Day 36. April 5, 1862. – We Saw a Grate Smoke Raise Up: Letters, Diaries, Wires from the Valley of the Late Rebellion

talking rarely and in monosyllables….

April Saturday 5 1862

Quite cool this morning and the sun came up bright and all appearance of a fine day. Capt [illeg. looks like Buislin] field officer Lieut I.T. Hamilton. The pay master came with the pay soldiers are to be paid off soon and I hope that I may be so. I have been in camp all day nothing new of importance. The ground is quite dry. We are at the camp at Winchester. I hope to hear some good news. I am now boarding in Capt Huyetts markee. I am glad to hear that our Regiment may stay here awhile. I hope the time may soon come that all nations will learn war no more and all things to live in peace and harmony

Lincoln’s Spies: Their Secret War to Save a Nation Douglas Waller P. 174

“On April 5, McClellan halted his advance. He now believed he faced a line of heavily manned defenses in front of him that stretched like a most behind the marshy and difficult-to-cross Warwick River from Yorktown on the eastern side of the Peninsula to the James River on the western side. Instead of the 15,000 Rebels he four days earlier thought were deployed there, McClellan now was convinced the enemy force totaled 100,000 or more. What the befuddled Union commander faced was actually a clever ruse created by John Bankhead Magruder, a tall, well-tailored Rebel general with a theatrical bent, who moved his soldiers back and forth along his line of infantry and artillery outposts behind the Warwick River to create the illusion, complete with sound effects, that he had more than the piddling 11,000-man army he actually led there.”

We Are In For It! The First Battle of Kernstown Gary L. Ecelbarger P. 229

“On Saturday, April 5, Colonel Holliday rode southward toward Fisher’s Hill where his command was stationed. At the stone bridge that crossed Tumbling Run, he dispatched an orderly and his bugler to tell the adjutant to join him, but this was merely an excuse to send the aides away from him. Totally alone and behind his command, Holliday rode farther with a little speed, wheeled his horse to the right on a by-road that led to the North Fork of the Shenandoah River, and dismounted at the riverbank. Holliday then drew a pistol from his belt, placed the muzzle against his forehead, and squeezed the trigger. His lifeless body tumbled backward into the river and gently floated near the men he had commanded up to just minutes earlier.”

A Virginia Yankee in the Civil War The Diaries of David Hunter Strother David Hunter Strother P. 26

“APRIL 5, SATURDAY.—Raining…. A militiaman deserter came in and gave us some fresh information. He says Jackson’s principal force lies between Rude’s Hill and New Market without heavy guns or baggage and is ready for flight. The force is much disorganized, drinking whiskey furiously, scattered along the whole road to Harrisonburg and Staunton.

Was informed that Colonel [Jonas P.] Holliday of the Vermont cavalry had committed suicide, the cause said to be disgust with the bad discipline of his regiment. Colonel Holliday was a regular officer of New York, a tall man with a huge beard and of a melancholy mien, talking rarely and in monosyllables. I was introduced to him three days ago and remarked his sad and speechless demeanor. He ordered his regiment to march and remaining behind lit his pipe and blew his brains out.”

Nature’s Civil War: Common Soldiers and the Environment in 1862 Virginia Kathryn Shively Meier P. 64

“General Banks confirmed the incident in his official report on April 6^th, 1862. “The death of Colonel Holliday was very sudden and very sad. He appeared greatly depressed when here about the condition of his regiment, which was then at Strasburg.” Further, “his officers say he had been nearly insane for three weeks, and attribute his depression of spirits to personal disappointments not connected with his profession. I do not know why this may be. His death occurred near Strasburg, while he was near the head of his column. He shot himself in the head, and died without a word.” It would be silly to suggest that environmental adversity alone contributed to suicide, but the daily discomfort of soldiering and prolonged separation from loved ones in combination with combat trauma tested the limits of those in poor mental condition.

To sum up this soldier experience in the 1862 Peninsula and Shenandoah Valley campaigns, soldiers perceived nature as tremendously hampering to mental and physical health.”

Terrible Swift Sword Bruce Catton P. 295-296

“Robert Toombs, in a letter to Vice-President Stephens: “This army will not fight until McClellan attacks it. Science will do anything but fight. It will burn, retreat, curse, swear, get drunk, strip soldiers—anything but fight.” “Davis’s incapacity is lamentable.” Both Mr. Davis and General Johnston were uneasily aware that General McDowell was very likely to bring 40,000 men down to join McClellan in the near future, and they knew that if this host marched down to the Chickahominy from Fredericksburg the cause was lost…. And far off in the Shenandoah Valley, Stonewall Jackson put his troops on the road, heading east through a gap in the Blue Ridge, doubling back to Staunton, and disappearing entirely from the ken of all Federal patrols, scouts, and military thinkers.

