Day 35. April 4, 1862.
35
He was not out in that storm….
April Friday 4 1862
Quite cool this morning and the sun came up clear and a fine appearance of a fine day. We are camped at Winchester the 110th Regt P.V. Capt McCasey field officer and Lieut I Rogers officer of the camp. There was some soldiers went out the pike today towards Strausburg and some Artillary. The 7 Virginia Regiment came camped near us. They are going to join the 1st Brigade Shields Division. This was a most delightful day and we have no assurance of staying here very long. McNights company came this evening from Paw Paw Station where they were garding. I received no letter today quite cool this evening
Note: D.C., 1861: Lincoln has been President just a month now; Sumter is coming in 8 days. Russell writes of the extreme danger, the traitors from all corners carrying out their conspiracy to bring down the U.S. Government:
My Diary North and South: Volume 1 Sir William Howard Russell P. 60
April 4th.—
“I had a long interview with Mr. Seward to-day at the State Department. He set forth at great length the helpless condition in which the President and the cabinet found themselves when they began the conduct of affairs at Washington. The last cabinet had tampered with treason, and had contained traitors; a miserable imbecility had encouraged the leaders of the South to mature their plans, and had furnished them with the means of carrying out their design. One minister had purposely sent away the navy of the United States to distant and scattered stations; another had purposely placed the arms, ordnance, and munitions of war in undue proportions in the Southern States, and had weakened the Federal Government so that they might easily fall into the hands of traitors and enable them to secure the war materiel of the Union; a minister had stolen the Public funds for traitorous purposes—in every port, in every department of the State, at home and abroad, on sea and by land, men were placed who were engaged in this deep conspiracy—and when the voice of the people declared Abraham Lincoln President of the United States, they set to work as one man to destroy the Union under the most flimsy pretexts. The President’s duty was clearly defined by the Constitution. He had to guard what he had, and regain, if possible, what he had lost. He would not consent to any dismemberment of the Union, nor to the abandonment of one iota of Federal property—nor could he do so if he desired.”
Note: Back to current time, 1862:
Make Me a Map of the Valley: The Civil War Journal of Stonewall Jackson’s Topographer Jedediah Hotchkiss P. 17-18
Note: Hotchkiss shows us in the first line that Kernstown was important to Jackson, at least enough so to stay isolated & write about the battle that happened almost 2 weeks ago:
“April 4th: The General spends most of his time in his room. It is said he is writing his report of the battle at Kernstown.
There is not much of a prospect of a fight though it is hard to tell what a day may bring forth. We have reports of all sorts of things happening around us but put little credit in anything. Today I saw a Philadelphia paper of March 28th. It contained an exaggerated and inflated account of the fight of March 23rd, claiming a capture of 200 wagons when we did not lose one.
The birds are singing very sweetly here and I suppose they are also singing at Loch Willow and papa would like to sit out on the porch with the little girls and mama and hear them sing rather than be here where he has to see and hear so much of men killing and being killed, doing all the damage they can to one another, burning up bridges, etc. Oh, how I wish that war would cease and that we might all have peace in the enjoyment of our rights and liberties; but those rights we [must] have, cost what it may.”
Bloody Engagements: John R. Kelso’s Civil War John R. Kelso Edited by Christopher Grasso P. 51-54
“The train had traveled well that day, and it was some hours after dark when I reached their camp. They had been doubtful about my fate, and were greatly rejoiced to see me among them again. A heavy snowstorm was falling, but we had a good camping place, and spent the night quite comfortably. Next morning the snow was nearly a foot deep and greatly impeded our progress. During the day, the cold became intense. The country being comparatively open, the wind, which blew almost a hurricane, hurled upon us great billows of drifting snow that almost blinded and stifled us. When night was approaching, we passed two large and comfortable looking houses. At both of these, I stopped and begged shelter for our sick and for our women who had young babies. No men were at home at either house. At the first house, the woman said that she did not propose to put herself to any trouble to save “black abolitionist enemies from the sufferings they had brought upon them.” I left without reply. At the other house, the woman said that all her “späh rooms had Tuhkey cahpets.” I asked her if she thought her “Tuhkey cahpets” were worth more to her than our wives and babes, who were perishing in that storm were to us. She said that she was not responsible for our being out in the storm. I told her that I wished the day might come when she should suffer as our loved ones were then suffering. She said that that was not a Christian wish. I replied that hell was full of such Christians as She was. I then proposed to my friends to take possession of these houses any way. They all objected, however, saying that the result of such a procedure would probably be the murdering of us all by some band of armed rebels before we could get beyond their reach. We struggled on, therefore, through the dense darkness, the drifting snows, and the fearful cold, our weary and discouraged animals sometimes almost refusing to move any further.
