Day 49. April 18, 1862.
49
they had no historian and they left no record….
Friday 18
Quite cool this morning but cloudy and looks as if we will have some rain but got very warm and cleared off. I went to the battlefield of Winchester. I got a lot of canes to send home to Father.* I saw 70 prisners but into town. We are still camped near town. It commenced to rain some this evening. Thunderd but did not rain much
*Likely to his father, Peter Burket (1793-1867) he sent sugar canes. William Penn owned Ephraim’s farm originally. Penn sold it to someone the Burket’s bought it from. But who were the Burkets going back in Pennsylvania history?
About Ephraim’s heritage & the history of the farm he owned, I discovered, in the preface of a 54 page book “History of the Descendants of Peter Burket, late of Sinking Valley, Blair Co., Pa., who died Jan. 20, 1867 by Theodore Blair Patton” (Published 1897), notes taken after a family reunion of the Burkets and Pattons. (The Pattons were of the first Pennsylvania Railroad. I have, passed down, a piece of rail line from what my grandfather said was used in constructing the First PA. RR that Mr. Patton gifted to either his father or grandfather— can’t remember which man he said, as I was literally a child, but likely Ephraim, as he was the one who knew the Pattons first? It weighs 27 lbs. Ephraim had clipped & placed in the back flap of his diary a long article on the Pattons at the PA. RR. From a newspaper that cost 3 cents.) With the reunion notes are hard to see photographs where people are sitting in front of the farm, around tables, taken at the family reunion July, 1895; one with hands on hips, one man is all who can be seen, so that everyone else present resembles just rough outlines of gravestones sitting by two windows at the two-story farm. The book also has several hand-drawn illustrations of the Burket property. No word on how the debt of Penn’s peppercorn vines played out…. (below)
“Sometime since, at a family reunion, held at the home of Col. Ephraim* Burket, on the old homestead farm, in Sinking Valley, Blair county, Pennsylvania, the subject of the history of the Burket family, and the descendants of Peter Burket, deceased, was discussed.
It appeared that no history of the Burket family was known to exist, and that no complete record of the descendants of Peter Burket was in the possession of any of the members of his family. It was thought best to endeavor to complete a record of the latter, and steps were taken to that end.
The work was proven much more difficult than was anticipated, and has, therefore, taken a much longer time than it was thought possible.
The blank pages are intended to be used in completing the further family history as it may become necessary.
T.B. PATTON Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, December 22, 1897
On April 16th, 1793, John Penn the younger, and John Penn the elder, by their attorney Anthony Butler, sold to James Stuart 375 acres and 39 perches of land located in Tyrone township, county of Huntingdon (afterwards Blair county) State of Pennsylvania (being part of the late proprietaries manor of Sinking Valley) for 370 pounds, 12 shillings and 1 penny current money of Pennsylvania in specie, in addition to which said James Stuart was to pay a quit rent of one (1) peppercorn on the first day of March of each and every year thereafter, forever if demanded.
From Stuart, in 1802, for 2000 pounds, all the land and perches passed to Peter Burgart Sr., then Peter Burket Jr., then Ephraim.”
Hauntingly, this last line arrives right before the blank pages were left for future Burket generations to fill in with family lore: “There seems to be no records in the possession of any of the Burket family giving any history as to the antecedents of Peter Burgart, Sr.” It’s possible Peter Burgart came from Germany as an indentured servant or was an escaped convict. Whatever the case, he did not ensure future generations knew a thing about him, not even basic information for his sons to pass down. In this, he was honest by default, for he could have invented any florid story he chose about his place in Europe before arrival in the U.S. (For more on Ephraim’s history, see May 5th letter, May 27th letter.)
Apologies for the sideways last two pics. They’re that way in the book, I swear. The 4th pic on the side reads, “The Burket Farm, Sinking Valley, Blair County, Pennsylvania, 1897.”
The 5th pic reads, “The Burket Homestead, Showing Reunion of Burket and Patton Families, 1895.” If you squint you can make out vague outlines of Burkets & Pattons gathered but long dead. Pic 6 is a ledger in Ephraim’s diary where he wrote Patton borrowed or lent money for something illegible, & 2 crocks of butter. $6.72 total.
