Civil War Bookmarks

In "Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief", James McPherson mentions Confederate President Jefferson Davis’ sharp response to the idea of President Abraham Lincoln perhaps offering amnesty.

"Amnesty, Sir, applies to criminals. We have committed no crime. At your door lies all the misery and crime of this war … We are fighting for Independence—and that, or extermination, we will have … You may emancipate every negro in the Confederacy, but we will be free. We will govern ourselves … if we have to see every Southern plantation sacked, and every Southern city in flames."

Respectfully,

Randy

This poem by Francis Miles Finch has been a personal favorite of mine for years. When I saw this published in a Civil War Preservation Trust newsletter today, I knew I had to post it here.

“The Blue and the Gray,”
by Francis Miles Finch
(1827 - 1907)

By the flow of the inland river,
Whence the fleets of iron have fled,
Where the blades of the grave-grass quiver,
Asleep are the ranks of the dead:
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment-day;
Under the one, the Blue,
Under the other, the Gray.

These in the robings of glory,
Those in the gloom of defeat,
All with the battle-blood gory,
In the dusk of eternity meet:
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment-day,
Under the laurel, the Blue,
Under the willow, the Gray.

From the silence of sorrowful hours
The desolate mourners go,
Lovingly laden with flowers
Alike for the friend and the foe:
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment-day,
Under the roses, the Blue,
Under the lilies, the Gray.

So, with an equal splendor,
The morning sun-rays fall,
With a touch impartially tender,
On the blossoms blooming for all:
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment-day,
Broidered with gold, the Blue,
Mellowed with gold, the Gray.

So, when the summer calleth,
On forest and field of grain,
With an equal murmur falleth
The cooling drip of the rain:
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment-day,
Wet with the rain, the Blue,
Wet with the rain, the Gray.

Sadly, but not with upbraiding,
The generous deed was done,
In the storm of the years that are fading
No braver battle was won:
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment-day,
Under the blossoms, the Blue,
Under the garlands, the Gray.

No more shall the war cry sever,
Or the winding rivers be red;
They banish our anger forever
When they laurel the graves of our dead!
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment-day,
Love and tears for the Blue,
Tears and love for the Gray.

Please join me in wishing all veterans our very best this coming Memorial Day.

Respectfully,

Randy

In his memoir, "I Rode with Stonewall", Henry Kyd Douglas describes his experiences in a Union prison camp on Johnson’s Island in Lake Erie. He moves from describing the barracks to some of the move difficult struggles during his stay.

"To a newcomer the outlook was not hopeful. The prison was an oblong, bare piece of ground enclosed by a high fence, and perched up on this fence, or barricade, at intervals, in sentry boxes, were armed sentinels. The barracks or prison houses were long buildings, hastily erected of wood and weatherboard, called wards. The weatherboarding was a single layer nailed to upright beams, and there was no plastering of any kind. The weatherboarding would sometimes warp, and in all rooms there were many knotholes, through which one lying in bed could look out upon the moon or the water; but when the weather got below zero, the scenery was scarcely compensation for the suffering…Of course out on that lake, the weather became excessively cold, below zero, and not infrequently drove the sentinels from their posts, knowing well enough that no prisoner could escape and live.

On the 9th and 21st of January, 1864 - I am not so sure of one of the dates - the thermometer fell to 28^o below zero.The former of the two nights I spent in the hospital, which was in the enclosure, nursing a very young fellow from Mobile, who, babbling in his delirium of flowers and fields and playing with his mother and sister in his sunny land, died died before morning. During the night Captain Stagg of a Louisiana regiment was frozen so badly that, when he was discovered in the morning he was speechless, and it required vigorous measures under a physician’s directions to restore him. That same night, as often before or after, two men would squeeze into one bunk so as to double blankets, would wrap themselves up head and feet, and in the morning break through crackling ice, formed by the congealing of the breath that escaped, as one has seen on the blankets of horses in sleighing time."

Respectfully,

Randy

In “The Gettysburg Gospel”, Gabor Boritt offers a grim after-battle description which abruptly dispenses with any lingering romantic visions of war. Opting to avoid the more sterile strategic or tactical discussions, he instead bluntly notes the sights and smells which accosted the towns people as they merged with the wreckage of the colossal three-day battle.

“Gettysburg, July 4, 1863. Stench fills the air. Excrement from perhaps 180,000 men and more than 70,000 horses has been left behind in the area. There are thousands of flies, millions. Dead men barely covered in shallow graves. Seven thousand dead men? More likely close to 10,000. How many dead horses and mules? Three thousand, five? None buried. A nurse writes of carcasses “steaming in the sun.” The smell of putrid animal flesh mingles with the odor of human decay. It extends into the spirit of the people. War had come to them. Then it had gone and left the horror behind.”