About midnight, we reached a high open flat sparsely covered with small post oak trees. Here we stopped. Chopping by feeling and not by sight, we felled many of these trees, and carried them together into several piles. We were working for life and we worked with a will; but our axes were few, and in the dense darkness, our progress was slow. It was two hours before our fires were burning. During these two hours, the women and children remained in the wagons, some of them, poorly clad, becoming actually frostbitten. Even now, our fires burned badly. The wood was all green and covered with snow. On the side next the wind, great billows of snow were rolled by the wind upon the feeble flames, and, on the other side, the smoke and sparks were carried right into the faces of those who took shelter there. That was a truly fearful night. All went supplerless to their miserable rest. I placed our few old blankets upon the snow, on the side of my fire opposite the wind, under the canopy of smoke and sparks. Here I put my family to sleep, my wife cared for our little four month old infant. I took our little two year old daughter, Iantha, in my arms, and opening my bosom, tried to warm her against my body. She would cling close to me and shiver. Her bowels were troubling her, however, and I had several times to take her out into the terrible cold. Presently all but myself fell asleep, mourning in their sad dreams.
I could not sleep. I lay there thinking;– thinking thoughts of unutterable bitterness. What had I done that my life should be hunted as it had been? What had my poor wife and babes done that they should be thus driven from home to perish in the storms of winter. Had they all been at rest in their graves, instead of lying there sighing in their sleep, my thoughts could not have been more better than they were. The blood in my veins seemed to grow hot. My whole nature was changing. All in it that was gentle was dying. I found myself thirsting for blood. I forgot how many of the rebels were good and kind people, faithfully giving their lives for a cause which they believed to be right. I forgot everything only that my family were there perishing in that awful night storm of winter, and that the rebels were responsible for this. In my madness,– what else shall I call my condition? – I vowed to slay twenty five rebels before I cut my hair. If it was madness to make such a vow, what was it to keep it, as I did?
I arose from my bed. I wandered about the camp. I wanted to see all there was to see of suffering. Most of the people were sleeping. A few women were still up at some of the fires, caring for their sick children or for those whose limbs had been frosted. These women were nearly all crying. At a distant fire, I found the saddest case of all. A young woman, scarcely more than a child herself, was confined in child-birth. Her bed was on the snow upon the windward side of the fire. He young husband and a few women were trying to so hang up blankets about her upon sticks as to protect her from the terrible blasts and the drifting snows. I helped them a little in this. The blankets, however, were swept down every few minutes by the storm, and great billows of drifting snow came upon her. And there amid the howlings of that fearful winter storm, by the dim fitful light of that smoky log fire, her child was born, and there they both died, and there, too, on the cheerless morrow, they were laid to rest in the cold ground. A sad, sad closing of the young life of that poor little girl’s mother. She had fondly looked forward to the time when her infant, loved before it was born, should nestle in her bosom. When she heard its faint cry* in that awful storm, she fervently prayed “God” to spare its life for her sake, and to spare her life for its sake;– to spare both for Christ’s sake. He was not out in that storm.”
Note: “What fearful shapes and shadows beset his path amidst the dim and ghastly glare of a snowy night.” Frederick Simpson Coburn, 1899.