**Founded in 1894, The Museum of the Confederacy is 2 blocks north of the State Capitol, & in 2013 changed its name, transitioning into & with the American Civil War Museum. The White House of the Confederacy is under the ACWM umbrella now also, as is the American Civil War Museum at Appomattox. Pretty sure I’d cut off a finger in exchange for airfare & hotel there. On 4/22/22, the Valentine Museum and Reclaiming the Monument presented a “temporary light-based public art installation” at night, which flashed the first of six giant projections of photographs across the entirety of the outside of the White House. It’s called “There All Along: The Hidden Black Lives Inside the White House of the Confederacy.” To learn more, see valentine.org. They won a $670k grant from the Mellon Foundation Monuments Project, which seeks to “transform the nation’s commemorative landscape by supporting public projects that more completely and accurately represent the multiplicity and complexity of American stories.” Right now, “Recontextualizing Richmond” is the art, & the artists are Alex Criqui & Dustin Klein. Reclaiming the Monument’s work the NYT called one of the “most influential works of American protest art since World War II.”
That there’s these images cast over the whole thing, the size of the whole building, so there’s no building left to see, the building now evaporated, as it should never have existed, & is now there on this night only due to these projected images, that it is only these images that now give what’s left something to show for it…. I can’t put it in words, but I love it.
Back to the ACWM: Some– should we call them patriots?– aren’t happy.
Reviews online: “There are plenty of replicas of historic Union flags, as there should be, but no Confederate battle flags. That says it all. Don’t waste your time here.” “It does not have the warmth of the former Museum of the Confederacy. There is even a statue of Lincoln in front. Distasteful.” “And to top it off the last thing you see as you leave the so called museum is a KKK hood. Every Confederate family that donated artifacts should demand them back! Fake history what a disgrace of Richmond and the Southern soldiers!” “It’s very obvious the how place is set up. It’s obvious the purpose is to make the southern soldiers such horrible human beings. And I noticed a lot less Confederate artifacts in this museum verses the old one.” “I walked out. I should have asked for my money back.” “This museum is showing our history as being focused on slavery instead of the real reason for the Civil War, it was about Constitutional Rights.” “Very few actual objects, let down since VA and Richmond in particular are the heart of the civil war.” “Descriptions are placed too low behind the glass to be legible. I literally spend an hour on my hands and knees reading about ‘who-gave-what-that-belonged-to-whom-and-when’!” “Our nation deserves a bit more effort.”
Tedious. Tedious & mistaken Americans. Out of “over 120,000 unique artifacts, pamphlets, photographs, prints, sketches and manuscripts,” half of which aren’t military, plus the 3,000 item collection that’s part of Black military history from the Civil War up through the Gulf War, & the 500 plus flags carried across the battlefields…. if a person can’t find something of interest, they probably got lost on the way to the Museum of Nothingness, located 15 miles south in a town called Nowhere.
See acwm.org. It’s a great website with online exhibits & lots of info. FYI: They’re accepting descendant’s civilian & military artifacts, as they have for the past 120+ years.
Civil War Weather in Virginia Robert K. Krick P. 52
“On April 18, local cavalrymen forced to abandon Fredericksburg to the enemy for the first time left their home grounds under a bright sky. As they looked back across the Rappahannock River they could see enemy regiments “marching… across the fields of the Chatham estate with their muskets glistening brightly in the morning sun.”
P. 54
“7a.m. 62; 2p.m. 84; 9p.m. 66. Rain .85.”
The Civil War Diary Quilt Rosemary Youngs P. 157
Emma LeConte: Diary, February 14, 1864
“What a panic the whole town is in! I have not been out of the house myself, but father says the intense excitement prevails on the streets. The Yankees are reported a few miles off on the other side of the river. How strong no one seems to know. It is decided if this be true that we will remain quietly here, father alone leaving. It is thought Columbia can hardly be taken by a raid as we have the whole of Butler’s cavalry here– and if they do we have to take the consequences. It true some think Sherman will burn the town, but we can hardly believe that. Besides these buildings, though they are State property, yet the fact that they are used as a hospital will it is thought protect them. I have been hastily making large pockets to wear under my hoopskirt– for they will hardly search our persons. Still everything of any value is to be packed up to go with father. I do not feel half so frightened as I thought I would. Perhaps because I cannot realize they are coming. I hope still this is a false report. Maggie Adams and her husband have promised to stay here during father’s absence. She is a Yankee and may be some protection and help. Our sufferings will probably be of short duration. As they will hardly send more than a raid. They would not have time to occupy the town. But I cannot believe they are coming!”