The military planner who becomes lost in the fog of war rarely notices the onset of the fog. It comes on gradually, the sum total of many small uncertainties which hardly seemed worth a second thought. There is a little patch of mist here, another patch over yonder, a slow thickening of the haze along the horizon, the sky turning gray and sagging lower over the woods, sunlight fading out imperceptibly… and then, suddenly, the horizon has vanished altogether, there is fog everywhere, and the noises that come from the invisible landscape are unidentifiable, confusing and full of menace; at which point it is mortally easy to give way to panic and do one’s self great harm.

P. 296-297

There was not, in all of this, anything more than the mild uncertainty as to enemy movements and intentions which is normal in time of war. The Federal government reflected and went on with its plans. McDowell was to be strengthened for the projected advance on Richmond. Banks was to make certain that Jackson had actually departed, and having done so was to detach Shields’s division—the outfit which had beaten Jackson at Kernstown, earlier in the spring—and send it off to join McDowell at Fredericksburg. Banks then was to get his own troops back to a safer position. His advance guard was at the town of Harrisonburg, barely twenty-five miles north of Staunton; it must retreat, and Banks must concentrate at Strasburg, eighteen miles south of his main supply base at Winchester. If Jackson had gone a-roving, and if McDowell was going to march down to the Chickahominy, there was no need for the Federals to do anything in the Shenandoah Valley except guard the lower end of it.

Everything was under control, and there were just two small areas of doubt: Jackson’s whereabouts and intentions, and the revival of Washington’s ancient fear that the Rebels were scheming to invade across the Potomac. Neither of these seemed very important; they were just there, two hazy spots in the landscape. If the two grew, blended into one, turned the haze into a real fog, there might be trouble. For the moment things looked serene enough.”

Note: “Fog of war,” where there’s no coherent version of reality to work from remaining, which can be a deliberate wartime tactic. A purposeful fog no one can see through. “We’re in an era of battling narratives but we live in one contiguous reality…. Once you get into the fog…. the fog is not an unfortunate thing that has sprung up…. the fog is an integral part of the mystery…. Once you have the fog, you have no longer a coherent reality that you can use science to tangle with, and anything can happen. Essentially you have gotten away with it…. no facts are reliable. This is a case where basically civilization cannot endure…. if there is no such thing as a shared reality, if there is no such thing as facts, then justice is impossible…. and so I say whenever you see the fog, the tendrils of the fog lapping around…. How do I fight through this crazy fog….” Episode 258, Unfound Podcast, Ed Dentzel in conversation with Jeff Wise, Flight MH370 Revisited 8/20/21

Hearts Touched by Fire: The Best of Battles and Leaders of the Civil War Edited by Harold Holzer P. 347

THE PENINSULAR CAMPAIGN.

George B. McClellan, Major-General, U.S.A. (excerpt)

“Then, on the 5^th of April, I found myself with 53,000 men in hand, giving less than 42,000 for battle, after deducting extra-duty men and other noncombatants. In our front was an intrenched line, apparently too strong for assault, and which I had now no means of turning, either by land or water. I now learned that 85,000 would be the maximum force at my disposal, giving only some 67,000 for battle. Of the three divisions yet to join, Casey’s reached the front only on the 17^th, Richardson’s on the 16^th, and Hooker’s commenced arriving at Ship Point on the 10^th. Whatever may have been said afterward, no one at the time– so far as my knowledge extended– thought an assault practicable without certain preliminary siege operations. At all events, my personal experience in this kind of work was greater than that of any officer under my command; and after personal reconnoissances more appropriate to a lieutenant of engineers than to the commanding general, I could neither discover nor hear of any point where an assault promised any chance of success. We were thus obliged to resort to siege operations in order to silence the enemy’s artillery fire, and open the way to an assault. All the batteries would have been ready to open fire on the 5^th, or, at latest, on the morning of the 6^th of May, and it was determined to assault at various points the moment the heavy batteries had performed their allotted task; the navy was prepared to participate in the attack as soon as the main batteries were silenced; the Galena, under that most gallant and able officer, John Rogers, was to take part in the attack, and would undoubtedly have run the batteries at the earliest possible moment; but during the night of the 3^rd and 4^th of May the enemy evacuated his positions, regarding them as untenable under the impending storm of heavy projectiles.”

