Day 51. April 20, 1862
51
“DEVIL” scrawled on one of the bricks….
Sunday 20
Raining this morning and part of the night and very mudy today. There was not much stir today as it was disagreeable and this is Easter Sunday and we are in Virginny. We have no preaching today. I must close this for the evening.* Raining some this evening
*Was he in a hurry in a five line entry? There’s a mystery here. Instead of just closing, he announces he must close. Almost as an apology. It could be he was determined to write each day, but it was late and he was tired, so didn’t want to write more than just to put something down. Maybe the light was dying: “My candle is expiring” was a line to end a letter used back then, like my “battery’s going dead” to end a conversation.
Civil War Weather in Virginia Robert K. Krick P. 54
“7a.m. 49; 2p.m. 50; 9p.m. 48. Easter Sunday, showery.”
Silent Witness: The Civil War Through Photography and its Photographers Ron Field P. 283-287 Osprey Publishing 2017
“Following the surrender of the demoralized remains of the Army of Northern Virginia to Ulysses S. Grant on April 9, 1865, Robert E. Lee stayed at Appomattox for three days until the last of his soldiers had laid down their arms and been paroled. He then set out for Richmond. Two of his three sons, George Washington Custis Lee and William Henry Fitzhugh “Rooney” Lee rode with him, plus several aides, black servants, and a seriously wounded Confederate officer.
Following Lee’s arrival back in Richmond, there was great interest among photographers in the city to photograph him at such a pivotal moment in history. But while requests from both Roche and Gardner were refused, Brady had more success, having known and photographed Lee long before the war. When he first asked if Lee would sit for his camera, the defeated Confederate general is believed to have replied, “It is utterly impossible. How can I sit for a photograph with the eyes of the world upon me as they are today.” But Brady was persistent, and asked an old acquaintance, Confederate Colonel Robert Ould, to appeal to the general. A district attorney in Washington before the war, Ould had become the chief Confederate officer in charge of prisoner exchange during the Civil War. Interviewed later in life, Brady stated that Ould and Mrs. Lee persuaded the general to agree to be photographed, although as Brady put it, “It was supposed that after his defeat it would be preposterous to ask him to sit.” But, Brady continued, “I thought that to be the time for the historical picture.”
The next day, April 20, 1865, Brady came to the house and took a number of photographs. Four were of Lee alone and two of him with his aide, Colonel Walter Taylor, and his oldest son, Custis Lee, who had been captured at Sailor’s Creek only three days before the surrender. As the light was most favorable there, Brady posed them beneath the overhang of the back porch of the basement at 707 East Franklin Street, with his assistant, probably Egbert Fowx, behind the lens. Only a few short accounts of this monumental event appeared in the contemporary press. On April 22, the Washington Evening Star, quoting from the now Union-controlled Richmond Whig of the previous day, reported, “General Lee and staff – or rather those who accompanied him to Richmond – were yesterday photographed in a group by Mr. Brady, of New York. Six different sittings were then taken of General Lee, each in a different posture, and all were pronounced admirable pictures.”
In fact, things did not go completely smoothly on the occasion. Partway through the session, and while Lee was being photographed standing alone, someone noticed the derisive word “DEVIL” scrawled on one of the bricks to the left of the door behind him. An uncomfortable reminder that Lee was regarded as evil by many Unionists in 1865, the offensive graffiti was promptly scrubbed out and the rest of the photographs were taken. As further evidence that Brady did not want the image with the graffiti to be reproduced, it was later discovered that the photographic wet plate including it had the instruction “Do Not Use” scratched at the side.”
Note: And that Devil being one not discovered until 2006. See: john-banks.blogspot.com, “Then & Now: Robert E. Lee’s Wartime House in Richmond.”