Note: One year later, she writes:
The Civil War The Final Year: Told by Those Who Lived It Edited by Aaron Sheehan-Dean P. 601
THE BURNING OF COLUMBIA: SOUTH CAROLINA, FEBRUARY 1865
Emma LeConte: Diary, February 18, 1865
“Saturday Afternoon, 18th. What a night of horror misery and agony! It is so useless to try to put on paper any idea of it. The recollection of it is so fearful– yet any attempt to describe it seems so useless– it even makes one sick to think of writing down such scenes. And yet I have written thus far, I ought, while it is still fresh, try even imperfectly to give some account of last night. Every incident is now so vividly before me and yet it does not seem real– rather like a fearful dream, or nightmare that still oppresses.”
Note: Hitchcock below makes clear his anger at the outrageous pillaging, & what should be done about it. If you can imagine scores of men combing through like a plague of locusts, you can imagine it was “next to impossible” for officers to prevent outright plunder:
Marching with Sherman: Passages from the Letters and Campaign Diaries of Henry Hitchcock, Major and Assistant Adjutant General of Volunteers, November 1864–May 1865 (1927) Major Henry Hitchcock P. 133-134
(Excerpt)
In Camp “Scarboro” or “Station No. 7”
On GEORGIA CENTRAL R.RD.
Eighteenth Day out
Saturday, December 3/64.
“From this house we had a fine view of the burning of the R.R. Depot, ticket office and storehouses. The depot made a superb fire, even at noonday. Densest black smoke in immense volumes,—then broad sheets of flame licking the shingle roof and pillars, and sucked in under the eaves like a sheet of blazing fluid. Davis’ sketch shows this very well, but he ought to have made a larger picture and taken in whole scene: smaller building this side of depot, woods all round, troops filling round from destroyed track up road over hill and past our house, and storehouses also burning near the R.R. Track, to the right. Gen. Howard joined us at this house and sat some time talking with General and rode on with us. Mrs. Myers also there, Frau of the old Jew, and much more sense. She took the loss of cotton much more quietly and tried to step his ceaseless talk and protestations. “It’s no use to talk—’tis brennin’ now.” As usual the soldiers had carried off all provisions and they said had also entered the house and stolen clothes, knives and forks, etc.—besides gutting a little frame store in front of the house, which constituted (with the hotel) the business portion of the “late town of Millen.” Here is but one comment on these things; no need to repeat it. I cannot think there is any sufficient excuse. Admit (as we must) the difficulty of preventing all lawlessness in a large army,—especially that of negroes and camp followers, who cannot always be reached,—yet I am sure that a Headquarters Provost Marshal, if necessary, with a rigid system of roll-calls in every company required at any halt—severe punishment inflicted not only on men who straggle but also on officers who fail to prevent it,—and the absolute prohibition and summary punishment even of legitimate foraging except by regular details,—would go far to prevent these outrages. The general orders contemplate and call for this,—but they are not enforced,—at least not as I think they should and might be. Per contra it is true that real efforts have been and are made by both Division and regimental Commanders to do this very thing,—Howard has issued very severe orders against pillaging, denouncing the punishment of it by death, and has now several men on trial for it who if convicted will be shot. Also, it is in fact next to impossible—obviously so—to catch, or when caught to identify or convict, the guilty parties. The mischief is not done under the eye of officers, and five or ten minutes is long enough to do irreparable harm.”
