Day 104. June 12, 1862.
104
he will regret it but once….
June Thursday 12 1862
Quite cool this morning. It was quite cool last night. We have camped Two miles East of the Town of Luerey Page Co. Va. There was about 100 waggons took wounded and sick back to Frountroyal to day to be sent to Washington City. The day was very warm. I don’t feel very well as I am woren out and weak that I can’t stand much more. I have the Rheumatism and pain in the back. I got a Furlough to go home for thirty days to [illeg. looks like secbuite] my health as I must do something or I will be no use. We have about 180 wounded men that were sent to Frount Royal that were wounded in the Battle on Monday
Note: I can’t stand much more. I will be of no use. Ephraim’s had it. He’s done here. Most horror films revolve around not being where you are. Just go somewhere else. Plots show characters who need to make a beeline in the other direction. Yet instead, they walk back further into the woods, they traipse back in the house, or they all split up with a promise to meet back in a few minutes. If the whole thing could be avoided by just being elsewhere, just go somewhere else. Don’t walk back into the battle.
Today his handwriting is dramatically different: it’s slanted straight up, thicker, the ink making the words larger, more spaced apart. It’s likely he was given– or gave himself– opium or another medicine. Also: He could have warned his wife by letter he was heading home; almost a week later he arrives there. She could have known in two days that he was heading home because the mail took two days. So what was his motivation in surprising everyone by showing up unannounced? Though he is given a 30 day pass, he tells himself on the page he is “to spend a few days.” He seems to have intended to return. And right as Ephraim leaves, Jeb starts his ride around the Union army. Were the two in close proximity at any point?
Note: Thursday, June 12, 1862 saw a Full Moon & a Supermoon at 06:16:56a.m. (moonposition.com)
Lincoln Day by Day: A Chronology 1809-1865 Volume III: 1861-1865 C. Percy Powell P. 120
“June 12, 1862: Writes Gen. Frémont: “Accounts which we do not credit, represent that Jackson is largely reinforced, and is turning upon you…. keep us well and frequently advised; and if you find yourself really pressed… fall back cautiously towards, or to, Winchester,… and we will in, due time, have Gen. Banks in position to sustain you.’”
Note: Meanwhile, today and for the next 4 days, Jeb Stuart, with one thousand and two hundred cavalry, prowl about like jaguars, encircle the entire Union Army, all 100 miles worth of the enemy. Does Ephraim travel anywhere near those 1,200 skulking around on the margins today, hear or or sense the horse hooves tonight? Did he get a chill like like when you just felt the devil pass? Someone walking over his grave?
Nature’s Civil War: Common Soldiers and the Environment in 1862 Virginia Kathryn Shively Meier P. 129
“One of the most common reasons soldiers cited for straggling was indeed excessive exposure to extreme weather. As Private McKim remembered, veterans recognized when environmental strain became too much to bear, such as in spring 1862 in the Shenandoah Valley: “When we had no tents and when the weather was so inclement and our exposure so unusually severe, we would slip off to some private house whenever opportunity offered and leave could be obtained, and sometimes without leave. Only in this way, I think, could we have endured the ordeal.” McKim enjoyed the Confederate benefit of being warmly welcomed into Shenandoah Valley homes, while Union soldiers more often sought solace in churches and barns. But that is not to say that no Union soldiers were invited into Southern homes. Private Wood was a Massachusetts man in the Valley who straggled in search of water to a civilian house on an exceedingly hot day (“it was ‘said’ that the thermometer yesterday in the shade stood at a hundred and ten degrees”). Residents obliged him, and as a thank-you he mended their broken clock, since in civilian life he had been a clockmaker. Later Wood also visited a friend in the Valley, Miss Vowell, who promised to nurse him if he ever fell ill. It is important to bear in mind, however, that Union soldiers were often straggling in hostile territory and took some risk when they approached civilians in private homes.
P. 144
Quoting General Loring’s officers petition for a furlough because of the conditions at Romney, then in Virginia: “The terrible exposure and suffering… can never be known to those who did not participate in it. When men pass night after night in the coldest period of a cold climate without tents, blankets, or even an ax to cut wood with, and without food for twenty-four hours….”
