Day 42. April 11, 1862.
42
it was worth dying just to listen to….
April Friday 11 1862
Quite cool this morning and bids to be a fine day and I hope it may. It is warm and the mud is drying up and the snow is melting away. Lieut I.L. Hamilton officer of the gard in camp and I am not very well today. I am looking for a letter from home and there has none come but I will not look in vain as our mail does not come only twice a week. The boys are in town spend their monney that is Winchester and some have sent their monney home. Lieut [illeg. looks like Fleury Holiday of Company A]. Cool this evening
Note: 1865:
A Stillness at Appomattox Bruce Catton P. 362-363
“The leading brigade lost sight of the path through the abatis, but the whole corps was running now, details with axes were smashing at the entanglements, sheer weight of numbers was breaking a dozen openings—and the tide flowed on, past the abatis and into the ditch, with the black loom of the fortifications rising just ahead.
Far to the rear, on the parapet of a Union fort, an army surgeon had been watching, and in the predawn gloom he could see a twinkling, flashing line of fire half a mile wide—the rim of the Confederate works, lit by musketry. As he watched he saw a black gap in the center of this sparkling line, and then there was another gap a little to one side, and then a third one, and as he watched these gaps widened and ran together, and suddenly the whole chain of lights was out and he knew that the line had been captured.
It was not done easily, for if the defenders were few they died hard, and there was hand-to-hand fighting along the works. Storming parties got over in squads, stabbing and clubbing muskets. There was no cheering—everyone was too much out of breath for that—but the men coming up in the support brigades realized that the trenches had been taken when they saw Confederate cannon reversed, firing toward the Confederate rear. In some cases Union infantry refused to wait for the parties of artillerists who had been sent over to work the captured guns, and tried to operate them themselves. The 11th Vermont claimed to have fired twelves rounds from one battery, overcoming the want of primers simply by discharging muskets into the vents of the loaded pieces.
Dawn came at last, and the whole line of works was black with Union soldiers. Beyond the line lay the Confederate camps, with eager parties of VI Corps hot-shots pushing on through them, every man for himself—some of them running on to reach the unguarded rear areas, some looking through tents and huts for loot, some just going, kept moving by the excitement of victory. Far to the right, the XI Corps had stormed the whole first line of deadly trenches but met stubborn resistance on the second line, and the sound of artillery and musketry rolled across the pine flats. On the left, the entire line of defense had dissolved. Ord’s troops, and the II Corps, were breaking through on the west, cutting the defenders’ organizations into fragments and driving these broken units before them. By twos and threes and by disorganized squads, the Federals broke clear through past the railroad to the edge of the Appomattox. In a chance encounter by a bit of wood, some of these killed the famous A.P. Hill.
In the Confederate camps the VI Corps made merry. One man remembered seeing a burly buck private outfitting himself in the tinseled gray dress-uniform coat which some Confederate officer would never need again, and another soldier was wrapping a Confederate flag about his shoulders as if it were a toga. The whole corps was up, now, overflowing the trenches, scampering around among bombproofs and huts and tents, staring out over ground which no armed Yankee had previously seen. Up into their midst came a group of mounted men, Grant and Meade and Wright trotting over to reorganize the storming columns and make the break-through complete.
“Then and there,” wrote a Connecticut soldier exultantly, “then and there the long-tried and ever faithful soldiers of the Republic saw daylight!” And the whole corps looked up and down the Petersburg lines —broken forever, now—and took in what had been done, and caught its breath, and sent up a wild shout which, the Connecticut man said, it was worth dying just to listen to.
The end of the war was like the beginning, with the army marching down the open road under the spring sky, seeing a far light on the horizon. Many lights had died in the windy dark but far down the road there was always a gleam, and it was as if a legend had been created to express some obscure truth that could not otherwise be stated. Everything had changed, the war and the men and the land they fought for, but the road ahead had not changed. It went on through the trees and past the little towns and over the hills, and there was no getting to the end of it.”
Note: A.P. Hill, floating his remains– him– as well as others or their simulacrums, in ground or in sky, lifting them up & away, & the soldiers & sailors, these pesky cannons, putting them elsewhere from Richmond, in 2022, not much money involved, just $1,563,963.17 (current estimate), that .17 for someone to stand behind it all with a Peacock feather.
nccivilwarcenter.org
“My name is Katy Louise Frye Sigmon. I am almost 93 years old. I was born and raised on this farm. The log house stood until December 1918 but burned to the ground then. As a child I knew where the brick oven stood, where the foundation of the house was, and also where the spring was. The log barn stood until sometime in the 1950s. One of my nephews still lives on 12 acres of the original farm. The story below was told to me by my paternal grandmother, Louise Camilla Caroline Frye. Born October 3, 1860 in Catawba County, NC, Jacobs Fork Township near Newton, NC.