P. 62
Note: Hitchcock writes from “Latimer’s X Roads” at 7:30 P.M. on November 16, 1864, on his “first day’s march out,” illustrating just how fast things can go wrong:
“As we passed Latimer’s house…. not a straggler from the ranks going by. I rejoiced that though deserted, it escaped. Since we camped, before dark, first a thick smoke, then ruddy glow over tree tops, now a lesser one, signals its destruction by those behind us. Probably some soldier discovered its master’s whereabouts also, and so goodbye to his house. Sorry for it—yet who can be surprised, and how to help it? Two minutes’ work of one unnoticed straggler. Talked with Ewing,—condemned it as against “Special Field Order No. 120”—he agrees, but says impossible to control unless by power to kill for it. Vested with General in the field, and that now all such things must first go to Washington, and there they refuse to sanction punishment by death. It is a great mistake. Such “mercy” damages us.
Had quite warm discussion with Dayton (Capt. and A.D.C.) this morning en route: I advocating our self-restraint, “laws of war” etc., etc., he contending we should do whatever and as bad as the rebs, even to scalping. His view not important, save as typical.”
Last: His stunning portrayal of fiery Columbia, the torched cotton, their drunken, failed attempts to douse it all:
Marching with Sherman: Passages from the Letters and Campaign Diaries of Henry Hitchcock, Major and Assistant Adjutant General of Volunteers, November 1864–May 1865 (1927) Major Henry Hitchcock P. 268-270
Fayetteville, North Carolina, Sunday, March 12, 1865 (letter to wife)
“One word about Columbia. It was not burned by orders, but expressly against orders and inspite of the utmost effort on our part to save it. Everything seemed to conspire for its destruction. The streets were full of loose cotton, brought out and set on fire by the rebels before they left,—I saw it when we rode into town. A gale of wind was blowing all that day and that night, and the branches of the trees were white with cotton tufts blown about everywhere. The citizens themselves—like idiots, madmen,—brought out large quantities of liquor as soon as our troops entered and distributed it freely among them, even to the guards which Gen. Howard had immediately placed all over the city as soon as we came in. This fact is unquestionable, and was one chief cause of what followed. Here in Fayetteville a lady has told Gen. Sherman that Gen. Joe Johnson told her, yesterday morning, that the burning of Columbia was caused by liquor which the people there gave our soldiers. Besides there were 200 or 300 of “our prisoners” who had escaped from rebel hands before, and when we reached Columbia burning to revenge themselves for the cruel tratment they had received; and our own men were fully aware of the claims of Columbia to eminence as the “cradle of succession.” In that same town, in 1861, a woman, a school-teacher from New England, was tarred and feathered and sent North “for abolition sentiments.”
The result of all this was that partly by accident, from the burning cotton, partly by design by our escaped prisoners, and by our drunken men, fire was started in several places,—and once started, with the furious wind blowing, it was simply impossible to put it out. Nothing was left undone,—I speak advisedly—to prevent and stop it; Gen. Howard, Sherman, and other Generals and their staffs, and many other officers and hundreds of men were up and at work nearly all night, trying to do it, but in vain. The guard was changed— three times as many men were on guard as were even on guard at any one time in Savannah where perfect order was preserved; our own officers shot our men down like dogs wherever they were found riotous or drunk—in short no effort was spared to stop it; and but for the liquor it might perhaps have been stopped. This is the truth; and Wade Hampton’s letter to Sherman—it will be in the New York Herald if not already published North—charging him with sundry crimes at Columbia is a tissue of lies….”
Hearts Touched by Fire: The Best of Battles and Leaders of the Civil War Edited by Harold Holzer P. 1069-1071
SHERMAN’S MARCH FROM SAVANNAH TO BENTONVILLE.
Henry W. Slocum, Major-General, U.S.V.