“$50 REWARD, RUNAWAY NEGRO.

RANAWAY FROM THE SUBSCRIBER, last February, WILLIE, a bright mulatto, about 30 years old, about five feet, six inches high, wore when he ran away, long platted hair; by trade a cooper, has a wife in the Georgetown District, (S.C.;) has a down look when spoken to. He is supposed to be now lurking about Wo. or Johnathan Ellis’, near Stantonsburg, where he has relatives. The negro belongs to Miss Cynthia A. Ellis. All persons, black or white, are hereby forewarned under penalty of the law, not to harbor said negro.

Oct. 14th, 1836 ROB’T. BYNUM”

The South in History and Literature: A Hand-book of Southern Authors from the Settlement of Jamestown, 1607, to Living Writers Mildred Rutherford P. 361-362

THE NEGROES. By Zebulon Baird Vance.

“There is also a great change at hand for the negro. Who that knew him as a contented, well-treated slave, did not learn to love and admire the negro character? I, for one, confess to almost an enthusiasm on the subject. The cheerful ring of their songs at their daily tasks, their love for their masters and their families, their politeness and good manners, their easily bought but sincere gratitude, their deep-seated aristocracy– for your genuine negro was a terrible aristocrat– their pride in their own and their master’s dignity, together with their overflowing and never-failing animal spirits, both during hours of labor and leisure, altogether made up an aggregation of joyous simplicity and fidelity– when not perverted by harsh treatment– that to me was irresistible!

A remembrance of the seasons spent among them will perish only with life. From the time of the ingathering of the crops until after the ushering in of the new year, was wont to be with them a season of greater joy and festivity than with any other people on earth, of whom it has been my lot to hear. In the glorious November nights of our beneficent clime, after the first frosts had given a bracing sharpness and a ringing clearness to the air, and lent that transparent blue to the heavens through which the stars gleam like globes of sapphire, when I have seen a hundred or more of them around the swelling piles of corn, and heard their tuneful voices ringing with the chorus of some wild refrain, I have thought I would rather far listen to them than to any music ever sung to mortal ears; for it was the outpouring of the hearts of happy and contented men, rejoicing over the abundance which rewarded the labor of the closing year. And the listening, too, has many a time and oft filled my bosom with emotions, and opened my heart with charity and love toward this subject in all this wide world could impart!

Nature ceased to almost feel fatigue in the joyous scenes which followed. The fiddle and the banjo, animated, as it would seem, like living things, literally knew no rest, night or day; while Terpsichore covered her face in absolute despair in the presence of that famous double-shuffle with which the long nights and “master’s shoes” were worn away together!

Who can forget the cook by whom his youthful appetite was fed? The fussy, consequential old lady to whom I now refer has often during my vagrant inroads into her rightful domains, boxed my infant jaws with an imperious “Bress de Lord, git out of de way; dat chile never kin git enuff”; and as often relenting at sight of my hungry tears, has fairly bribed me into her love again with the very choicest bits of the savory messes of her art. She was haughty as Juno, and as aristocratic as though her naked ancestors had come over with the conqueror, or “drawn a good bow at Hastings,” and yet her pride invariably melted at the sight of certain surreptitious quantities of tobacco, with which I made court to this high priestess of the region sacred to the stomach.

And there, too, plainest of all, I can see the fat and chubby form of my dear old nurse, whose encircling arms of love fondled and supported me from the time whereof the memory of this man runneth not to the contrary. All the strong love of her simple and faithful nature seemed bestowed on her mistress’ children, which she was not permitted to give to her own, long, long ago left behind and dead in “ole Varginney.” Oh, the wonderful and touching stories of them, and a hundred other things, which she has poured into my infant ears!”

“FOR SALE,

a remarkable smart healthy

Negro Wench, About 21 years of age; used to both house work and farming, and sold for no fault but want of employ. She has a child about 9 months old, which will be at the purchaser’s option.

Aug. 12. Enquire of the Printers.”

The South in History and Literature: A Hand-book of Southern Authors from the Settlement of Jamestown, 1607, to Living Writers Mildred Rutherford P. 16

“On the plantations the negro children had been their playmates, they had their negro mammies for nurses, and they knew how the negro talked, how he lived, and they knew more, for they knew the great undercurrent of love and personal interest in the heart of every white man, woman and child for those human creatures that were theirs, intrusted to them by an overruling Providence. And just as the negro took a family pride in his “wite folks,” esteeming them more aristocratic than any others (for the negro has always despised “po’ wite trash,” as he called them), so the white children had the same pride in their slaves, esteeming them more respectable than the slaves of others, and claiming for them traits of character that were in every way commendable.”