Note: He gets the legacy he created. “Remembering Robert E. Lee 2009 with Gary W. Gallagher, “Robert E. Lee Confronts Defeat”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCLPb_bUjCE
Lee in the post-war years, Matt Atkinson, ranger at Gettysburg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVFoZFH1sLM
Silent Witness: The Civil War Through Photography and its Photographers Ron Field P. 287
“Six photographs of Robert E. Lee were taken by Matthew Brady and his assistants at his home in Richmond on April 20, 1865. A long-time acquaintance of Lee, Brady was anxious to photograph him, as historian Douglas Southall Freeman remarked, before “the fire of battle had faded from his eyes.” For the occasion Lee wore a clean uniform and well-shined black shows, but left aside his sword, waist sash and boots. The lack of braid on his coat sleeves was also a possible indication that he wished to appear less martial, thereby setting an example to his former troops to swallow their anger in defeat and return home to rebuild their lives. Only discovered in 2014 by a member of the Center for Civil War Photography, one of the bricks to the left of the door frame has the word “DEVIL” scrawled on it…’”**
The Myth of the Lost Cause and Civil War History Gary W. Gallagher and Alan T. Nolan, Editors (2000) P. 18 “The Anatomy of the Myth.” Alan T. Nolan
“Another characteristic of the Lost Cause legend appears in its characterizations of Southern military leaders. These men, at least the successful ones, are not evaluated simply in terms of their military and leadership skills and combat effectiveness. Although they are surely given such credit, they are also presented as remarkable and saintly creatures, supermen. Generals Lee and Stonewall Jackson are the primary examples of this phenomenon. The Lee hagiography is surely well known. Douglas Southall Freeman, his leading biographer, whose treatment has been highly influential with all other Lee writers, goes to great lengths to picture Lee as Christlike. Lee’s supreme, God-like status was established almost immediately after the war. As early as 1868 he was described in a Southern publication as “bathed in the white light that falls directly upon him from the smile of an approving and sustaining God.” The apotheosis had advanced by 1880, when John W. Daniel, who had served on Lt. Gen. Jubal Early’s* staff, wrote that: “The Divinity in his bosom shown translucent through the man and his spirit rose up to the god-like.” A group of twentieth-century writers including Gamaliel Bradford, Clifford Dowdey, and Freeman have carried this image of Lee well into our own time.”
Note: See also P. 245 on in Lens Of War for extensive suggested readings on the photographic record of the war. Great stuff! As the infamous (10/20/62) NYT quote about war photographer Mathew Brady & his 1862 exhibition “The Dead of Antietam” went & still goes, “Mr. Brady has done something to bring home to us the terrible reality and earnestness of war. If he has not brought the bodies and laid them in our dooryards and along the streets, he has done something very like it.” I ran across the NYT article below about Brady & it seemed a throughline to the present, from the ennui of all us caught out here in this over-saturated daily media-barraged world, but now via these thin bricks we hold in our hands, when so much of what we witness around the world seems surreal because, well, it is. Which brings me to the end of the following. What? Many, many, many folks would have read this piece in the NYT at the time it came out, which takes a random turn at the end about a horse race that should have been called off [???]:
BRADY’S PHOTOGRAPHS.; Pictures of the Dead at Antietam.
Oct. 20, 1862
Credit…The New York Times Archives
See the article in its original context from
October 20, 1862, Page 5
About the Archive
This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them. Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions.
The living that throng Broadway care little perhaps for the Dead at Antietam, but we fancy they would jostle less carelessly down the great thoroughfare, saunter less at their ease, were a few dripping bodies, fresh from the field, laid along the pavement. There would be a gathering up of skirts and a careful picking of way; conversation would be less lively, and the general air of pedestrians more subdued. As it is, the dead of the battle-field come up to us very rarely, even in dreams. We see the list in the morning paper at breakfast, but dismiss its recollection with the coffee. There is a confused mass of names, but they are all strangers; we forget the horrible significance that dwells amid the jumble of type. The roll we read is being called over in Eternity, and pale, trembling lips are answering to it. Shadowy fingers point from the page to a field where even imagination is loth to follow. Each of these little names that the printer struck off so lightly last night, whistling over his work, and that we speak with a clip of the tongue, represents a bleeding, mangled corpse. It is a thunderbolt that will crash into some brain — a dull, dead, remorseless weight that will full upon some heart, straining it to breaking. There is nothing very terrible to us, however, in in the list, though our sensations might be different if the newspaper carrier left the names on the battle-field and the bodies at our doors instead.
