Day 93. June 1, 1862.

June Quotes:

James L. Petigru 1860 (A South Carolina native): “South Carolina is too small for a republic and too large for an insane asylum.”

Shelby Foote: “People want to know why the South is so interested in the Civil War. I had maybe, it’s a rough guess, about fifty fistfights in my life. Out of those fifty fistfights, the ones that I had the most vivid memory of were the ones I lost. I think that’s one reason why the South remembers the war more than the North does.”

Shelby Foote: “As a Southerner I would have to say that one of the main importances of the War is that Southerners have a sense of defeat which none of the rest of the country has.”

Mary Boykin Chesnut: “North was only a direction indicated by a compass– if a man had one, that is, for otherwise there was no north or south or east or west; there was only the brooding desolation. When we read of the battles in India, in Italy, in the Crimea, what did we care? It was only an interesting topic, like any other, to look for in the paper. Now, you hear of a battle with a thrill and a shudder. It has come home to us… A telegram comes to you and you leave it on your lap. You are pale with fright… How many, many of your friends or loved ones this scrap of paper may tell you have gone to their death.”

Michel-Rolph Trouillot: “But we may want to keep in mind that deeds and words are not as distinguishable as often we presume. History does not belong only to its narrators, professional or amateur. While some of us debate what history is or was, others take it into their own hands.”

Chinua Achebe: “It is the storyteller, in fact, who makes us what we are, who creates history. The storyteller creates the memory that the survivors must have– otherwise their surviving would have no meaning… This is very, very important… Memory is necessary if surviving is going to be more than just a technical thing.”

The Civil War: The Complete Text of the Bestselling Narrative History of the Civil War – Based on the Celebrated PBS Television Series Ward, Ward, & Burns. P. 114 “Why, it’s just like shooting squirrels, only these squirrels have guns, that’s all.”

93

The iron had entered his soul….

Note: Lee takes over today. He believed that the tropical summer climate, especially in the swamplands, would force Unionists to withdraw (as if it weren’t humid, too, in the northeast). However, the Union had quinine when malaria hit, which the South was lacking, due to the naval blockade (they substituted with dogwood, willow, turpentine). Vicksburg will fall in large part due to rampant malarial mosquitoes kicking Confederate ass…

(note: doodle top page & under year “1862,” a mass of lines resembling sticks stacking up like an assemblage of bird twigs)

June Sunday 1 1862

There is not much sign of good weather this morning. It is quite cloudy and we had quite a shower last night. We were camped at Frountroyal last night… Gen McDowells forces from Fredericksburg there was a good number. There was some 2 to 3,000 cavalry and artillary and Infantry. The soldiers were going all day. We were called out marched out on the Winchester Turn Pike about 1 miles when the order came to take another course. That was the Lurey Pike we marched out it some 11 miles that made 13 miles this afternoon. We biovoucked in the woods. We had a shower this afternoon towards evening. And at night we had quite a shower in the evening but was not so cold. We march 300 miles since the 29^th of April. We are now 15 miles North of Lurey and 11 from Frountroyal

Civil War Weather in Virginia Robert K. Krick P. 62

“7a.m. 63; 2p.m. 78; 9p.m. 71. Drizzle, .40, sharp thunder at 8p.m.”

Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson S.C. Gwynne P. 309

“A snapshot of troop deployments on the morning of June 1 would have found Jackson camped just north of Strasburg; Shields twelve miles east in Front Royal; Frémont five miles to the west; and Winder, ten miles north on the valley pike.”

The Confederate War: How Popular Will, Nationalism, and Military Strategy Could Not Stave Off Defeat Gary W. Gallagher P. 138

“On June 1, McClellan’s huge army stood just outside Richmond, and another formidable northern force lay at Fredericksburg. If Joseph E. Johnston had remained in command, McClellan likely would have besieged and taken the Confederate capital that summer. That blow, coming after the loss of Middle Tennessee, New Orleans, Memphis, Corinth, and other important points probably would have sealed the Confederacy’s fate. But by September 1, Lee’s victories had cleared Virginia of Federal armies and taken the war to the banks of the Potomac River. Confederate civilian morale rebounded, European leaders concluded the South was winning the war, and Lincoln faced a crisis with northern elections looming in November. Apart from these rich psychological and political dividends, Virginia’s farmers were able to gather a harvest vital to Confederate logistical planning.”

Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson S.C. Gwynne P. 313

“The game this time was mostly about bridges– four of them– strung out over roughly forty miles in the Luray Valley between the towns of Luray and Port Republic. They were important because the South Fork of the Shenandoah– a navigable river in normal times that carried flatboats downstream to Harper’s Ferry– was in flood stage, swift, swollen, and unfordable. Shields realized that he desperately needed the northernmost of those bridges, named White House and Columbia, to cross the river, cut through New Market Gap, and intercept Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley. On June 1, while Jackson was still passing through the jaws of Lincoln’s trap, Shields had dispatched one of his best officers, Colonel Samuel S. Carroll, to travel ahead of the army to seize and hold those bridges. He had other work for Carroll, too. Ten miles south was another bridge at the hamlet of Conrad’s Store, over which Jackson and his army had passed when retreating from Banks in April. It was the most direct escape route from the midvalley to the Blue Ridge Mountains. Shields, convinced that Jackson was indeed trying to escape, ordered Carroll to burn the Conrad’s Store bridge. “Everything depends on speed,” Shields told him. “Jackson must be overtaken.” And then, underscoring how vastly important this assignment was, he promised the young officer a brigadier generalship if he succeeded. “You will earn your star,” he said, “if you do all this.’”

Note: However, Jackson’s men had torched it two days back:

P. 315

“Jackson was doing the thing Shields least expected him to do, which was to stand and fight. And because he had chosen to stay put, the very last thing he wanted was for the two Union armies to be able to easily unite against him. Burning the Conrad’s Store bridge and the two bridges near New Market Gap meant that would never happen. Jackson had decisively won the opening gambit. As the badly-bogged down Shields would soon discover, he could neither cut off Jackson’s retreat, nor unite easily with Frémont.”

Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era James M. McPherson P. 458

“The rebels cleared Strasburg on June 1 and slogged southward while Frémont and Shields, finally aroused, nipped at their heels. For the next few days it became a stern chase, with Frémont pursuing Jackson on the Valley pike and Shields trudging southward on a parallel course east of Massanutten Mountain. Ashby’s cavalry burned four bridges to delay Union pursuit. Several rear-guard cavalry fights took place, one of them resulting in the death of Ashby, who had become a romantic hero in the South. Jackson kept pushing his men to the edge of collapse. They won the race to the only undamaged bridge left on the Shenandoah River, at Port Republic near the south end of the Valley where Jackson had launched his epic campaign five weeks earlier. During those weeks Jackson’s own division had marched more than 350 miles (Ewell’s had marched 300 miles) and won three battles. Now they stopped to fight again.”

The Civil War, A Narrative: Fort Sumter to Perryville Shelby Foote P. 454-455

“Soon after sunset the tempest broke. Rain came down in torrents. (Near Strasburg, Frémont called a halt for the night, wiring Lincoln: “Terrible storm of thunder and hail now passing over. Hailstones as large as hens’ eggs.”) Jackson kept moving, having just received word that he was now involved in another race. McDowell had just joined Shields at Front Royal, and had sent him south up the Luray valley to parallel Jackson’s advance on the opposite side of Massanutton Mountain. If Shields marched fast he would intercept the rebels as they came around the south end of the ridge; or he might cross it, marching from Luray to New Market, and thus strike the flank of the gray column moving along the turnpike. Either way, Jackson would have to stop and deploy, and Frémont could then catch up and attack his rear, supported perhaps by Banks, who had reentered Winchester, urged by Lincoln to lend a hand in accomplishing Jackson’s destruction.

Even though it bruised his men with phenomenal hailstones, it would deepen the mud in the eastern valley and swell the South Fork of the Shenandoah, which lay between Shields and the mountain. To make certain he did not cross it, Jackson sent a detail to burn the bridges west of Luray.”

Note: 1865:

A Diary From Dixie Mary Boykin Chesnut P. 372

“June 1^st.– The New York Herald quotes General Sherman as saying, “Columbia was burned by Hampton’s sheer stupidity.” But then who burned everything on the way in Sherman’s march to Columbia, and in the line of march Sherman took after leaving Columbia? We came, for three days of travel, over a road that had been laid bare by Sherman’s torches. Nothing but smoking ruins was left in Sherman’s track. That I saw with my own eyes. No living thing was left, no house for man or beast. They who burned the countryside for a belt of forty miles, did they not also burn the town? To charge that to “Hampton’s stupidity” is merely an afterthought. This Herald announces that Jeff Davis will be hanged at once, not so much for treason as for his assassination of Lincoln. “Stanton,” The Herald says, “has all the papers in his hands to convict him.”