Note: The following is an excerpt from a long footnote where Slocum writes:
“A knowledge of the art of building railroads is certainly of more value to a country than that of the best means of destroying them; but at this particular time the destruction seemed necessary, and the time may come again when such work will have to be done. Lest the most effectual and expeditious method of destroying railroad tracks should become one of the lost arts, I will here give a few rules for the guidance of officers who may in future be charged with this important duty. It should be remembered that these rules are the result of long experience and close observation. A detail of men to do the work should be made on the evening before operations are to commence. The number to be detailed being, of course, dependent upon the amount of work to be done, I estimate that one thousand men can easily destroy about five miles of track per day, and do it thoroughly. Before going out in the morning the men should be supplied with a good breakfast, for it has been discovered that soldiers are more efficient at this work, as well as on the battle-field, when their stomachs are full than when they are empty. The question as to the food to be given the men for breakfast is not important, but I suggest roast turkeys, chickens, fresh eggs, and coffee, for the reason that in an enemy’s country such a breakfast will cause no unpleasantness between the commissary and the soldiers, inasmuch the commissary will only be required to provide the coffee. In fact it has been discovered that an army moving through a hostile but fertile country, having an efficient corps of foragers (vulgarly known in our army as “bummers”), requires but few articles of food, such as hard-tack, coffee, salt, pepper, and sugar. Your detail should be divided into three sections of about equal numbers. I will suppose the detail to consist of three thousand men. The first thing to be done is to reverse the relative positions of the ties and iron rails, placing the ties up and the rails under them. To do this, Section No. 1, consisting of one thousand men, is distributed along one side of the track, one man at the end of each tie. At a given signal each man seizes a tie, lifts it gently till it assumes a vertical position, and then at another signal pushes it forward so that when it falls the ties will be over the rails. Then each man loosens his tie from the rail. This done, Section No. 1 moves forward to another portion of the road, and Section No. 2 advances and is distributed along the portion of the road recently occupied by Section No. 1. The duty of the second section is to collect the ties, place them in piles of about thirty ties each—place the rails on top of these piles, the center of each rail being over the center of the pile, and then set fire to the ties. Section No. 2 then follows No. 1. As soon as the rails are sufficiently heated Section No. 3 takes the place of No. 2; and upon this devolves the most important duty, viz., the effectual destruction of the rail. This section should be in command of an efficient officer who will see that the work is not slighted. Unless closely watched, soldiers will content themselves with simply bending the rails around trees. This should never be permitted. A rail which is simply bent can easily be restored to its original shape. No rail should be regarded as properly treated till it has assumed the shape of a doughnut; it must not only be bent but twisted. To do the twisting Poe’s railroad hooks are necessary, for it has been found that the soldiers will not seize the hot iron bare-handed. This, however, is the only thing looking toward the destruction of property which I ever knew a man in Sherman’s army restoring it to its former shape except by re-rolling. –H.W.S.”
This Hallowed Ground: The Story of the Union Side of the Civil War Bruce Catton P. P. 441-443
Note: Upshot was 100 million in damages all to get the parasitic White folk to do they own damn work:
“Plantations were looted outright; men who had set out to take no more than hams and chickens began carrying away heirlooms, silver, watches- anything that struck their fancy. Here and there southern patriots felled trees to obstruct roads, or burned bridges; there was never enough of this to delay the army seriously, but there was just enough to provoke reprisals, and barns and houses went up in smoke as a result. A general remarked that “as the habit of measuring right by might goes on, pillage becomes wanton and arson is committed to cover the pillage.” An Illinois soldier confessed that “it could not be expected that among so many tens of thousands there would be no rogues,” and another man from the same state burst out: “There is no God in war. It is merciless, cruel, vindictive, un-Christian, savage, relentless. It is all that devils could wish for.”
Day after day crowds of fugitive slaves fell in on the roads to follow the army. A “Mammy” would show up, bundle on her head, baby in her arms, three small children at her heels; the soldiers would ask where she was going and she would say, “To Savannah, sah–” and officers, who were aware that the army’s destination was not known even to the Union rank and file, would wonder how she knew that that was where they were heading. Sherman did his utmost to keep these fugitives from following. It was ordered that the army’s progress was on no account to be obstructed or delayed by these hopeful contrabands, but there was no way to keep them from trailing after the soldiers if they chose, and many of them did choose. What became of most of them, no one ever knew. Thousands of Negroes, it was thought, followed the army for a few days and then vanished, going off no one knew where, uprooted persons wholly adrift in a strange and disordered world. In the end, thousands of them did reach the seacoast with the army, but they were only a fraction of the blind, desperate throng that followed for a time and then spun off into unremembered darkness.