We recognize the battle-field as a reality, but it stands as a remote one. It is like a funeral next door. The crape on the bell-pull tells there is death in the house, and in the close carriage that rolls away with muffled wheels you know there rides a woman to whom the world is very dark now. But you only see the mourners in the last of the long line of carriages — they ride very jollily and at their case, smoking cigars in a furtive and discursive manner, perhaps, and, were it not for the black gloves they wear, which the deceased was wise and liberal enough to furnish, it might be a wedding for all the world would know. It attracts your attention, but does not enlist your sympathy. But it is very different when the hearse stops at your own door, and the corpse is carried out over your own threshold — you know whether it is a wedding or a funeral then, without looking at the color of gloves worn. Those who lose friends in battle know what battle-fields are, and our Marylanders, with their door-yards strewed with the dead and dying, and their houses turned into hospitals for the wounded, know what battle-fields are.
Mr. BRADY has done something to bring home to us the terrible reality and earnestness of war. If he has not brought bodies and laid them in our dooryards and along the streets, he has done something very like it. At the door of his gallery hangs a little placard, “The Dead of Antietam.” Crowds of people are constantly going up the stairs; follow them, and you find them bending over photographic views of that fearful battle-field, taken immediately after the action. Of all objects of horror one would think the battle-field should stand preeminent, that it should bear away the palm of repulsiveness. But, on the contrary, there is a terrible fascination about it that draws one near these pictures, and makes him loth to leave them. You will see hushed, reverend groups standing around these weird copies of carnage, bending down to look in the pale faces of the dead, chained by the strange spell that dwells in dead men’s eyes. It seems somewhat singular that the same sun that looked down on the faces of the slain, blistering them, blotting out from the bodies all semblance to humanity, and hastening corruption, should have thus caught their features upon canvas, and given them perpetuity for ever. But so it is.
These poor subjects could not give the sun sittings, and they are taken as they fell, their poor [???] the grass of around them in [???] of Pain, or reaching out for a help which none gave. Union, soldier and Confederate, side by side, here they lie, the red light of battle faded from their eyes but [???] set as when they met in the last fierce change which located their souls and sent them grappling with each other and battling to the very grass of Heaven. The ground whereon they lie is [???] by shot and shell, the grass is trampled down by the [???] of her, [???] feet, and little revulets that and scarcely be of [???] trickling along the earth like tears over a mother space. It is a block, barren plain and alone it bends an ashen [???] there is no friendly [???] or shelter from the noonday sun or the midnight [???] coldly and unpifyingly the stars will look down them and darkness will come with night to shut them in. But there is a poetry in the scene that no green holds or smiling landscapes can possese. Here lie men who have not hesitated to seal and lamp their convictions with their blood, — men who have lung themselves into the great gulf of the until own to teach world that there are truths [???] than life, wrongs and shames more to be dreaded than death. And if there be on earth one spot where the grass will grow greener than on another when the hunt, Summer comes, where the leaves of Antumn will shop more lightly which they fall like a benediction upon a work completed and promise fulfilled, it is these soldiers’ graves.
These is one side of the picture that the sun did not catch, one phase that has escaped photographic skill it is the background of widows and orphans, torn [???] the bosom of their natural protectors by the red [???] unless hand of Battle, and thrown upon the brotherhood of God. Homes have been made desolate, and the light of life in thousands of hearts has been [???] forever. All of this desolation imagination must paint — broken hearts cannot be photographed.
