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