Respectfully,

Randy

Instead of a quote, I thought I’d include this video of the Battle of Gettysburg’s 75th Anniversary gathering at Gettysburg in 1938. These are priceless video clips of the old veterans of North and South.

Respectfully,

Randy

(My thanks to the person who assembled this video. Well done.)

Despite the occasional tendency towards romanticism, the American Civil War was a brutal, sanguinary conflict. One description of the sad carnage comes from Stephen Sears excellent book “Chancellorsville” in which he describes the consequences of the ferocious fighting.

“The concentrated artillery fire was taking an unusually high toll in this battle. In his notes on the day’s fighting, Colonel Regis de Trobriand of the 38th New York reported a caisson blown up by a Rebel shell; a gunner from the battery, terribly burned by the explosion, “runs shrieking towards the ambulances.” Soon afterward he witnessed a lieutenant in the 3rd Maine cut in two by a bursting shell, “legs thrown to one side,the trunk to another.” Brigadier Jim Lane of A. P. Hill’s division came on a section of the battlefield pounded by the guns of first one side and then the other, “a ghastly & sickening sight…Brave men were laying everywhere,…some with the backs of their heads blown off, others with their faces gone & still others with no heads at all.”

Despite the gruesome depictions, not everyone proved so unlucky. During the same fight, Colonel Henry Madill, 141st Pennsylvania, had “his horse killed under him, (and) picked himself up and counted seven harmless bullet holes in his coat.”

Mr. Sears also described the experiences of an especially fortunate officer. Of Captain Jonathan Hager, 14th US, he would say, “this was his first time he had commanded in battle. When he deployed his men they were in the open and close to Watson’s battery and squarely in the line of fire of the Rebel battery. One shell struck amidst the 14h’s color guard, wounding five of its nine men. A second hit within ten feet of Captain Hager, showering him with dirt. A third exploded directly under a battery caisson, Hager wrote, “& I thought my time had come.” But miraculously the caisson did not not explode, and he decided that a “kind Providence protected me.” After that he felt no fear.”

Respectfully,

Randy

This excerpt may not quite flow as naturally from the previous offering as one might like, but the image is so unexpected that I will risk the somewhat rough transition. In his memoir, “I Rode With Stonewall”, Henry Kyd Douglas wrote of an incident early in General Thomas J. Jackson’s career in the Valley. This small window into a life cut short reveals a much different side of the man than that of the oft described stoic, secretive, disciplinarian.

“After riding along some distance, the General spied a tree hanging heavy with persimmons, a peculiar fruit of which he was very fond. Dismounting, he was in a short time seated aloft among the branches, in the midst of abundance. He ate in silence and when satisfied started to descend, but found that it was not so easy as the ascent had been. Attempting to swing himself from a limb to the main fork of the tree, he got so completely entangled that he could move neither up nor down and was compelled to call for help. He remained suspended in that attitude until his staff, convulsed with laughter, brought some rails from a fence nearby and made a pair of skids to slide him to the earth.”

Mr. Douglas said nothing more of the incident.

Respectfully.

Randy

Well, after some time, I’ve decided to pick up the blogging pen once again. You may remember my former blog at gettysburg-acw.blogspot.com. This one is going to be a little different. If you are anything like me, the tops of books that you’ve read resemble unmown lawns as countless bookmarks poke erratically from the pages to mark a favorite section or quote. And, if you are anything like me, you rarely return to visit those cherished little bits of your former reads. To remedy this, I will return to those bookmarks, find the most interesting, and share them here. Of course, I’ll likely include other thoughts and comments as well.

We’ll start with the master story teller himself. In “The Army of the Potomac: Mr. Lincoln’s Army”, Bruce Catton describes Union General George McClellan’s Army in the spring of 1862, before most had fought in a major battle.

“On the surface, everything was fine. Nearly two hundred thousand young men had been drilled, disciplined, clothed, armed and equipped. They innocently thought themselves veterans. They had roughed it for a whole autumn and winter under canvas, knew what it was to sleep on bare ground in the rain, and learned the intricate, formalized routines by which marching columns transformed themselves into battle lines, and they had been brought to a razor edge of keenness. The great unpredictable that lay ahead of them seemed a bright adventure, for in the 1860s cynicism was not a gift which came to youth free…”

And so we begin.

Respectfully,

Randy