These pictures have a terrible distinctness. By the aid of the magnifying glass, the very ceatures of the slain may be distinguished. We would scarce choose to be in the gallery, when one of the women bending over them should recognize a husband, a son, or a brother in the still, lifeless lines of bodies, that lie ready for the gaping trenches. For these trenches have a terror for a woman’s hear, that goes far to outweigh all the others that hover over the battle-field. How can a mother bear to know that the boy whose slumbers she has cradled, and whose head her boson pillowed until the roiling [???] called him forth — whose poor, pale face, could she reach it, should find the same pillow again — whose corpse should be strown with the rarest flowers that Spring brings or Summer leaves — when, but for the privilege of touching that corpse, of kissing one more the lips though white and cold, of smoothing back the hair from the brow and cleansing it of blood, [???], he would give all the [???] of the [???] have can this [???] bear to know that [???] trench, lastly due, made hands have [???] him. She would have hundred the [???] the [???] track, and after warming him by a spur, paid half forfeit, to the great disappointment and disgust of the crowd. He said that the horse had hutt his leg; but Prince — like other elderly animals — has his constitutional ailments and has been recently under the hands of Dr. DIXON, the veterinary surgeon; therefore Mr. MCMANN cannot be excused for causing so much expense and loss of time to the public, when he could have as well given notice in the morning papers that the match was off. An offer was made by Mr. SHAW, the proprietor of the track, to get up a trot, but the sporting men preferred to receive back their dollars, and left. Only two twenty-mile trots have ever been accomplished within the hour; the first, we believe, took place on the Union Course, in the Fall of 1848, and was performed by Trustee, son of thoroughbred Trustee — dam Fanny Pullen — in 59 minutes 35 1/2 seconds. The same feat was also done in 59 minutes 55 seconds, by Lady Fulton, in 1853, on the Centreville course.
Photographic History of the Civil War: Vicksburg to Appomattox William C. Davis and Bell I. Wiley Published by The Civil War Times “Under the Direction of the National Historical Society” P. Various I Ran Across. How is it even I, as a young girl, thought war was romantic, the ultimate human experience? That any blood or suffering got leached out of any of my imagining? How does that get drilled into kid’s heads so young? No reality about it whatsoever. That reality hides in language like the below:
“The Confederates held their ground manfully.”
“dashing commander”
“bravery alone could no longer withstand superior might and equal dash”
“gallant”
“these rangers were men of daring”
“the set jaw of determination”
“a Federal sharpshooter’s aim was true, and a fine Confederate officer lay dead”
“they were jaunty”
“these western raiders were colorful men”
“hard-boned Westerners”
“the most dashing and most notorious”
“they rode forward, toward the enemy and glory”
“they rode forward, toward the enemy and glory” Oh, and “they rode forward, toward the enemy and glory.”
Note: Following 4 pictures are from the Sears 1962 catalog:
The Vintage Book of War Fiction “Why Are the Men Fighting?” By Italo Calvino P. 254
“Ferriera mutters into his beard: ‘So you think the spirit of our men…and the Black Brigade’s…the same thing?’
‘The same thing, the same thing…but, if you see what I mean…’ Kim has stopped, with a finger pointing as if he were keeping the place in a book. ‘The same thing but the other way round. Because here we’re in the right, there they’re in the wrong. Here we’re achieving something, there they’re just reinforcing their chains. That age-old resentment which weighs down on Dritto’s men, on all of us, including you and me, and which finds expression in shooting and killing enemies, the Fascists have that too: it forces them to kill with the same hope of purification and of release. But then there is also the question of history. The fact is that on our side nothing is lost, not a single gesture, not a shot, though each may be the same as theirs – d’you see what I mean? – they will all serve if not to free us then to free our children, to create a world that is serene, without resentment, a world in which no one has to be bad. The others are on the side of lost gestures, of useless resentment, which are lost and useless even if they should win, because they are not making positive history, they are not helping to free themselves but to repeat and perpetuate resentment and hatred, until in another twenty or a hundred or a thousand years it will begin all over again, the struggle between us and them; and we shall both be fighting with the same anonymous hatred in our eyes, though always, perhaps without knowing it, we shall be fighting for redemption, they to remain slaves. That is the real meaning of the struggle now, the real, absolute meaning, beyond the various official meanings. An elementary, anonymous urge to free us from all our humiliations; the worker from his exploitation, the peasant from his ignorance, the petty bourgeois from his inhibitions, the outcast from his corruption. This is what I believe our political work is, to use human misery against itself, for our own redemption, as the Fascists use misery to perpetuate misery and man fighting man.’”