“$10 REWARD.—Absconded from the subscriber’s dwelling, on the 6^th instant, the negro girl FANNY, aged about 30; speaks English and French; has lost her front teeth; very dark skin; took with her her daughter, a mulatto, aged about 7. She has a daughter on Girod street, No 188, and may go there at night. She has been seen at the St Mary Market.

J.A. BRAUD”

A Yankee Spy in Richmond Elizabeth Van Lew P. 50

1863, Date Uncertain

“The poor creatures [blacks] – punishment for any little thing, misdemeanor or stubbornness. They would be placed in a coffin with holes over their face to breathe through, and keep them in here from 24 to forty hours. Then there were the blocks, upon almost every place of which I could attempt no description, the beatened slaves is too horrid to believe, unless one had seen it. What I write I can prove. Negroes whipped almost to death in Louisiana. If the law becomes cognizant of it, [it] takes the negro from the master as punishment to the master, & sell[s] him to another who has full whipping powers. There is not one negro in 1,000 who has knowledge that in a certain no. of slave holders with hate…. Death & whipping w[or]k was all the negro got, and in Louisiana a politician sent in a bill to abolish sending negroes to the penitentiary on the ground that a negro was better off in the penitentiary than at home under his master. Have we mentioned handsaw whipping? Handsaw, which grazed the skin, was one other method of the punishment. A Buck skin is raw hide, lash until the man whipping would have to draw only through his finger as if milking to rid it of the blood. Negro whips. The blood would be in puddles where they whipped. These Negro whips were made of the North cowhides & all & sent south….”

Editors Make War: Southern Newspapers in the Secession Crisis Donald E. Reynolds P. 175 Unnamed New Orleans journal)

“Louisiana has joined the Southern exodus; she has passed dry-shod through the chasm, she has placed a gulf of storm and water, cloud and darkness, thunder and lightening [sic], between herself and Egypt and servitude. Let Pharoah [sic] and his hosts follow at their peril.”

Note: The old-time gentlemen on these peaceful pastoral plantations past the 38^th parallel, planters in their amniotic tranquility about to face a fearful fall:

The South in History and Literature: A Hand-book of Southern Authors from the Settlement of Jamestown, 1607, to Living Writers Mildred Rutherford P. 393-394 “The Aristocracy of the South.” Charles H. Smith

“The old time aristocrat was a gentleman. He was of good stock and thoroughbred. Whether riding or walking you could tell him by his carriage– by the vehicle he rode in or the measured dignity with which he walked about. That vehicle was as unique as a Chinaman’s palanquin. It did not rest on elliptical springs, but was swung high between four half circles, and the clickey, or driver’s seat was perched still higher and the driver’s bell-crowned hat was the first thing that came in sight as the equipage rose in view over the distant hill. There were two folding staircases to this vehicle and nobody but an aristocratic lady could ascend or descend them with aristocratic grace. The gentleman who was born and bred to this luxury was a king in his way– limited, it is true, but nevertheless a king. His house was not a palace, but it was large and roomy, having a broad hall and massive chimneys and a verandah ornamented with Corinthian columns. The mansion was generally situated in a grove of venerable oaks. It was set back one hundred or two hundred yards from the big road, and the lane that led to its hospitable gate was bordered with cedars or Lombardy poplars. These cedars are still left in many places, but the poplars died with the Old South. They died at the top very like their owners. Prominent in the rear of this mansion was the old gin house, with the specious circus ground underneath where the horses went round and round under the great cog-wheels, and the little darkies rode on the beams and popped their home-made whips. Not far away were the negro cabins and the orchard and the big family garden, and all around were fowls and pigs and pigeons and honey bees and hound dogs and pickanninies to keep things lively. The owner of the plantation was a gentleman and was so regarded by his neighbors and a nobleman without the title of nobility. He had been through college and to New York and Saratoga and had come back and married another gentleman’s daughter and settled down. The old folks on both sides had given them a start and built the mansion, and sent over a share of the family negroes to begin life with.