P. 145
Private Patterson of the 9th Alabama appeared to have little choice but to straggle given his regiment’s experience near Lebanon Church, Virginia. He wrote of a march that “beggars description. The night was so dark that it was absolutely impossible to see anything and we relied entirely on the sense of hearing and feeling.” It was not the dark so much as the rain that afflicted the men. “And the mud and water was literally knee deep, and the men would run against each other, strike their faces against another’s back or gun without seeing anything.” The result was almost comical. “Some fell in mudholes and had to be dragged out, and our regiment became scattered for a mile, and all along the road you could hear, “This way, Co. D,’ ‘Hear is your company A,’ ‘Close up Company C,’ &c &c.” Patterson did what he could to keep up. “I continued the march about 5 miles when I ran into a clump of bushes, and winding myself up in my wet blankets as well as I could remained there until daylight, keeping the bushes under me as much as possible to keep from drowning.” He found his comrades in the morning, one of whom complained that he had lost his boots in the quagmire.”
Terrible Swift Sword Bruce Catton P. 41
“The preliminaries were already underway. Before he made final plans Lee needed to know where McClellan’s right flank was anchored, how it was guarded, and what sort of protection there was for the all-important Federal supply route, the Richmond and York River Railroad line back to White House on the Pamunkey. He told his cavalry commander, the youthful, flamboyant, and highly gifted Brigadier General James Ewell Brown Stuart, to go and find out. With 1200 troopers Stuart on June 12 rode off in what quickly became one of the most spectacular missions of the war.
Stuart was storybook romance incarnate. He had a compulsive desire for the limelight and just the right combination of daring and military skill to get it, and along with his theatrical qualities he was a hard worker and an unusually competent cavalry commander. He rode far to the north, crossed the headwaters of the Chickahominy and swung east, went slicing down behind the Federal right flank, crossed the railroad near the great base at White House, and wound up by riding entirely around McClellan’s army, recrossing the Chickahominy far downstream and returning to the Confederate lines on June 15 after days and nights of gaudy adventure. The ride made him famous, and was most embarrassing to McClellan—if a Confederate cavalry brigade could ride all the way around the army without even getting into a serious fight there must be something wrong with the Federal security arrangements—but the important thing was that Stuart gave Lee exactly the information Lee needed.”
Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era James McPherson P. 463-464
“With 1,200 picked men he rode north from Richmond on June 12 and swung east across the headwaters of the Chickahominy, brushing aside the small enemy patrols he encountered. Stuart’s progress was helped by the fragmented organization of Union cavalry, which was sprinkled by companies and regiments throughout the army instead of consolidated into a separate division as the southern cavalry was. Stuart’s troopers discovered the location of Fitz-John Porter’s 5th Corps, which McClellan had kept north of the Chickahominy while transferring the rest of the army to the other side. Stuart had accomplished his mission. But he knew that by now the enemy was swarming in his rear. To return the was he had come would invite trouble. To continue on, to make a complete circuit around McClellan’s army, might foil the pursuit. Besides, it would be a glorious achievement. In his mind Stuart could already see the headlines. He pushed on, winning skirmishes, capturing 170 enemy soldiers and nearly twice as many horses and mules, destroying wagonloads of Union supplies, traveling by day and night over the swollen Chickahominy on an improvised bridge which the rebels burned behind themselves minutes before pursuing Union cavalry reined up impotently on the north bank. Stuart’s horsemen evaded further clashes and completed the circuit to Richmond by June 16, four days and a hundred miles after setting out. This exploit won Stuart all the acclaim he could have desired. He also gained great personal satisfaction from the enterprise, for one of the opposing cavalry commanders was his father-in-law, Philip St. George Cooke, a Virginian whose decision to remain loyal to the Union had vexed Stuart. “He will regret it but once,” Jeb had vowed, “and that will be continuously.”