The Civil War Archive: The History of the Civil War in Documents Henry Steele Commager P. 543-544 Testimony of Mrs. Mary A. Ward
“In the fall of 1863 we were very much menaced by General Rosecrans’ army up about Dalton and Resaca, and every little while we would have an alarm that a raid was coming. A raid was a very amusing thing, or rather, it is amusing to think of now. We would wake up out of our sleep and everybody would spring out of bed saying, “The Yankees are coming; they are only 10 miles out of town; they are coming with a sword in one hand and a torch in the other.” That was the watchword. Then we would all try to think what we had that was valuable, although at that time we didn’t have much except the family silver and furniture, which were rapidly wearing out. The supply of bed linen was also getting small. The blankets had been all sent to the soldiers long before. Very few housekeepers had blankets as late as 1863. On these occasions the ladies would put on three or four dresses and tie around under the dresses everything that could be suspended and hidden in that way. Hams would be jerked out of the smoke-house, and holes would be dug and every thing thrown in pell mell. Then we would begin to imagine that because we knew where those things were, the first Yankee that appeared would know, too, and often we would go and take them all up from there and dig another hole and put them in that; so that our yards came to look like graveyards. It is very funny to think of now, but it wasn’t funny then– to be flying around in the middle of the night that way. Then, to add to the confusion, the children would wake up and would stare around with a vacant look, and begin saying, “What is the matter? What is the matter?” And then we would tell them “The Yankees are coming.”…
The ideas of the children about the Yankees was very funny. As soon as they heard the Yankees were coming they would jump up and get under the bed, or run out of the house. In fact they would have no idea of what they ought to do to preserve themselves. If you told them the house was on fire of course their first impulse would have been to get out of the house, but when you told them the Yankees were coming they didn’t know what to do or which way to turn– whether to run out of the house or to get under the bed or go up the chimney.
I remember one night– all these things come up to me now so vividly– I remember just such a night as I have been describing, when all the children jumped up and got under the bed. We asked what was the matter. Well, “the Yankees were coming.” There was one little girl who was terribly frightened. She had no idea whether the Yankees were men, or horses, or what kind of animals they were. She just knew that they were something dreadful. That business went on through the whole of that night; we would hear that the Yankees were six miles off; that they were two miles off, and every sound we heard, whether it was the baker’s cart, or anything else, we would think it was the Yankees; that they were actually in town.
On these occasions, after we had secured the things, as we thought, there would be consultations as to which of the servants would be the most trustworthy to do the manual labor– which ones we could take into our confidence, for of course it was necessary to have a Negro man around to lift things. We were obliged to take them into our confidence, and yet we mistrusted them on such occasions, because this was 1863, and by that time there had been a great many stories told among us of the disloyalty of servants in such emergencies.
On the night I am now speaking of this excitement continued until morning came. Everybody had been up all night, and it would have been a relief to us to have known that the Yankees had come; but after awhile we ascertained that it was an unmistakable demonstration; that the Yankees were really down here about Gadsden, and that the report brought to Rome had come from a very reliable man, who had traveled all night to carry the news. The first alarm came from some body who had heard of the matter but was not able to report the entire truth. That night and the next morning all was suspense….
Just as we were all expecting the Yankees to come in, and expecting that we were just literally going to be butchered– in fact I don’t know what we did think– a courier came rushing into town with the news that Forrest had captured the Yankees and was bringing them in with him as captives. Then there was a reaction, and the excitement was worse than any camp-meeting you ever saw. Everybody was flying from one end of the town to the other. Suppers that were just ready to be cooked were never cooked or eaten; there was a general jollification. Everybody in town felt relieved from a terrible pressure. Forrest came into town and every lady insisted on going up and speaking with him and his forces. My daughter Minnie was a baby at the time, and I took her with me and went up and spoke to him and he took her and kissed her. He told us that his prisoners were coming into town, and he wanted them to eat at once. Everybody went home and there was just a regular wholesale cooking of hams and shoulders and all sorts of provisions that we had, and everything was sent down to the respective camps. We were quite willing to feed the Yankees when they had no guns.”
Note: Numbers & positions today:
The Peninsula: McClellan’s Campaign of 1862 Alexander Stewart Webb P. 90-91
(1862)
“Banks followed Jackson up the valley, and about April 20th, the latter took up a strong position at Swift Run gap– his front covered by the Shenandoah, his flanks by the mountains, and with good roads to his rear, toward Gordonsville, where lay General Ewell’s division of Johnston’s army, within easy reach. Should Banks endeavor to go on to Staunton, he exposed his flank and rear and his line of communication with the Potomac to attack from Jackson, while if he attacked Jackson, and should be defeated, his army would be cut off in the heart of a hostile country.
