon to dethrone the supernatural Ice King.
The Winter Carnival scheduled GAR Day for Feb. 12 and sent out invitations to posts from around the region and as far away as Montana, Missouri and Chicago. Many answered the call, conveniently arriving by train. When finally assembled in St. Paul on the scheduled night, a small army of 2,000 GAR men and their sons, having donned their distinctive GAR uniforms, marched out of Rice Park armed with muskets loaded with blank rounds. They were at the end of a parade of several thousand uniformed Carnival clubs, all moving up Minnesota Street to the Ice Palace grounds and under command of Gen. John Sanborn of St. Paul, first colonel of the 4th Minnesota Infantry during the war.
Along the route, the GAR men detoured long enough to march to the Ryan Hotel at Sixth and Robert streets, which served as the social hub for Carnival entertaining and where prominent out-of-town guests were lodged. Rachel Sherman had been staying there from the first days of the Carnival and reviewed their column from the balcony. In recognition of their esteem for her father, the GAR band struck up the old familiar tune “Marching Through Georgia,” just as they had done on their notorious March to the Sea with Gen. Sherman during the war.
Meanwhile, the lead units of the column of attackers forced their way onto the royal compound through the massive arch at the park entrance and surrounded the palace where Borealis and his defense force manned the ramparts of the castle. When the GAR men arrived as the last unit of the assault column to take its place, the other attackers parted to allow them to approach the palace. The crowd pulsed with anticipation.
Orders for surrender were again made and refused. The front lines of the GAR men armed with 2,000 muskets holding blank loads deployed as skirmishers and opened the ball with the roar of several volleys. The crowd grew frenzied as all the forces in the assault lobbed 150,000 fiery balls from Roman candles against the palace walls.
The castle walls again flashed electric colored lights in defiance, joined by flashes from the turrets. The Emmet Artillery of the Minnesota National Guard joined the battle, launching fireworks above the castle. Special wires had been attached to the castle walls, and now fire bombs were launched along the cables timed to explode as they hit the ice blocks. The castle answered with fireworks of its own. The tremendous tumult of noise and light and smoke from the battle was joined by the enthusiastic throaty approval of more than 100,000 joyous onlookers.
At length, one group of Union veterans scaled the east palace wall, bringing the battle inside. Soon, the gates were flung open, and other attackers rushed inside. A silence ensued, then suddenly the multicolored Polar Bear Flag of the Ice King was lowered from the highest turret, and the Stars and Stripes banner which the men of the GAR had served so faithfully in their youth was raised in its place. The crowd roared its delight even louder than before.
As they had done at Appomattox, the Boys in Blue were magnanimous in victory and issued pardons to Borealis and his forces, provided they would depart the city. It was done, and again the crowd retired downtown to continue the celebration.
In a final Civil War coincidence, during the Carnival on Feb. 9, Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock, the senior general in the United States Army and Democratic nominee for president in 1880, had died in New York. Hancock was widely admired by Union veterans and well known in Minnesota, since during the Battle of Gettysburg it had been from him on July 2, 1863, that the order for the famous charge of the 1st Minnesota Infantry had been issued. For his crucial leadership there, Gettysburg is frequently referenced as Hancock’s field. After the war, he served for a time in command of the Army District of the Northwest, headquartered in St. Paul. His identical twin brother, Hilary Baker Hancock, resided in Minneapolis.
After the Stars and Stripes had been raised in victory over the first Ice Palace in the United States, constructed for the first Saint Paul Winter Carnival, the veterans who had served in the late war with Winfield Scott Hancock, in a moving tribute, lowered it to half staff.
The Saint Paul Winter Carnival would close to rave reviews and national recognition at the end of February. With the positive attention it gained and the carnivals of 1887 and 1888, the local business community achieved its goal of dispelling the Eastern newspaper charges of Minnesota being just “another Siberia,” and the Minnesota economy would continue to prosper.
In a final irony, the first Winter Carnival Ice King, Gen. Richard Johnson, and the first Fire King, Delos Monfort, found their final resting places within sight of each other in Oakland Cemetery in St. Paul. The Ice King reposes on a slightly higher elevation, providing him a position of defensive advantage just as he held in 1886. But they are again surrounded by hundreds of veterans of the Union Army who served as allies to the first Fire King and helped initiate the legend and lore of the Saint Paul Winter Carnival.
Patrick Hill is a native of St. Paul and has previously published articles on the Minnesota connections to the Civil War in Minnesota History and Ramsey County History magazines. Among the the variety of sources he drew on for this account were the St. Paul Pioneer Press, Feb. 1-13, 1886; the St. Paul Globe, Feb. 2-13, 1886; the St. Paul Dispatch, Feb.1, 1886; and Northwest Magazine, February 1888.