Lee had the information he needed. And he knew whom he wanted to lead the attack: Jackson. He would bring Jackson’s army secretly from the Valley to hit Porter’s corps on the flank while three divisions of the Richmond army crossed the Chickahominy and simultaneously attacked its front. The danger in this, of course, was that while Lee concentrated 60,000 men against Porter’s 30,000 north of the Chickahominy, the 75,000 bluecoats south of the river might smash through the 27,000 Confederates on their front and walk into Richmond.”
Patriotic Gore: Studies in the Literature of the Civil War (1962) Edmund Wilson P. 195
Note: General Sherman on men such as Stuart:
“The enemy had no infantry nearer than the Tallahatchee bridge, but their cavalry was saucy and active, superior to ours, and I despaired of ever protecting a railroad, presenting a broad front of one hundred miles, from their dashes.” And in Sherman’s remarkable analysis of the elements that compose the Confederacy which is contained in his report to Halleck of September 17, 1863, he lists: “Fourth. The young bloods of the South: sons of players and sportsmen, men who never did work and never will. War suits them, and the rascals are brave, fine riders, bold to rashness, and dangerous subjects in every sense. They care not a sou for niggers, land or anything. They hate Yankees per se, and don’t bother their brains, about the past, present, or future. As long as they have good horses, plenty of forage, and an open country, they are happy. This is a larger class than most men suppose, and they are the most dangerous set of men that this war has turned loose upon the world. They are splendid riders, first-rate shots, and utterly reckless. Stuart, John Morgan, Forrest, and Jackson, are the types and leaders of this class. These men must all be killed or employed by us before we can hope for peace.’”
To the Gates of Richmond: The Peninsula Campaign Stephen W. Sears P. 173
“Stuart’s raid, a man in the Fifth Corps wrote home, “was a day of great excitement, you may be sure. The whole army was under arms supposing that an attack was to be made upon us from all sides….” After the alarm passed away, he decided “there must have been an awful leak in our lines somewhere.” A day or two afterward an enterprising young Richmond newsboy made his way into the Federal lines with an armful of Examiners and sold every copy to Yankee soldiers eager to find out what had happened. Stuart’s raid did not greatly disturb General McClellan. “The stampede of last night has passed away,” he assured Washington on June 14. Neither the railroad nor the supply base at White House had been damaged, he noted, and he blamed the whole episode on a lack of proper vigilance by his cavalry.”
Note: Horses, or the lack thereof, make another appearance:
Report of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War U.S. Congress 1863 Part One: Army of the Potomac. P. 523-524
“October 12, 1862 [1:15 p.m.]
HEADQUARTERS ARMY OF THE POTOMAC
The recent raid of Stuart, who, in spite of all the precautions I could take with the means at my disposal, went entirely around this army, has shown, most conclusively, how greatly the service suffers from our deficiency in the cavalry arm. The great extent of the river line from Washington to Cumberland, the major portion of which, at the present stage of water, is fordable at almost every order to watch the numerous crossings. At the time Stuart crossed it so happened that the greater part of our cavalry was absent near Cumberland, in pursuit of another rebel cavalry force which had made its appearance at the Little Cacapon and other points on the Upper Potomac, destroying railroad bridges, &c. I had pickets at McCoy’s Ferry, where Stuart crossed, but they were captured by his men, and in consequence of this I did not learn of the crossing for several hours afterward. All the cavalry that could be collected to pursue Stuart only amounted to less than one thousand men. With these Pleasanton marched seventy-eight (78) miles in twenty-four hours, with a horse battery, but only came up with Stuart at the Potomac, after he had marched over ninety miles during the same time, with change of horse.
The track of the rebels was entirely outside of our infantry until he came near General Stoneman, at Poolesville, who has not, as yet, explained why he did not mass his troops and engage him as he was ordered.
The rapid movement of the rebel cavalry precluded the possibility of marching out infantry from any point of our lines with a probability of intercepting them. Cavalry is the only description of the force that can prevent these raids. Our cavalry has been constantly occupied in scouting and reconnoissances, and this severe labor has worked down the horses and rendered many of them unserviceable, so that at this time no more than one-half of our cavalry are fit for active service in the field.