He dressed well, and carried a gold-headed cane and a massive watch and chain that were made of pure gold at Geneva. There was a seal attached– a heavy prismatic seal that had his monogram. The manner in which he toyed with this chain and seal was one of the visible signs of a gentleman. It was as significant as the motions of a lady’s fan.

These old-time gentlemen kept open house and all who came were welcome. There was no need to send word that you were coming, for food and shelter were always ready. A boy was called to take the horses and put them up and feed them. There was plenty of corn and fodder in the crib, plenty of big fat hams and leaf-lard in the smoke-house, plenty of turkeys and chickens in the back yard, plenty of preserves in the pantry, plenty of trained servants to do all the work while the lady of the house entertained her guests. How proud were these family servants to show off before the visitors. They shared the family standing in the community and had but little respect for what they called the “po’ white trash.” These aristocrats had wealth, dignity, and leisure, and Solomon says that in leisure there is wisdom, and so these men became the lawmakers, the jurists, the statesmen and they were the shining lights in the councils of the nation.

The result of the war was a fearful fall to the aristocracy of the South. They lost many of their noble sons in the army and their property soon after. The extent of their misfortunes no one will ever know, for “the heart knoweth its own bitterness.” Many of them suffered and were strong. The collapse of them was awful. They had not been raised to exercise self-denial or economy, and it was humiliating in the extreme for them to descent to the level of the common people. But they did it, and did it heroically.

The children of these old patriarchs had come down some, and the children of the common people came up some, and they have met upon a common plane, and are now working happily together, both in social and business life. Spirit and blood have united with energy and muscle and it makes a good team– the best all round team the South has ever had.”

Note: Some kind of English high class? Please. Without their slaves, they’d be nothing. Have nothing. Land & labor; once they lost that it was lights out.

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. 78

CAMP 1 MILE NORTH OF EDENTON FACTORY (THAT WAS)

Sunday night: November 20/64. 8:30 P.M.

fifth day out

“Stopped for lunch at house of Mrs. Farrar, six miles N. Of E[denton] Factory. Mrs. F. at home—young woman, would be pretty if less slatternly. Never saw a Yankee farmer’s wife but would be ashamed to look so. Yet he has a good place, probably twenty negroes, certainly I saw “quarters” for so many or more. He is at Milledgeville—“gone there last week to help in the breastworks, and to fight,” said the darkies. Mrs. F. said he was in the rebel army from choice—the first woman who has not declared her husband was forced to go. General talked to her in his usual strain—kind tone but declaring that unless they obey laws all will be utterly ruined, etc.

The negroes here (F.’s) say they have been habitually punished by flogging not only with strap, but with hand-saws and paddles with holes—and salt put in the wounds. They also told us of a famous “track-hound” (blood-hound) at the next house, nearby, used to hunt runaways. As we went by that house, Nichols had gone there (by General’s permission) and had the hound shot by a soldier: he was a large red dog: we heard the shot and the dog’s dying howls. N. says the darkies there were in great glee over it. No wonder.”

The Mind of the South W. J. Cash (1941) P. xliv

“Beneath these was a vague race lumped together indiscriminately as the poor whites—very often, in fact, as the “white-trash.” These people belonged in the main to a physically inferior type, having sprung for the most part from the convict servants, redemptioners, and debtors of old Virginia and Georgia, with a sprinkling of the most unsuccessful sort of European peasants and farm laborers and the dregs of the European town slums. And so, of course, the gulf between them and the master classes was impassable, and their ideas and feelings did not enter into the make-up of the prevailing Southern civilization.”

**Pastoral narrative, pastoral menace. They stood upon their blood, then treated others like they were cheap Chinese Dollar Tree toys. Notably, this sentiment does not extend to nor address the contradiction of Southern States’ insistence Northern states return runaway slaves. Northern States weren’t allowed their right to not return runaway Southern slaves. The South forced other states to catch their slaves. So it’s zombie rules, citing it for their own ideological agenda, a contradiction that continues throughout the 19th, 20^th, and 21^st centuries. Actual slavery continues now in various parts of Africa and Asia, especially in India (18.4 million in 2022). In fact, the sheer number of slaves now exceeds the number brought over in the Atlantic slave trade. Look up Libya, China, & Mauritania (2% of Mauritanians are slaves). These countries continue chattel slavery, forced prostitution, forced marriage, bride-buying, child slavery, child soldiers, debt bondage, forced begging, forced migrant labor. Also see North Korea, Eritrea, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Nigeria, Haiti, Thailand, Laos, Moldova, etc. However, you don’t have to look overseas, as forced labor does currently exist, since 1865, in our own American prisons. See also prisons in the U.K. & Australia.