Ghastly glare of Kelso’s snowy night, I think of a doll-sized shape in shadows shrieking PLAY WITH ME. Like a doll that sits & repeats PLAY WITH ME PLEASE PLEASE PLAY WITH ME, disappearing into the snow like a little spirit turned to ice then stopping moving. “Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.” G.K. Chesterton
Note: Three years from today Lincoln walks around Richmond. A general rides out to pass him the skeleton key to the city while fires are still getting doused. The city’s crossbeams still charring like flagpoles newly planted in the ground, or future crossbeams of the WTC. A pictograph of a demon & it is a pure white deer too. It is everything that ever was & that can be still. It is double fang marks & it is the bones a baby passes between when delivered.
Lincoln Day by Day: A Chronology 1809-1865 Volume III: 1861-1865 C. Percy Powell P. 325
“April 4, 1865: City Point, Va. and Richmond, Va. Party lands at point called Rocketts on edge of town, 100 or more yards back of Libby Prison. With six sailors in front of President and six in rear, with Porter and Penrose on one side and Tad and Crook on other, party proceeds on foot to Gen. Weitzel’s headquarters, house recently occupied by President Davis. At David house is shown into room used for office. Sits and remarks, “This must have been President Davis’s chair.’”
Note: When did chairs get wheels? Lincoln’d be doing wheelies, spinning around & about, stealing post-its & pens, doodling god knows what on Jeff’s stationery. And don’t fret about the fire closing in right now on “Mrs. General Lee” (how’s that for a married name?). She’ll get escorted safe across lines then into McClellan’s hands June 10th.
Lee’s Lieutenants: A Study in Command Volume 1 Douglas Southall Freeman Scribner, 1942 P. 690 (1865)
Note: Today supply wagons that were to arrive for men & animals did not:
“This information, spread quickly through the ranks, brought to the surface the innate qualities of every man and tested what remained of discipline. Those who were physically feeble beganto lose their grip on reality. Soldiers whose weakness was in character, rather than in body, began to slip away in sullen determination to fight no more for a Confederacy that would let them starve.”
P. 691
Note: Tomorrow:
“A gray 5th of April and a slow spring drizzle probably added little to the misery of the thousands who had slept in the fields and the woods. Rain was nothing: it was bread they must have. The railroad had brought none during the night. No trains, in fact, were being operated. Eagerly, anxiously, the troops awaited the return of the commissary wagons. When the vehicles were hauled wearily back to camp, despair deepened. So little had been collected that it scarcely counted. The farmers reached by the forage parties had been visited previously by commissaries and quartermasters. Barns and storerooms were almost empty. The weakened soldiers, now heartsick as well as famished, had to face another day of acute hunger.
P. 694-696
Men staggered as if they were drunk. When some of them tried to talk, they were incoherent. Nerves were so taut that panic spread wildly. An unmanageable black stallion broke loose from a fence and he charged down the road with a rail still on his tie rein. His dash started infantry fire. Troops thought that they were being subjected to a night attack. Round after round was sent in every direction. When officers at last restored order, panic again produced veritable mania. A third time the adjoining battalions fired into one another and killed and wounded an unascertained number of men. These soldiers had to be left dead by the roadside or gasping and groaning in one of the few houses that could shelter them.
Every few minutes, half-dead veterans would leave the column and lie down in dumb despair. By daylight, officers were appalled to find to what degree Brigades had dwindled. Some regiments almost had dissolved. Those who remained in some of the less disciplined regiments “were allowed to shoot from their places in the ranks pigs, chickens or whatever of the sort came in their way.” Officers would look on or would avert their gaze and say nothing. Soldiers who were lucky enough to bring down a hen or a porker devoured the raw meat as they crept like paralytics along the road.”
Note: It’s so The Walking Dead, isn’t it? And along the road, last year? Dogs:
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. 142-144
OGEECHEE CHURCH” OR
STATION 4½ GEORGIA CENTRAL R.R.
Twentieth day out
Monday, December 5/64.