The enemy is well provided with cavalry, while our cavalry force, even with every man well mounted, would be inadequate to the requirements of the service and to the large infantry force with the army. I therefore again most strenuously urge upon the department the imperative necessity of at once supplying this army, including the command of General Banks, with a sufficient number of horses to remount every dismounted cavalry soldier within the shortest possible time.
If this is not done we shall be constantly exposed to rebel cavalry raids.
GEO. B. MCCLELLAN,
Major General.”
“WAR DEPARTMENT
Washington, D.C., October 13th, 1862. [Sent 10.07 a.m.]
Your telegram in regard to supplies has been referred to the quartermaster general, and he replies that everything asked for had been sent or ordered.
The movement of your re-inforcements by railroad has probably delayed the transportation of some portion of them. It is difficult to supply the waste of horses.
H.W. HALLECK,
General-in-Chief.”
The Civil War, A Narrative: Fort Sumter to Perryville Shelby Foote P. 465
“Pride in the reports of his army’s conduct in that battle– so fierce that eight out of the nine general officers in Keyes corps had been wounded or had had their horses shot from under them– restored his health and sent his spirits soaring: as was shown in the congratulatory address he issued a few days later. “Soldiers of the Army of the Potomac!” it began. I have fulfilled at least part of my promise to you. You are now face to face with the rebels, who are held at bay in front of their capital. The final and decisive battle is at hand. Unless you belie your past history, the result cannot be for a moment doubtful…. Soldiers!” it ended. “I will be with you in this battle and share its dangers with you. Our confidence in each other is now founded on the past. Let us strike a blow which is to restore peace and union to this distracted land. Upon your valor, discipline and mutual confidence the result depends.”
The men enjoyed the sound of this, the reference to their valor and the notion that the war was being fought for peace. Some of them had wondered; now they knew. It was being fought to get back home. That knowledge was a gain, and there were others. Having done well in one big battle, they felt they would do better in the next one. They could laugh now at things that had seemed by no means humorous at the time: for instance, the boy going up to the firing line with the fixed stare of a sleepwalker, pale as moonlight, moaning, “Oh Lord, dear good Lord,” over and over as he went. They had a familiarity with the mechanics of death in battle. Coming up the Peninsula they had passed a rebel graveyard with a sign tacked over the gate: “Come along, Yank. There’s room outside to bury you.” Since then, many of them had served on burial details, fulfilling the implication, and undertakers were doing a rush business with both the quick and the dead, embalming the latter and accepting advance payments from the former, in return for a guarantee of salvation from a nameless grave in this slough they called the Chicken Hominy. The going price was $20 for a private and up to $100 for an officer, depending on his rank.
The main consolation was McClellan. He gave the whole thing meaning and lent a glitter to the drabness of their camps. They cheered him as he rode among them; they took their note of confidence from him. Presently, after fretful news from the Shenandoah Valley, they saw his confidence increase. He had just been informed that Lincoln had called off the goose-chase after Jackson and was bringing McDowell back to Fredericksburg, with orders to resume the advance on Richmond as soon as his men recovered from their exertions. Best of all, as a cause for immediate rejoicing, the 9500-man division of Brigadier General George A. McCall– left on the Rappahannock while the rest of the First Corps was crossing the Blue Ridge– had been ordered to join McClellan at once, moving by water to assure the greatest speed. Their transports began to arrive at White House June 11, five days after the march order was issued. As these reinforcements came ashore a dispatch arrived from Stanton: “Be assured, General, that there has never been a moment when my desire has been otherwise than to aid you with my whole heart, mind and strength since the hour we first met…. You have never had and never can have anyone more truly your friend or more anxious to support you.”
Next day army headquarters moved to the south bank of the Chickahominy, where three of the five corps now were: Keyes on the left at White Oak Swamp, Heintzelman covering the Williamsburg road in the center, and Sumner on the right, astride the railroad. Porter and Franklin were still on the north bank, the former advanced to Mechanicsville, the latter in support. When McCall arrived he would be assigned to Porter, whose strength would be 27,500 men, and Franklin would join the main body, taking position between Sumner and the river. The army would then present an unbroken front, anchored firmly on the left and extending a strong right arm to meet McDowell, who had wired on June 8: “McCall goes in advance by water. I will be with you in ten days with the remainder by land from Fredericksburg.”