Eben dressed himself in his best, and went at a run to meet his Yankee deliverers- so he said. At the gate he met a squad coming in. He had adorned himself with his watch and chain, like the cordage of a ship, with a handful of gaudy seals. He knew the Yankees came to rob white people, but he thought they came to save niggers. “Hand over that watch!” they said. Minus his fine watch and chain, Eben returned a sadder and a wiser man. He was soon in his shirt-sleeves, whistling at his knife-board. “Why? You here? Why did you come back so soon?” he was asked. “Well, I thought may be I better stay with the ole marster that gave me the watch, and not go with them that stole it.” The watch was the pride of his life. The iron had entered his soul.

Went up to my old house, “Kamschatka.” The Trapiers live there now. In those drawing rooms where the children played Puss in Boots, where we have so often danced and sung, but never prayed before, Mr. Trapier held his prayer-meeting. I do not think I ever did as much weeping or as bitter in the same space of time. I let myself go; it did me good. I cried with a will. He prayed that we might have strength to stand up and bear our bitter disappointment, to look on our ruined homes and our desolated country and be strong. And he prayed for the man ‘we elected to be our ruler and guide.” We knew that they had put him in a dungeon and in chains. Men watch him day and night. By orders of Andy, the bloody-minded tailor, nobody above the rank of colonel can take the benefit of the amnesty oath, nobody who owns over twenty thousand dollars, or who has assisted the Confederates. And now, ye rich men, howl, for your misery has come upon you. You are beyond the outlaw, camping outside. Howell Cobb and R. M. T. Hunter have been arrested. Our turn will come next, maybe. A Damocles sword hanging over a house does not conduce to a pleasant life.”

The South: A Tour of its Battlefields and Ruined Cities, A Journey Through the Desolated States, and Talks with the People, 1867 J.T. Trowbridge, J.H. Segards, Editor P. 561-564

“It is curious to consider what has become of all the jewels and finery of which our armies robbed the people of the South. On two or three occasions gentlemen of respectability have shown me, with considerably more pride than I could have felt under the circumstances, vases and trinkets which they “picked up when they were in the army.” Some of these curiosities have been heard from by their rightful owners. A ring, worn by a lady of Philadelphia, was last summer recognized by a Southern gentleman, who remarked that he thought he had seen it before.” Very possibly,” was the reply; “it was given me by Captain—, of General Sherman’s staff; and it was presented to him by a lady of Columbia for his efforts in saving her property.” But the lady of Columbia, who knew nothing of any such efforts in her behalf, avers that the gallant captain stole the ring.*

Mrs. Minegault, daughter of the late Judge Huger, of Charleston,—the same gentleman who was associated with Dr. Bollmann in the attempted rescue of Lafayette from the dungeons of Olmütz,—while on a visit to New York last summer, was one Sunday morning kneeling in Grace Church, when she saw upon the fair shoulders of a lady kneeling before her, a shawl which had been lost when her plantation, between Charleston and Savannah, was plundered by the Federals. Her attention being thus singularly attracted, she next observed on the lady’s arm a bracelet which was taken from her at the same time. This was to her a very precious souvenir, for it had been presented to her by her father, and it contained his picture. The services ended, she followed the lady home, and rang at the door immediately after she had entered. Asking to see the lady of the house, she was shown into the parlor, and presently the lady appeared, with the shawl upon her shoulders and the bracelet on her arm. Frankly the visitor related the story of the bracelet, and at once the wearer restored it to her with ample apologies and regrets. The visitor, quite overcome by this generosity, and delighted beyond measure at the recovery of the bracelet, had not the heart to say a word about the shawl, but left it in the possession of the innocent wearer.

I talked with some good Columbians who expressed the most violent hatred of the Yankees, for the ruin of their homes. Others took a more philosophical view of the subject. This difference was thus explained to me by Governor Orr’s private secretary, an intelligent young man, who had been an officer in the Confederate service:—

“People who were not in the war cannot understand or forgive these things. But those who have been in the army know what armies are; they know that, under the same circumstances, they would have done the same things.”