Note: Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life Barbara J. Fields, Karen Elise Fields P. 123

“From Peterloo to Santiago, Chile, to Kwangju, South Korea, to Tiananmen Square and the barrios of San Salvador, humanity has learned again and again that shared color and nationality set no automatic limit to oppression. Ultimately, the only check upon oppression is the strength and effectiveness of resistance to it.”

***Cotton (white gold), tobacco, rice, sugar the top 4 crops. Southern wealth was in slaves, which is why they were richer than the North.

Note: In 1837 Missouri outlawed free speech. You couldn’t speak abolitionism. Within a few years this became the norm across the South. In Louisiana, you could get a bounty on your head for talking about Black people being free.

Note: Some say General Johnston was the Confederacy’s McClellan.

Note: Up to 90% of imported slaves were battle captives and slaves who were sold by raiders in Africa like Tippu Tip, & by Ashanti Generals such as Adu Bofo. Had they not been sold to Americans, it’s maintained they would have still remained slaves in Africa; that fact, of course, didn’t make their enslavement any better. Yet many– if not most– slaves were sold to others by men of their own race. The elephant in the room: Black people sold Black people to other Black people, then to White people (I’m going to capitalize the “W” here to show how rare that is; more on that in the introduction when I post it). However, once across the Atlantic, the profit slaves were forced to produce went almost solely to the White race. Other races, too, enslaved Africans, then their descendants. However, in comparison to the numbers of Black women, men, children held, terrorized, raped, worked to death, executed by Whites, that number is negligible.

And how you handle power and view the actual history of slavery as it played out across the world is your indicator as to who you would have been had you any power to wield over others in a past century. Who you are now says exactly who you would have been in the world back then. Add to that any internal dynamics, plus the external: peer pressure, cultural & local norms, economic stressors. How well could you have stood up to it? How well do you stand up for what’s right now? That’s how you’d do, only amplify it. What is the nature of your character, in the end? Because that’s who you are now & that’s who you’d be back then. Outside their ‘location,’ or situation, we think these people a mystery, their choices baffling.

But think a moment. How do you, reader, handle any power you have? Do you make sweeping generalizations based on skin color? Class? Disability? Sex? Is your inclusion, if you have any, tokenized? Fetishized? Then what makes you think, were your skin color the opposite, you wouldn’t have acted the same way as some of these men centuries back? If you’re automatically hateful toward Whites, Blacks, or anyone not how you look, you would have been fine owning quite a few who also didn’t look like you back in 1860s America. That’s how things level down.

Note: The “constitutional liberties against the perceived Northern threat to overthrow them” originated in the Virginia Declaration of Rights, which declared, “All men are by nature equally free and independent and have certain inherent rights.” This declaration was the first Bill of Rights in the U.S. Colonies, & became the model for the U.S. Constitution’s Bill of Rights. It could not be more clear these were to be White rights only. Ironically, the Iroquois, specifically Chief Canasatego, in Lancaster, PA., introduced Benjamin Franklin to the ideological foundations of the document.

time may soon come that all nations will learn war no more….

(Vietnam Song) Feel Like I’m Fixin’ To Die (1965, & performed at Woodstock in 1969)

“Well come on all of you big strong men,
Uncle Sam needs your help again,
He got himself in a terrible jam,
Way down yonder in Vietnam,
Put down your books and pick up a gun,
We’re gonna have a whole lotta fun

And its 1, 2,3 what are we fighting for?
Don’t ask me I don’t give a damn,
The next stop is Vietnam,
And its 5, 6,7 open up the pearly gates,
Well there ain’t no time to wonder why,
WHOOPEE we’re all gonna die

Well come on generals let’s move fast,
Your big chance is come at last,
Gotta go out and get those reds,
The only good commie is one that’s dead,
And you know that peace can only be won,
When you blow them all to kingdom come

Well come on mothers across the land,
Pack your boys off to Vietnam,
Come on fathers don’t hesitate,
Send your sons off before its too late,
Be the first one on your block,
To have your boy come home in a box

Country Joe and the Fish

Note: The “Fish” Cheer became the “Fuck” Cheer, then after that, so much for the Ed Sullivan Show…. Wikipedia tells us the song was a question on the 2008 U.S. AP history test. I see 34 Civil War songs at Wikipedia’s “List of Anti-War Songs.” The song came out of the FM dial incessantly when I was growing up.

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