McClellan had plenty to do while he waited. The rains had returned with a vengeance, taking the bridges out again, flooding the bottoms, and sweeping away the corduroy approaches. “The whole face of the country is a perfect bog,” he informed Washington. “The men are working night and day, up to their waists in water.” Lincoln and Stanton kept wanting to know when he would be ready to attack, and he kept stalling them off with a series of loop-holed replies. A week after Fair Oaks he told them: “I shall be in perfect readiness to move forward and take Richmond the moment McCall reaches here and the ground will admit the passage of artillery.” Six days later, with McCall on hand and four corps consolidated south of the Chickahominy, he declared: “I shall attack as soon as the weather and the ground will permit.” June 18 the rain slacked and he wired: “After tomorrow we shall fight the rebel army as soon as Providence will permit.”
It was a tantalizing progression of near-commitments and evasions: first McCall, then the weather, and finally Providence itself: Lincoln and Stanton scarcely knew what to think. McClellan knew, though. He had read rumors that the powers in Washington were engaged in a frenzy of backbiting over the recent fiasco in the Valley. “Alas! SMALL P poor country that should have such leaders,” he groaned, adding “When I see such insane folly behind me I feel that the final salvation of the country demands the utmost prudence on my part, and that I must not run the slightest risk of disaster, for if anything happened to this army our cause would be lost.” He saw his way to victory. According to the Pinkertons, the rebels had the advantage of numbers, but he had the advantage of superior training and equipment. Therefore he would make the contest a siege. Employing “the utmost prudence” to avoid “the slightest risk,” he had evolved a formula for victory, ponderous but sure. He kept it from Lincoln and Stanton, who would neither approve or understand, but he told it gladly to his wife, who would do both: “I will push them in upon Richmond and behind their works. Then I will bring up my heavy guns, shell the city, and carry it by assault.’”
Note: 43% of soldiers from both sides were out sick from January to mid-August 1862. By June 20th, 1862, the Army of the Potomac has 11k men too sick to fight, which is about 1/10th the whole army. According to Stephen Sears in To the Gates of Richmond: The Peninsula Campaign, they lost 705 to death and disease in June alone. Ephraim Burket could have been the 705th man. Too, disease reduced most regiments of one thousand to a half their size before they even got to their first battle.
The number of times Ephraim writes the word sick is 10. The number of times he again tells the pages he suffers from rheumatism? Just 4. From January to June 1862, there are 1,979 cases of rheumatism. There were 254,738 cases of rheumatism, according to the Library of Congress Civil War Desk Reference, making it the 3rd leading cause soldiers gave as unfit for duty. Civil War rheumatism deaths according to the above reference: 475. Other sources list the number in the thousands. Like all facets of this war, reliable statistics are virtually impossible to pin down. As centuries swing by, historian continually up the number of casualties. What starts out as 500k casualties now runs up to 850k. As the decades tick by, all numbers associated with the Civil War are likely to rise, and there is always the possibility new records will come to light. The Confederacy lost records in the capture of Richmond when it burned down; the last train out lugged gold bars, not official papers from Jeff’s office. “Defiant to the end,” the Confederacy has survived as something more than whichever documents of the regime were lost that night. What also survives time, though, is what’s called the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies in the War of the Rebellion (O.R. for short, 128 volumes began in 1864, with 138, 579 pages published between 1881-1901).