“Left camp between 7 and 8 A.M., troops already in motion, we riding along slowly. Blair and staff go on to front to see about enemy and their promised opposition at “4½.” Soon after 9 A.M. came to house of Mr. Morton (or Martin?) on main road, opposite to and E. of “Station 5,” and about five miles from camp of last night. Just before reaching this place, saw large blaze and smoke on our right, near road, and found it was a very good dwelling house burning. Felt very indignant and grieved, but no use to make comments. But after reaching Morton’s found that said dwelling house belonged to one Mr. Stubbs,—that the [sic] said Mr. Stubbs had regularly kept a pack (five or six) of “track-hounds” and made it a business to hunt negroes with them, and also to hunt escaped Union prisoners with them; and he has a reputation of having, by means of these dogs, prevented the escape of a large number of our men who got away on one occasion from a R.R. train, got into the swamps, and were hunted down and caught. Found further that he was well known by name and reputation to our troops, who have been inquiring for him and his house as we came along for two days past. There is now with us a Colonel who was once prisoner in Southern Georgia—escaped (last summer) and got within forty miles of our lines at Atlanta, when he was caught by dogs and taken back to prison; and this man has sworn that no dog (hound) shall be left alive on the road he marches on. The troops (strange to say) sympathize with this man and his feelings, and I have repeatedly seen dead dogs (just shot) lying by the roadside and in yards. At the place I am told they killed five or six full grown dogs and as many more pups, and to the woman interceding for the latter as harmless they replied that the pups would soon be dogs if not killed. Hence Mr. Stubbs’ house was burned—by whom, nobody knows exactly. I have satisfied myself that he did keep such dogs for the purpose in question and then used them, and I find it difficult to feel any further sympathy or indignation about it. I can’t say it is “right on general principles”—but it “served him right,” the scoundrel! Mrs. Morton and one or two other ladies were at home, all middle-aged or old; looked sour enough, said little. House very good one, two-story double frame, with front porch; good out-buildings, quite handsome garden in front, plenty of forage.”
The Civil War in 50 Objects Harold Holzer and the New York Historical Society P. 241-250
(Note: Two years from today the newly formed U. S. Sanitary Commission will run the New York Metropolitan Fair. It will open today and run through April 27th, and pull in over $1.34 million)
“That the U.S. Sanitary Commission pursued these objectives in the face of open hostility from the army’s hidebound medical hierarchy made its accomplishments all the more remarkable.”
P. 243
The overwhelming result offered plenty to dazzle the soberest visitor. The Metropolitan Fair was a combination museum, curiosity shop, theater, state fair, sideshow, rummage sale and mega-department store, unquestionably the largest exposition of any kind yet organized in a single venue. Few in its throngs of visitors had seen anything quite like it. On entering the flag-festooned main pavilion through a temporary building erected in front of the armory, attendees could choose from a dizzying array of eye-catching options. One of the most popular attractions was a display in the hall of arms, trophies, and more than a thousand historic battle relics (including uniforms worn by Washington and Jackson and a drinking cup said to have been made by a heartless rebel from a Union soldier’s skull after the Battle of Bull Run). Nearby stood an indoor “wigwam,” complete with authentic Rocky Mountain Native Americans (few New Yorkers had ever before set eyes on an Indian) who periodically sang and performed war, scalp, and thanksgiving dances. A few steps away was a refreshment center that featured a restaurant serving such delicacies as turtle soup for fifty cents and porterhouse steak with mushrooms for seventy-five cents. Coffee, at an expensive fifteen cents per cup, could be accompanied by such treats as charlotte russe and meringue for a quarter dollar each. AN adjacent ice-cream parlor offered vanilla or lemon at fifteen cents per scoop. Entertainment was never far away. Within yards, a spectacular fifty-horsepower steam engine imported from the Fishkill Works grandly belched out sound and fury, though signifying little except the churning of mammoth gears.
