Day 111. June 19, 1862.
111
animals that refused to go were shot down….
Thursday 19―
Midling cool this morning as it rained some yesterday but things look as if it would rain today and it did rain. I was at home all day and the day was midling warm. There is nothing new that I know of. I don’t feel very well today again. I have a pain in my breast. G. Crawford was here this evenning or afternoon*
*It’s important to Ephraim to be exacting. He’s not sure which, so he wrote both. Eerie & abrupt tone shift in his diary entries after he got home. He wrote of his feelings only in terms of being tired or in pain. Contrast with his June 14 entry.
Lincoln Day by Day: A Chronology 1809-1865 Volume III: 1861-1865 C. Percy Powell P. 122
“June 19, 1862: President approves act securing freedom to all persons within U.S. territories. Writes Gen. McClellan: “If large re-inforcements are going from Richmond to Jackson, it proves one of two things, either that they are very strong at Richmond, or do not mean to defend the place desperately.’”
Armies of Deliverance: A New History of the Civil War Elizabeth R. Varon P. 257
Note: writing of Vicksburg Siege, 1863:
“For six weeks, as Federal reinforcements poured into their lines (bringing Grant’s ranks to 71,000), 220 guns threw shellfire into the city and Union forces moved their trenches ever closer, and waited the Confederates out. As the infantryman Oldroyal explained in his June 19 diary entry:
For a month we have been watching our enemy vigilantly, and a panorama, consisting of a great variety of war scenes, has, during that time, passed before us. We have had charging, digging rifle-pits, blowing up forts and firing all sizes of cannon, to say nothing of percussion shells, spherical case shot, times shells, parrot, grape, cannister, shrapnel, etc…. The terrible noises… that have rung in our ears, must echo for years to come. I may add our endurance of this southern sun, at times being short of rations, and at no time out of danger, yet all the time nearly uncomplaining—every one trying to make the best of it.’”
Note: In a year, this time a diary entry from the Shenandoah Valley. People were suffering horribly:
The Civil War The Final Year: Told by Those Who Lived It Edited by Aaron Sheehan-Dean P. 322-323
“SMOKE AND FLAME”: VIRGINIA, AUGUST 1864
Mathella Page Harrison:
Diary, August 17, 1864
“(The union defeat at Kernstown, Virginia, on July 24 and the burning of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, by Jubal Early’s cavalry on July 30 led Lincoln and Grant to reorganize the forces opposing Early in the Shenandoah Valley. Major General Philip H. Sheridan, the commander of the Army of the Potomac’s Cavalry Corps, took command of the new Army of the Shenandoah on August 7, and began advancing south from Harpers Ferry three days later. When his cavalry encountered infantry reinforcements from Lee’s army near Front Royal on August 16, Sheridan decided to withdraw to the north and guard the Potomac River crossings. From her farm in Millwood, Mathella Page Harrison watched as Union soldiers carried out Grant’s orders to confiscate or destroy the Valley’s provisions, forage, and livestock.)”
“Wednesday, August 17th– Night has closed at last on this day of horrors. Years almost seem to have rolled since I opened my eyes this morning. The first sound that greeted my ears was the rumbling of Yankee waggons passing onward with their troops to swell the hosts of those who passed last week and who were assembled in and around Winchester waiting for Early’s return. At nine o’clock Yankee pickets were stationed in every hill. Fires of barns, stockyards etc. Soon burst forth and by eleven, from a high elevation, fifty could be seen blazing forth. The whole country was enveloped with smoke and flame. The sky was lurid and but for the green trees one might have decided the shades of Hades had descended suddenly. The shouts, ribald jokes, awful oaths, demoniacal laughter of the fiends added to the horrors of the day. They demanded feed when they had just applied the torch to the provisions of the year, and indeed years, for now the seed which would have been sown has been destroyed. In almost every instance every head of stock had been driven off. Those young animals that refused to go were shot down. Near a farm where eight fires were blazing. Custer and his staff sat exulting over the ruin they had wrought. Large families of children were left without one cow. In many of the barns were stowed in and around carriages, all kinds of farming implements, waggons, plows, etc., and in no instance did they allow anything to be saved. The loss is inestimable and unpardonable in these times, situated as we are, communications with our lines so difficult, and no trade with the enemy even if we wished it. Hay, oats and straw were burnt with the wheat. I cannot imagine what the poor cattle are to live on this winter. Owing to the great drought the field grass burnt like tinder. Almost half of the county was in flames. Some of the dwellings were sacked, clothing, provisions, male and female taken indiscriminately. Remember Chambersburg was their watch word. Thoroughly did they enjoy their days work. When one fire at its hottest, the dwelling in peril of being added to the number, one turned to the other, “Haven’t we had a nice day?” Retaliation may be glorious for the interior of Dixie but to those in this poor place debatable land its fires are almost beyond endurance.”