They had no historian and they left no record, and the soldiers were by turns amused and bored by them; but as they moved- blindly, hopefully, doomed, going from one misery to another- they gave significance to the entire march, to the long dusty columns in blue with rowdy outriders and with the lines of bayonets that took no arguments from planters. For if this army was destroying much that did not need to be destroyed, it was also destroying slavery; dismantling one of the barricades that stood in the way of the advance of the human spirit, lighting dreadful fires that would finally stand as beacon lights no matter what they consumed.
It is believed that some of the fugitives met death by starvation, yet those who were able to stay with the troops usually got enough to eat. Some queer grapevine of slave-quarter information told the Negroes which regiments in all this army tended to be most kindly and hospitable; also, the soldiers simply had ever so much more food than they themselves could consume. Foragers brought in vast wagonloads of material that was abandoned to rot. Usually the surplus was given to the Negroes.
So much food was taken, indeed, that the soldiers themselves were almost appalled when they stopped to think about it. In one regiment the men made a rough rule-of-thumb estimate of the requisitions that had been made and concluded that the army must have accounted for one hundred thousand hogs, twenty thousand head of cattle, fifteen thousand horses and mules, five hundred thousand bushels of corn, and one hundred thousand bushels of sweet potatoes. Sherman himself later estimated that his army had caused one hundred million dollars’ worth of damage in Georgia. Of this, he believed, perhaps twenty million dollars represented material that the army actually used; the rest was “simple waste and destruction.” One officer wrote about burned houses, burned fences, roads cut to bits by marching men, fields despoiled and crossed by innumerable wagon tracks, and concluded that “Dante’s Inferno could not furnish a more horrible and depressing picture than a countryside when war has swept over it.” As the march went on, it was noted that the word “bummer” changed its character. Originally it had been a term of contempt, applied only to the notorious stragglers who never stayed in ranks, in battle or out of battle, and who were looked down on by all combat soldiers; before the army got to the coast the men were beginning to call themselves bummers, and even Sherman, looking back in post-war years, did not mind applying the word to all of his troops.
The effect of all of this was prodigious. As Sherman had foreseen, the fact that an army of sixty thousand men could march straight through the southern heartland, moving leisurely and taking all the time it needed to destroy the land’s resources, without meeting enough resistance to cause even a day’s delay was an unmistakable portent of the approaching end. No one could remain in much doubt about how the war was going to result when this could be done. Furthermore, the march was both revealing and contributing to the Confederacy’s inability to use the resources that remained to it. Around Richmond, Lee’s army was underfed, short of animals, perceptibly losing strength from simple lack of food and forage; yet here in Georgia there was a wealth of the things it needed, and it could not get them– primarily because the land’s transportation and distribution system was all but in a state of total collapse, but also because this invading army was smashing straight through the source of supply. The morale of Confederate soldiers in Virginia and in Tennessee sank lower and lower as letters from home told how this army was wrecking everything and putting wives and children in danger of starvation.
P. 30
The army came up to Savannah on December 10. Sherman led it around to the right, striking for the Ogeechee River and Ossabaw Sound, where he could get in touch with the navy, receive supplies, and regain contact with Grant and with Washington. The XV Corps found itself making a night march along the bank of a canal; there was a moon, the evening was warm, and the swamp beside the canal looked strange, haunting, and mysterious, all silver and green and black, with dim vistas trailing off into shadowland. The men had been ordered to march quietly, but suddenly they began to sing- “Swanee River,” “Old Kentucky Home,” “John Brown’s Body,” and the like, moving on toward journey’s end in an unreal night. An Iowa soldier remembered how “the great spreading live-oaks and the tall spectre-like pines, fringing the banks of the narrow and straight canal, formed an arch over it through which the shimmering rays of the full moon cast streaks of mellow light,” and the picture stayed with him to old age.
Sherman missed a bet at Savannah, just as he had done at Atlanta. The Confederates had between ten and fifteen thousand soldiers there, and all of these might have been captured, but while he was investing the place Sherman incautiously left open a line of escape, and the defenders got out and moved up into the Carolinas.