The vast armory drill room featured eight bins and counters offering children’s clothing, hardware and furnishings, lingerie, perfumes, sewing machines, rubber products, fine jewelry, soaps and candles, leather products, architectural ornaments, harnesses and bridles, and church goods abounding with a “bewildering profusion” of “afghans… pincushions, tidies, and glove-boxes,” all “triumphed over by wax-dolls and fate-ladies.” A cozy concert hall offered band concerts and school-group recitals, along with a sold-out performance of Cinderella. Nearby, the visitor could enter a “curiosity shop” abounding with fossils and rare minerals or visit an autograph counter boasting signatures donated by literary and musical luminaries like Dickens, Macaulay, Thackeray, Rossini, Donizetti, and Verdi, not to mention Florence Nightingale, Garibaldi, and most of the crowned heads of Europe, Queen Victoria included.
This profusion of main-level displays all radiated from the fragrant central Floral Temple and Flower Department, which surrounded a lavish indoor fountain that somehow produced a lighting effect that resembled an ever-present ghost. Not many yards away, the braver curiosity seekers could submit themselves to a small electric shock from a newfangled magnet. Close by stood the headquarters of the official newspaper, the Spirit of the Fair, and a knickknack stand featuring wax fruits, flowers, and a “wounded Zouave” doll fetchingly posed before a basket for donations.
Perhaps the most dazzling of all was the cavernous art gallery “rich in pictures that had for years lurked in the seclusion of drawing rooms and private collections.” in the age before public museums, the Metropolitan Fair gallery gave art lovers their greatest, and in many cases their very first, opportunity to see so large and important an exhibition of paintings – some 360 in all. The breathtaking installation boasted among its large-scale landscapes Frederic Edwin Church’s Heart of the Andes, hung directly opposite Albert Bierstadt’s equally formidable Rocky Mountains – with both treasures surrounded by works by the great painters of the day: Huntington, Inman, Durand, Cropsey, and Eastman Johnson. Dominating even these masterpieces was the floor-to-ceiling display of the ornately framed Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze painting Washington Crossing the Delaware. It took up an entire wall, but it failed to impress every viewer. A critic from the New York Times complained that Leutze’s Washington had “the head and air of a dancing master” who looked as if he were planning to “dance a pirouette on the snow.”
Occupying the armory’s second floor was a library and bookstore, along with exhibits of stained glass, tapestry, and engravings and lithography. And one floor higher still was an exhibit of Mathew Brady photographs alongside a working photo studio manned by Gurney & Son, where visitors could sit for carte-de-visite portraits or purchase “nice stenographic views of the Fair” – dozens of which later entered the New-York Historical Society collections. And there was more. Featured in adjacent wings were displays of musical instruments, international exhibits, a science and medical display, and a “Knickerbocker Kitchen” where Dutch-costumed volunteers demonstrated new recipes for specialties like mince pie while an “ancient darkey in the chimney corner scraped away upon his still more ancient fiddle.” For urban fairgoers curious about rural life, a nearby structure on Seventh Avenue and Fifteenth Street offered a livestock exhibition that featured a representative population of cows, sheep, ponies, and horses, along with a 3,602-pound white ox.
The fair threw open its doors to the public on a dazzling spring day. Neighborhood residents marked the occasion by hanging flags from their windows. Music filled the streets, and military units marched to the armory for the opening ceremony. With ten thousand troops in the procession, it was the largest military display in civic history. At one point a “double line of bayonets” glistened “from Sixth to Second Avenue.” The public response was strong and grew stronger. Steamboat companies whose vessels groaned with commuters and tourists heading to the event gratefully donated a share of their receipts to the fair; similarly, local rail lines sent between twenty-five hundred and five thousand dollars each in gratitude for the “enormous business” the fair generated.
Visits were costly. Patrons paid five dollars for “season tickets” to the Metropolitan Fair or fifty cents for daily entrance. By the end of its three-week run, some thirty thousand visitors had thronged the event each day, with the press fanning public interest by publishing breathless reports of its wonders almost daily. No one ever estimated how many thousands of products passed to buyers from its scores of booths and counters.
The New York Historical Society’s exceptional collection of relics and records from this unforgettable charity event includes a set of forty-eight stereographic cards of its displays. Mathew Brady’s souvenir album, Recollections of the Art Exhibition, Metropolitan Fair, New York, April 1864; correspondence among its organizers; donor books; account ledgers; product lists; promotional broadsides; and one rare, surviving two-day ticket to the event for April 11 or 12, 1864.