This was the situation on April 28th, when Jackson again assumed the offensive, and began that succession of movements which ended in the complete derangement of the Union plans in Virginia– on the Peninsula as well as in the Shenandoah.
In order that he might operate effectively, Jackson applied to Lee for reinforcements, and asked that Ewell’s division might be given him. Lee answered on the 29th, that he feared to detach Ewell, lest he should invite an attack on Richmond and peril the safety of the army on the Peninsula; but he put the command of Edward Johnson, 3,500 strong, then at West View, seven miles west of Staunton, under his orders. The letter suggests that in case Jackson should feel strong enough to hold Banks in check, Ewell and Anderson’s army near Fredericksburg might attack McDowell between that place and Acquia Creek, with much promise of success. This shows that the great flank movement of Jackson, made later, was not then thought of.
At that time the Union forces in Northern Virginia were disposed of as follows: Banks with about 20,000 men near Harrisonburg; Schenck and Milroy, of Frémont’s corps, with 6,000 men, had pushed their pickets east of the mountains and were in front of Johnson; Frémont, with 10,000 more, was marching to join them; McDowell, with 40,000, was at Fredericksburg. Jackson proceeded to act. Joining his own forces and Johnson’s he moved promptly to attack Milroy, leaving Ewell, who was freed by McDowell’s change of position, to watch Banks. Jackson moved by a roundabout course to Staunton.”
Note: A year ago today, Lee resigns from the U.S. Army after 32 years. “You have made the greatest mistake of your life,” Winfield Scott tells him.
Gettysburg NPS Ranger Matt Atkinson 1/4/2015 “Robert E. Lee in the Post-War Years”
(to paraphrase, unless in quotes)
Lee had trouble sleeping after the war. “I’m thinking about all the soldiers that died in vain when I knew it was too late,” Lee told a woman when she asked him why he looked so sad. She asked why he didn’t prevent the deaths. “No, no, they had to find out for themselves.”
Ranger Atkinson:
“That, ladies & gentlemen, is that separation between civilian & military authority, which makes our government, even today, so unique. Look at any other government out there, and notice how often the military overthrows.”
General Grant Characterizes Lee:
“No man at the South is capable of exercising a tenth of the influence for good that he is, but instead of using it he is setting an example of forced acquiescence so grudging and pernicious in its effects as to be hardly realized.”
Note: We need to learn to let things burn.
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this is Easter Sunday and we are in Virginny….
Then at the Congressional Reconstruction Committee, April 1866, Lee’s up on the stand & asked if he had anything to add to his testimony. Says no. Elaborates on an earlier statement he’d made. That was it. Can you imagine. Lee in the Capitol. Saying nothing for the South. Nothing at all. The chance to go on the final record. He was out of words. Like blood loss over time. But the blood won’t wash off. Not at this late date. A man becomes out of time. Out of time to where nothing can change the past. Nothing to make it go back. Back to the way it was. How blood settles at the lowest point of gravity in a body. God save the South, woo.
He knew this was his chance to get the last word in on the war yet he stayed silent, out of his cotton-picking mind. In some deep valley his time ends. It must have been said into real thin air, that no in a room that will have the South still fighting a war, centuries later, that ended in 1865. But he knew that we knew that he knew that we knew that he knew who he was, the best in show, the type able to convince most people of most anything. So now we’re watching a conjurer with a well-rehearsed life, a manorial Lee, not the DEVIL Lee, the bricks to his right with DEVIL flensed off like the serial number on a gun so you wouldn’t know what to look for, that it was even there because all you ever get is what the camera shows anyway. Time leaving the sides of the house & by now it’s like an old trophy photo, & the DEVIL is eternal. Lee a little palsy now, as if some version of his future face had sunk in already, set in & hardened, become a mask past the old one, a face that could forget the war ever happened. Like something come to a last sea.
That is a look and you can’t fake that look.
The photographer thought to take this picture of Lee as he stood there with the vacancy, something innocuous ground to a point then stuck in back of the face. Every dog has his day, see you on the range.
If they knew you, what you were capable of.
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