After the War, as the Yankees were making their way back North, three Yankee soldiers stopped by the Frye farm and demanded that food be prepared for them. My great-grandmother “Betsy” (?) was home alone with three small daughters: Alice, Clara, and “Lou.” The men in the family were down by the river (Jacobs Fork) tending to the farm animals that had been hidden away in a “canebrake” to keep them safe.
Lou’s mother cooked over an open fire in the kitchen of the log house. She used a brick oven to bake bread. The brick oven was in a yard nearby. Water came from a spring about 800 feet from the house.
When the soldiers appeared, the little girls were hidden in the loft of the log house. My grandmother was 4 years old but remembered seeing two chickens being killed and cooked, plus bread being baked for the soldiers. Betsy was afraid to leave the house, so someone had to go to the spring to get water.
It took all day to cook the meal. The little girls stayed in the loft all day. Their “Bond servant” (slave) was hidden in the log barn that was nearly a quarter mile from the house.
My grandmother said her most vivid memory was as the sun was going down, she saw the Yankee soldiers walking across the hill with the sun shining on their backs.”*
The Civil War Archive: The History of the Civil War in Documents Henry Steele Commager P. 837 Myrta Lockett Avary in Dixie After the War
“For months after the surrender, Confederates were passing through the country to their homes, and hospitality was free to every ragged and footsore soldier; the poor best the larder of every mansion afforded was at the command of the grayjacket. How diffidently proud men would ask fo rbread, their empty pockets shaming them! When any man turned them off with cold words, it was not well for his neighbors to know; for so he was like to have no more respectable guests. The soldiers were good company, bringing news from far and wide. Most were cheerful, glad they were going home, undaunted by long tramps ahead. The soldier was used to hard marches. Now that his course was set toward where loved ones watched for his coming, life had its rosy outlook that turned to gray for some who reached the spot where home had stood to find only a bank of ashes. Reports of country through which they came were often summed up: “White folks in the fields, Negroes flocking to towns. Freedmen’s Bureau offices everywhere thronged with blacks.’”
Note: Snapping back to reality, 1862:
Terrible Swift Sword Bruce Catton P. 264
“As far as any Northerner could see in the middle of April, 1862, the war was almost won. The Confederacy was losing the Mississippi River** and all of the west, its Atlantic coastline was being sealed off, and it was obviously hard pressed. Secretary Stanton was so confident that on April 3 he closed the Army’s recruiting offices and ordered all recruiting details back to their regiments. Now the North’s largest army, carefully trained for eight months and equipped with everything an army could use, was coming down to crush a Confederate capital whose outnumbered defenders were still trying to reorganize their troops all the way down to company and regimental levels. This, surely, would be the final blow. It had to be.
And yet… four months later, after this army had done its level best, the war had turned topsy-turvy and it was the North rather than the South which seemed to be in danger of defeat. Once the Army of the Potomac went into action the tide began to flow in the other direction. The beginning of the long war—the all-out, all-destroying, disastrous war that finally went beyond control—dates from this army’s advance up the Virginia peninsula.”
A Virginia Yankee in the Civil War The Diaries of David Hunter Strother David Hunter Strother P. 28
“APRIL 11, FRIDAY.—Bright with frost…. Shields thinks that Lee is in front of McClellan. Lee has been appointed commander in chief of the Southern forces, which indicates that confidence in Davis is lost. Lee was the favorite officer of General Scott while in the U.S. Army. Davis was furiously jealous of Scott and consequently of anyone he patronized. Lee entered the service of Virginia when she made her first revolutionary movement, but when she was annexed to the Southern Confederacy, it was supposed he would resign. He did not do so, however, but has continued to serve in comparative obscurity. This was doubtless because of the ill-feeling between himself and President Davis. His promotion to chief command shows that the reverse of the Southern arms has ruined Davis’s influence and it promises that a great battle will be fought in Virginia. If this battle is decisively lost, it will finish the Rebellion and the old Virginia oligarchy will perish with it.”
The Civil War The Final Year Told by Those Who Lived It Edited by Aaron Sheehan-Dean P. 710
“SOMETHING THAT HAUNTED US”:
VIRGINIA, APRIL 1865
Stephen Minot Weld to Hannah Minot Weld
“For many of the young men who came of age during the war, soldiering came to seem the only way of life. “We expect to make this our trade for we have become fitted for nothing else now,” wrote Samuel Selden Brooke, a company commander in the 47th Virginia Infantry, in March 1864. Lieutenant Colonel Stephen Minot Weld had been captured at the Battle of the Crater in Petersburg on July 30, 1864, while leading the 56th Massachusetts Infantry. Weld was imprisoned in Columbia, South Carolina, until December, when he was paroled and sent north. Exchanged in March 1865, he rejoined his regiment in Virginia on April 4. He wrote to his older sister about Lee’s surrender:
CITY POINT, April 24, 1865.