Included in the trove as well are isolated copies of the long-forgotten official newspaper, Spirit of the Fair, in one of which its editor attempted to imagine how the city might appear one hundred years into the future– when, as it happened, another giant exposition took place in New York: the 1964 World’s Fair. This is how the 1864 newspaper answered the question “How then will this city look in 1964?”
“First, it will be the heart of the world, which electricity will thrill every instant with the pulses of all the earth. Midway between Asia and Europe, it will be to both their market, bank, mine, granary and library.
There will be bridges across the East River, and tunnels beneath the North; and vast docks at Harlem and Brighton. A belt of marble and granite piers shall gird it. The Croton [reservoir] will be quadrupled.
The Central Park will weave secular elms, and find all its groves too small for the multitudes. Railways, or whatever succeeds them, shall thread all the depths of the island, and Broadway be but an alley. Two national holidays, the old Fourth, and that auspicious day which we shall see crowned with peace and reunion, will be exulted here by the millions.”
Not all of these bold Metropolitan Fair dreams came true, but enough did become reality to remind the modern observer how much this thrilling municipal event inspired what seemed at the time to be incredibly bold aspirations for a limitless future.”
Note: The 1800s saw more fairs: The Centennial International Exhibition of 1876, May 10-November 10, 1876 was held to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Tickets were fifty cents, and over eight million went. Apparently at this one, seeing the Corliss Steam Engine “Whitman walked up to the engine and climbed onto the platform. Borrowing a chair from the mechanic, he sat in front of the meshing gears and thrusting pistons and worshiped. For thirty minutes, he did not move but sat agape in front of this metal god atop its altar. Whitman marveled at the repetitive, efficient movements dispensing power as a god would do. The poet saw America’s future. The new nation as a mighty machine powering prosperity and generating opportunity for anyone who could harness its energy. America, realizing the promise of its creation, heralding a century of untrammeled progress.” Find the Corliss, plus Grant & Dom Pedro (Emperor of Brazil) there to start it up, at https://loc.gov.resource/cph.3b42221
Lyrics from Whitman’s “Song of the Exposition” appeared in the advertising for the fair, according to Goldfield (P. 531). Find the nine-part lineated verse poem at the whitmanarchive.org.
All that said, there’s this:
“Wilson and Warren wrote during the one hundredth anniversary of the war– “this absurd centennial,” Wilson called it– when histories, plays, reenactments, products, and commemorations of all sorts proliferated. Wilson and Warren wrote to dampen the self-righteousness and materialism to which Americans inclined in those stressful years of the cold war. The two authors considered themselves voices in the wilderness, delivering jeremiads, for a once-powerful tradition of skepticism about the Civil War had crumbled and a new tradition of acceptance and celebration was rising in its place.” What Caused the Civil War: Reflections on the South and Southern History Edward L. Ayers P. 111
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a most delightful day….