I also observed that those whose losses were greatest were seldom those who complained most. Mayor Gibbes lost more cotton than any other individual in the Confederacy. Sherman burned for him two thousand and seven hundred bales, besides mills and other property. Yet he spoke of these results of the war without a murmur.

He censured Sherman severely, however, for the destitution in which he left the people of Columbia. “I called on him to relieve the starving inhabitants he had burned out of their houses. He gave us four hundred head of refuse cattle, but he gave us nothing to feed them, and a hundred and sixty of them died of starvation before they could be killed. For five weeks afterwards, twenty-five hundred people around Columbia lived upon nothing but loose grain picked up about the camps, where the Federal horses had been fed. A stranger,” he added, “cannot be made to understand the continued destitution and poverty of the people of this district. If a tax should now be assessed upon them of three dollars per head, there would not be money enough in the district to pay it. Ordinarily, our annual taxes in this city have been forty thousand dollars. This year they have dropped down to eighteen hundred dollars.”

South Carolina College is a striking illustration of the effect the war has had upon the institutions of learning at the South. Formerly it had about two hundred and fifty students; it has now but eighteen. The State appropriated annually sixty-five thousand dollars for its benefit; this year a nominal appropriation of eight thousand dollars was made, to pay the salaries of the professors, but when I was in Columbia they had not been able to get that. One, a gentleman of distinguished learning, said he had not ten dollars in his possession since Sherman visited them.

Of the desolation and horrors our army left behind it, no description can be given. Here is a single instance. At a factory on the Congaree, just out of Columbia, there remained, for six weeks, a pile of sixty-five dead horses and mules, shot by Sherman’s men. It was impossible to bury them, all the shovels, spades, and other farming implements of the kind having been carried off or destroyed.

Columbia must have been a beautiful city, judged by its ruins. The streets were broad and well shaded. Many fine residences still remain on the outskirts, but the entire heart of the city, within their circuit, is a wilderness of crumbling walls, naked chimneys, and trees killed by the flames. The fountains of the desolated gardens are dry, the basins cracked; the pillars of the houses are dismantled, or overthrown; the marble steps are broken; but all these attest the wealth and elegance which one night of fire and orgies sufficed to destroy. Fortunately the unfinished new State House, one of the handsomest public edifices in the whole country, received but trifling injury.”

Note: Regarding the ring is this note at the bottom of P. 562:

“An officer taking his punch (they drink punch in the army when the coffee ration is exhausted) from an elegantly-chased silver cup, was saluted thus:—

“Halloa, captain, that‘s a gem of a cup. No mark on it; why, where did you get it?”

“Y-e-e-s! that cup? Oh, that was given me by a lady in Columbia for saving her households gods from destruction.”

An enterprising officer in charge of a foraging party would return to camp with a substantial family coach, well filled with hams, meal, etc.

“How are you, captain? Where did you pick up that carriage?”

“Elegant vehicle, isn’t it?” was the reply; “that was a gift from a lady out here whose mansion was in flames. Arrived at the nick of time—good thing—she said she didn’t need the carriage any longer—answer for an ambulance one of these days.”

After a while this joke came to be repeated so often that it was dangerous for anyone to exhibit a gold watch, a tobacco-box, any uncommon utensil of kitchen ware, a new pipe, a guard-chain, or a ring, without being asked if “a lady at Columbia had presented that article to him for saving her house from burning.”—Story of the Great March”

Note: From June first 1862 to Appomattox, there’s one person in charge, & that’s Lee, who left no memoirs behind. And today, nine miles east of Richmond sits McClellan, with 100k Yankees, one flank at the James, the other toward D.C.

soldiers were going all day….

Lee replaces wounded Johnston. He trots up about 2 o’clock– or was it 1:30– arrives at the Hughes house on Nine Mile Road for Jeff to hand the Army of Northern Virginia over. Lincoln 12/5/59: “If a house was on fire there could be but two parties. One in favor of putting out the fire. Another in favor of the house burning.” The sun thru the sky hitting all of them. What time it was doesn’t matter. Because it didn’t to them.

Lee’s aim now: to raise the army in the Valley to 40,000 men so that he might cross the Potomac and invade Maryland and Pennsylvania. So that he might. Maryland. Pennsylvania.

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