Hard to say at a 160 year distance, but Ephraim may have had pericarditis, an irritation of the lining around the heart. The accumulating fluid is what kills a man. (Onset can occur after a few hours in the rain. Ephraim’s grandson– my father’s father– will catch tuberculosis (possibly via WWII service, causing him to move west from PA. to a less humid climate in Denver). Tuberculosis and rheumatic fever disqualified a soldier from enlisting in the Civil War. However, my grandfather served in WWII with TB. It wasn’t until late in the 20th century that rheumatoid arthritis treatment was invented; for TB, it was a 1943 discovery. In 1862, rheumatism was treated by quinine, blood-letting and powders back when no one knew what caused scurvy (30,714 cases), or what germs even were. Germ theory won’t become widely accepted until the 1890s. Interestingly, to say the least, it will be another 20 years after the war before people realize birds don’t migrate to the MOON every autumn.
Ephraim’s deteriorating health was the only reason he was allowed to leave; he had turned into a burden rather than an asset. Had his mother died, or had he not been home in two years, etc., they could have held him captive by threat of prison or execution, as Union soldiers were often denied leave even under the most extreme circumstances. Just like the Confederate Army, this was not, ultimately, a volunteer situation across the board. The difference between the armies was while Northern soldiers (& some southern) “volunteered” to serve at the start of the rebellion, Southerners were forced into service 4/16/62, as happened later in the North with Lincoln’s draft.
Note too, horse’s misery too, & Gettysburg looming:
“Rather than go west, Lee invaded Pennsylvania, hoping to provision his army, draw the Union forces from Virginia and, if possible, defeat the Army of the Potomac, thereby forcing the Union to lift Vicksburg’s siege and hurry reinforcements east. Success for Lee’s 75,000 men and 28,000 animals depended on movement to allow his horses to graze and free him from a 200- mile-long supply line. At Gettysburg Lee’s movement became contested, and, despite Longstreet’s arguments that the army should fight defensively, Lee attacked for three blood-soaked days. Lee could not sit and await a Federal assault. On June 23, he wrote Jefferson Davis that although he was able to purchase what he thought was adequate food for his men, “Forage is very scarce, and we have mainly to rely on grass for the animals.”
The retreat verified the exhausted state of his horses, as wagons and cannons were abandoned due to the collapse of animals and a lack of replacements. A want of horseshoes hobbled artillery horses, with the Third Corps losing about 60 percent. Isaac Baker, a cavalryman, recalled, “Our horses’ backs were raw with ulcers one and two inches deep and full of maggots. The green flies had put up a big job on us, our blankets were full of maggots and rotten, our saddles had from a pint to a quart of maggots in them and we had to run them out with hot water and soap and it was months before the horse’s backs were cured.” Half of the cavalry’s horses were ruined by the campaign. When Lee got back to Virginia, resuscitating his horses proved difficult, as he could only get a pound a day of corn per animal.
Unable to do more than defend, Lee agreed to send part of Longstreet’s corps west in September 1863 to aide Bragg at Chattanooga. Longstreet went without his horses, and Bragg’s inability to secure horses for Longstreet in Tennessee limited the mobility of his men, contributing to their failure during the siege of Knoxville.
The Confederate Commissary Department continually begged for equipment to gather food.”
https://www.historynet.com/southern-horse.htm “Southern Horse” Keith Miller (Originally published in the February 2006 issue of Civil War Times)
I can’t stand much more….
One more time, that’s the line, Chief: If, at this instant, I could dispose of 10,000 fresh men, I could gain a victory to-morrow…
It requires it be played straight in order for it to land, like McClellan means it this time, but he gets spooked at a jump scare that comes up in the movie, hides his eyes. The ill-starred McClellan like a bad story device: plot-blocking, cockblocking. Think Christopher Walken as the romantic lead in You’ve Got Mail. Parodistic. Running a bad joke into the ground, the impedimenta of noncompliance, partial compliance, delay, willful obstructionism, obfuscation, obtuseness, & serial incompetence. His self-inflicted catastrophes of poverty accounting, his epically splenetic time to cross. The glazed look of a man at the end of his run. If he could get away in a ’68 Charger, say, & just sit out in the parking lot. Cruise through the drive-thru, have some fries, hold the paper bag just so, guzzling a Bud from the corner store. But it was Jackson, too, who desperately, repeatedly, tried to roust up more troops while he waited on a sign from God, Jackson too starting to lose the plot.
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