McClellan’s grown something in his head about numbers, he’s raking the air with his empty hand, it’s not what you think. He says it with his whole chest & the various swears on his grave. But this was a veneer. He knew Lee had him dead to rites. On top of that, Native Americans lived in the Valley around 8000 BC. There are depictions of sorcery, & of animals not known now. Wooden ships of strangers on the distant eastern water. They knew it would not be long before one world shifted to another. Newly bloodied young men would strut. Each took the name of the first animal it saw. Jamestown 1607. Powahatan Confederacy gone by 1684, pushed them over, facedown, but the dead remain. Dead ancestors seated on folded legs, hands on knees, eyes staring, mouths open. Feathers have been fastened to the heads. The end & the beginning were always there: an A carved in a rock. A surveyor’s mark from the original 1745 survey? Maybe an early anarchy. As if a wish to take it all back. But here is the thing– we were here first. The first Mason–Dixon line. Neither red states above nor blue below. The “Nation’s River,” one of the “American Heritage” rivers. Longest free flowing river in the Eastern US. Intersex fish. “Feminized fish,” Bass- Smallmouth & large, the Redbreast Sunfish. Endocrine disrupters: the boys have eggs. Like a kind of bad blood took hold then swooshed around the circulatory system. Changes bright red to river. Eleven years after Congress ordered the EPA to identify pollutants, not a single chemical has been tested: “Too complicated.” To withdraw from Iraq. To feed the hungry. Explanations that fly in the face of the facts. 1/3 of DC residents functionally illiterate. Taxation without representation. Justicia Omnibus motto of city– justice for all. Named after George Washington since 9/9/1791. Lee crossed it invading the North. 1863, Stuart forded it with 3,000 Confederate cavalry to help Lee. The southern entrance. The fish have gone farther out to sea. Not all shad die after spawning. They can swim 12k miles. They can travel as long as it takes them. George Washington ate shad. 25km radius from the Washington Monument is restricted airspace. Flight 93’s target, as well as we can reconstruct events. In the final moments, a Boeing 757, 530 mph over Arlington Cemetery, debris landing in sections 69 & 70. On 9/11, a “lure motorcade” left the White House. Who became us when we left where we went. Who stayed? And the other costumed bird & animal imitators, almost identical, standing nearby. Animal visitations. Bodies painted green & black, mask, security clearance. The fish petroglyph found on the Potomac River carved into stone, two concentric lines surround a diamond-shaped stylized fish 1,300 years ago. Three concavities in the center represent its eyes & mouth. It’s still there, loud & clear. One tradition says when the people came to know anything of themselves, “it was to find that they had been for a long series of generations completely buried… in a dense fog.” Those days draw near. Some groups always had more than others. Each man carried a war club, knife, bow & arrows. Now listen. The Federal capital of the US of A is at coordinates 38.89, -77.03. The rectangular blocks are gravesites. The cemetery is running out of room. In 2060AD, full capacity. But they’re building! “Some 20,000 graves will occupy the sector, with a sweeping view of the Potomac….” Are appointed with little amulets for the next world; a ceramic fortune cookie, a bottle of beer, a spent 9-mm brass cartridge. It had an irresistible glow, a mini human skull, tiny gold pendant in the shape of a skull. Where the light is turned way from the subject so that nothing is only what it seems. Like an atrocity. The eternal flame at JFK’s grave is like a hot check they never could cash. “It’s as eternal as anything man-made can be,” as eerie a mirage as any ever witnessed, & the bill must be paid, after all. Millions of white dots appear in the beams of a searchlight. But we’re still here. We are the burning ones, don’t you forget it. Burning apart. Humans first came to America by boat, moving along the Pacific Rim from Siberia. Only halfway there. We don’t when it ended, but we do know where it began, where it proceeded, & how it ended… The river ends in no particular place. As Americans, we made our last camp. We bordered the dark rivers that had waited all along. Let me tell you that story: As land lost fertility, the village would change location, taking its name with it. 3.8 million miles of it. Memorial Day created May 30, 1868 for “the purpose of strewing with flowers, or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades.” A national disgrace in ’65 said Lyndon Baines to the river. Crashing tumble toward tidewater. Great Falls. One of the great falls. It’s a canal. A present-day visitor center sits right here. Hope that opening up the Potomac would make Matildaville a thriving town never materialized. No. No Matildaville. The eggs were too dark. Washington Monument your one finger salute. To light the way. No matter what direction the river snakes, the wind comes head on. A light over the house, a light over the river. The double light. Inside reading the story of the deluge. In the world of dark minds, the darkness is truly infinite. The sun is only a hand’s width on the western edge of the sky now. Is but a shadow of its former self. Witnesses testified that there is no better way to trace the course of American history than to follow the course of the Potomac. It has lost the formula for stopping itself.—Powahatan: “The place where people trade, or the place to which tribute is brought.” Some say Bald Eagles have returned to its banks. Circle the sky in different sounds that reach the Capitol in the winds, only to vanish back into the river. A rattle in the form of a human head with shell teeth stares vacantly into the blue frame river. Washington’s last words: “’Tis well.”
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