Yet this did not really matter in the least. Prim General Hardee, the Confederate commander, might get his garrison away unscathed, but the war would not be prolonged ten minutes by this fact. For Sherman was not fighting an opposing army now; he was fighting an idea, knocking down the last shredded notion that the southern Confederacy could exist as an independent nation, moving steadily and relentlessly not toward a climactic engagement but simply toward the end of the war.
His soldiers found Savannah unlike any town they had ever been in before. They entered the place on December 21, marching formally for a change, with bands playing and flags flying, Sherman himself taking a salute as they marched past.”
Note: After the stanza about his pet lambs meeting John Brown on the way, when soldiers went marching into the next stanza, they likely sang, “They will hang Jeff Davis to a sour apple tree, they will hang Jeff Davis to a sour apple tree, they will hang Jeff Davis to a sour apple tree, as they march along.” To listen to a 1901 rendition of the song, see the YouTube video recorded May 21, 1901, 36 years after Appomattox. Does Jeff D. look like a raptor, or is that just me?
Note: The moon was full, too, on December 13th, 1864.
This Hallowed Ground: The Story of the Union Side of the Civil War Bruce Catton P. 357
“…and as it moved, the great march to the sea began to resemble nothing so much as one gigantic midwestern Halloween saturnalia, a whole month deep and two hundred and fifty miles long.”
We Can’t Breathe: On Black Lives, White Lies, and the Art of Survival Jabari Asim P. 26
“Desperate and with few friends or resources, they followed the conquering footsteps of the Union Army. “Neither soldier nor fugitive speaks with so deep a meaning as that dark human cloud that clung like remorse on the rear of those swift columns, swelling at times to half their size, almost engulfing and choking them,” DuBois wrote in The Souls of Black Folk. “In vain were they ordered back, in vain were bridges hewn from beneath their feet; on they trudged and writhed and surged, until they rolled into Savannah, a starved and naked horde of tens of thousands.” Blackness to a ragged thinness beat shines nonetheless: in the midst of filth and misery, the refugees shared sustenance and intelligence, forming new alliances of bond and blood. They made a way out of no way, just as their ancestors had done in the sweltering bellies of Jesus, Amistad, Henrietta Marie, and the other vessels that had dragged them, battered and tormented, to the looming horrors of a strange new hell.
Sometimes, I picture in my mind a young boy originating in Africa, unspooling alongside a young boy stumbling and choking as his coffle yanks him toward the sea. The thread extends apparently without end, through the bloody spill of centuries and across fruited plains and fetid plantations, trailing the double-time stomp of a black Union soldier and continuing to unspool beside the swollen ankles of a church matron marching her way from Selma to Montgomery. I could see the thread snaking along Pennsylvania Avenue during Barack and Michelle Obama’s stately walk to the White House.”
Hearts Touched by Fire: The Best of Battles and Leaders of the Civil War Edited by Harold Holzer P. 762 Joan Waugh
“Sherman and his force of 62,000 marched three hundred miles across the state– almost uncontested– living off the land and in some cases inflicting unauthorized damage to personal property. Captain Daniel Oakey of the 2nd Massachusetts remembered his unit’s role, describing a rough and ready group of soldiers “who were expected to make fifteen miles a day; to corduroy the road when necessary; to destroy such property as was designed by our corps commander, and to consume everything eatable by man or beast.’” Crushing civilian and material support for the Confederacy, Sherman’s troops arrived at Savannah’s outskirts by December 17, and Confederate defenders led by General William J. Hardee abandoned the city on December 21. on the next day, Sherman sent a telegram to President Lincoln, offering him the city as a Christmas present.”
The Civil War: The Final Year Told By Those Who Lived It Edited by Aaron Sheehan-Dean P. 522
Note: Writing about Sherman moving through Georgia:
“….Georgia residents were sometimes visited by different parties of Union “bummers” (foragers), as well as by groups of stragglers and Confederate deserters. At the end of the march Sherman estimated that his troops had consumed or destroyed resources worth $100 million, of which $20 million was used by the army, while the rest was “simple waste and destruction.’”