DEAR HANNAH,— I received several letters from you last night, several of the complaining of my short letters and my want of enthusiasm for Lee’s surrender. To tell the truth, we none of us realize even yet that he has actually surrendered. I had a sort of impression that we should fight him all our lives. He was like a ghost to children, something that haunted us so long that we could not realize that he and his army were really out of existence to us. It will take me some months to be conscious of this fact.
In regard to the brevity of my epistle, I can only say that I have nothing to tell about.
I have got a splendid mule, which I am going to take home with me, if I can. He is the finest animal I have ever seen.
Last Thursday we received orders to move to City Point, and from there to Washington. Part of our corps has already moved and we are waiting for transportation. We shall probably move to-morrow, having reached here yesterday afternoon. Last Wednesday, the day before we moved, I went up to General Miles’s headquarters. First I went to Second Corps headquarters and then with Charlie Whittier to General Miles’s. While there, about forty negroes came in from Danville. General Miles ordered the band out, and told the negroes that he would hang every one who would not dance. About seven refused to dance, saying they were church members. The rest went at it tooth and nail, gray-headed old men and young boys. I never laughed so hard in my life.”
Judgment at Appomattox Ralph Peters
Note: Four pages before the end, writing about the surrender: the date is April 11:
“The weather soured, dousing the armies with rain, but within two days the formal surrenders began. First, the artillery turned over its guns, vehicles, and ammunition reserves, along with any animals that were property of the Confederacy, many of them lamed or dying in harness.”
Throes of Democracy: The American Civil War Era 1829-1877 Walter A. McDougall P. 454
“Although New England, New York, and Pennsylvania were the Union’s demographic and industrial core, they led a victorious war effort only because of the manpower, foodstuffs, railroads, horses, geography, and loyalty of the upper Midwest. Indeed, the nation’s center of gravity shifted so sharply in the Civil War era that twelve of the eighteen presidential elections from 1860 to 1928 would be won by midwesterners.”
*Imagine cherishing in your mind’s eye all those decades the day-going-down-sun-color hitting off their backs, that slant of light on their motion, the men just fed then walking off across her local hill, walking under a clingwrapping sun on its last legs for the day, those men she’ll never see again, some subtle property beside them walking too because the war just now finished with the surrender, & how that memory will stay, too, with the men the remainder of their days. And Katy’s being four, not knowing what exactly what just happened, but that it was big, & that it’s getting burned into her mind’s eye right then & there.
Note: Apricate (17th c.): to revel in the warmth of the sun on your back.
**Whoever gets control of the rivers Ohio, Mississippi, & Missouri wins the war Sherman said. Their loss of the Mississippi, in particular, would cut the Confederacy in half. As McPherson writes, “One of Lincoln’s first actions as commander in chief after the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter was to declare a blockade of the Confederate coast, which eventually extended 3500 miles from Virginia to Texas, including 189 harbors and coves where cargo could be landed. To block all of these holes was an impossible task.” The War that Forged a Nation: Why the Civil War Still Matters James McPherson (2015) P. 69
The Mississippi River & its tributaries:
Note: PA. 110th is on the cover of this book! https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/james-m-mcpherson/the-war-that-forged-a-nation/
Note: Some historians say Lincoln was killed because Booth heard his speech 4/11/65 where he mentioned Black voting rights.
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looking for a letter from home and there has none come….
The sun gets uncovered like a sentence that’s been commuted.
Fighting keeps going, though.
Lacking an explanatory key to the plot, the CSS Shenandoah “wipes out” the Yankee whaling fleet in the North Pacific, & something something Bering Sea. Not until August will they give up, “…stow its guns and makes a covert escape to Liverpool, England, where it furled its giant Confederate flag for the last time.”
And then, this happens: The Sultana. 260 feet spaddle-wheeler registered to board no more than 376, yet had 1,866– even up to 2,137…. plus 85 crew, 75 civilians, 160 animals. This is what happens when that. Happens.
Wiped out. Andersonville, most of them coming home from. That they would live after all. 4/27/65.
Just north of Memphis. Boiler explodes into flames. Union soldiers mainly, but some Confederate too. Just getting home. Getting closer. Just a scosh longer. Three. Three weeks after the surrender. A scosh more. Then walk in. Home. The door. If there was one still.
Southerners standing along the Mississippi who saw it happen swim out, like trying to touch the sky with two arms to hold it, bring it to ground level. Pull in logs. Anything. Here & now. Anything in reach. They make a makeshift raft. See if anyone, anyone is left alive? At the same time other nearby boats, southerners again, try to salvage those on fire. Men. On fire. Just out of Andersonville. Men reduced to withering flames, simultaneously drowning in a water that had not the grace to keep them aloft at this late date, even. The Ark is closing without. Those northerners. Then these southerners, swimming out to save their hides. Just after Andersonville.
A sound no animal has, a smell any animal ever heard.
The scramble for high ground now, the settling of blood. But don’t mistake coincidence for fate. This won’t be it.
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