How the South Could Have Won the Civil War: The Fatal Errors That Led to Confederate Defeat Bevin Alexander P. 315, Footnote 16
“Sherman’s remorseless pattern of deliberate personal injury to the Southern people sowed seeds of hate that bore bitter fruit. The purpose of war is a more perfect peace. Sherman’s legacy was the opposite. The memory of the damage he and his men did was was passed from parent to child throughout the South for a century after the war. Sherman’s march evoked an enduring folk memory of wanton havoc that embittered the Southern people against the North, the Republican Party, and the national government for generations. This is why the South remained “solid” in voting Democratic for many years.”
Note: On this day, 1861, Union Lieutenant Roger Jones– after Lincoln ignores his wire for troops to protect the roughly 20k firearms stored in the garrison at Harper’s Ferry, VA.– torches the U.S. arsenal at Harper’s Ferry to prevent it from falling into Rebel hands. 4K arms survive to be shipped South. Between 1861 & 1865, the town changes hands 14 times. 9/15/62 Jackson will capture 12,419 (estimates vary) Yankees here after the Battle of Harper’s Ferry: “It was the largest surrender of Federal troops, larger in number than the surrender of British Generals Cornwallis or Burgoyne in the Revolutionary War. The defeat was so humiliating that when news of it was released in Washington, War Department censors cut the numbers of Union soldiers captured in half.” (Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson S.C. Gwynne P. 458)
Then nine days later, the Army of the Potomac retakes the town. To avoid destruction, St. Peter’s Catholic Church hoists a British flag & thus converts to a makeshift hospital where services continue. It was the sole church in town to remain unharmed.
Last: Col. Lewis is relieved of command today. He was the Post Commander at Winchester during the Federal occupation between March & May, 1862.
Note: This day in 1865, near Durham Station, NC., initial surrender terms between Johnston & Sherman are drawn up.
thunderd but did not rain much….
The heat from the very fire of their railroad tracks melted like a circle back to the question the rails shaped themselves into, like the curled snake on a flag not to get treaded while holding onto slaves– which is what caused them– then lost them– the war, caused– then lost them– the Confederacy, lost the very war they themselves declared yet were convinced they’d win, & now they themselves are black from the fire steel now knotted & necklaced around their own oak trunks, railroad ties snaking, chasing their tails as they cut apart lines of any kind; telegraphs, bridge planks, & the still blood-stained wood rafters leftover from the lynchings & other demonic principalities & the husks of buildings of the Confederacy. Meantime down in Vicksburg they’re eating rats & such, which goes on forever while concrete lions topple on the grounds at the mansion gates all in a row, then roar out their broken teeth, mouths going nowhere but up toward the spiders from Mars. This is it, now. Like in any game, there are rules. But the Geneva Convention of 1863 had no mention of a coven of confiscatory feral vampires when it came to taking entire towns, family farms, heirloom silver, the fixtures, the wall sconces coming down off the walls, the slaughter of hogs, horses, everything in sight, leaving the South an unstanchable open wound. They were simple punks passing through, you can keep what you can carry, & the mass of them moved into obvious criminality, another land of measurement.
Simple punks, & whatever scientific name for people born with a Devil’s tail &c.&c.&c.
Or they were heroes.
Or neither.
And the only way to get a Devil is with another Devil.
4 columns at times, 200 miles long, 60 or so miles apart, second in history only to Alexander the Great’s March through the Persian Empire (334-331BC). In a kind of carnival license they’ll lay on proper revenge: some 600 miles worth of at times a 25-60 mile wide “swath” of 62k now given no standing rules, right behind him under a loose ceiling one can see the sky through, to maim the walls into the world until there are no more walls, to maim the world into the sky until there is no more sky, to scorch out the land until nothing’s left of that & the no-more-sky, until all that’s left is to come to a last sea. Sherman, he rides like he couldn’t kill them enough when he burns the lot, the whole lot, nothing but the lot, to Sherman, to Sherman this little piggy goes.
Nothing was off-limits, no matter the inhabitants; it mattered not the species of animal nor the random object of these soldiers’ desire, nor the dwelling place; the destruction was truly wicked, despicable, & fucking unbelievable, & it is no wonder hatred of the ‘Yankee race’ persisted, persists, across the centuries. War was the license, as it’s always been, for certain types of malignant men.
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