Note: And another diary entry:
Reminiscences of My Life in Camp with the 33d United States Colored Troops Late 1st S.C. Volunteers Susie King Taylor docsouth.unc.edu P. 31-32
Writing of 1864:
“Fort Wagner being only a mile from our camp, I went there two or three times a week, and would go up on the ramparts to watch the gunners send their shells into Charleston (which they did every fifteen minutes), and had a full view of the city from that point. Outside of the fort were many skulls lying about; I have often moved them one side out of the path. The comrades and I would have quite a debate as to which side the men fought on. Some thought they were the skulls of our boys; others thought they were the enemy’s; but as there was no definite way to know, it was never decided which could lay claim to them. They were a gruesome sight, those fleshless heads and grinning jaws, but by this time I had become accustomed to worse things and did not feel as I might have earlier in my camp life.
It seems strange how our aversion to seeing suffering is overcome in war,– how we are able to see the most sickening sights, such as men with their limbs blown off and mangled by the deadly shells, without a shudder; and instead of turning away, how we hurry to assist in alleviating their pain, bind up their wounds, and press the cool water to their parched lips, with feelings only of sympathy and pity.”
Note: You would be surprised what you can cave down into, what you’re capable of, so much more & so much worse, the intense human capacity for compliance.
takinguproom.wordpress.com “Why I never say, “Don’t Drink the Kool-Aid.” Rebecca Deniston, Jonestown Survivor.
“Ask yourself what would someone have to tell you, or what would someone have to do to you to get you to do something you couldn’t possibly believe you’d be capable of? Examine that. Learn from it. Don’t judge it. Don’t stand separate from it. Be willing to stand in the shoes of the people you’re judging.”
John Ruskin in letter to C.E. Norton, November 4th, 1860:
“When I begin to think at all, I get into such states of disgust and fury at the way the mob is going on (meaning by mob, chiefly Dukes, crown princes, and such like persons) that I choke; and have to go to the British Museum and look at Penguins till I get cool. I find Penguins at present the only comfort in life. One feels everything in the world so sympathetically ridiculous, one can’t be angry when one looks at a Penguin.”
The Union Soldier in Battle: Enduring the Ordeal of Combat Earl J. Hess P. 160-171
“At first, it was understandable that the Northern soldier had no interest in telling about the war. It was too hard to think about it for several years after Appomattox. Too full of “raw facts,” they wanted to heal, not evaluate. Many of them consciously made vows not to speak a word of their experiences, at least for the time being, and the fact that few memoirs were published for at least fifteen years after the end of the war indicated that they were men of their word. As J.T. Holmes of Ohio put it: “In those days the great interest lay rather in what was before than in what was behind us. The time to look backward either at the war, or at life, in the general sense, had not come to us. We were young men yet and the war was not two years old.”
As time went by, these attitudes changed. Hard memories softened, and distance lent perspective to the veteran. He found it possible to deal with the war as a conscious memory and to ponder it as a significant experience in his life. By the 1880s, more and more Northern veterans were taking pen in hand to explore their personal past. By the 1890s, what had started as a tentative trickle became a deluge. The Northern book and periodical market was awash in a sea of memories, reminiscences, and diaries written by everyone from cooks, privates, and chaplains to colonels, generals, and political leaders. Many other men chose not to publish their memories, preferring only to write them down and file them among family papers. Still others only spoke of the war to friends and relatives, perhaps to have their experiences remembered and passed down secondhand to succeeding generations. By whatever means, the Union veteran dramatically broke his silence after the passage of nearly a generation, and the war became real once again.
They created one of the most remarkable bodies of literature in American history. No other event inspired so many books, articles, and unpublished texts as did the Civil War. The Northern veteran needed only some impetus to set him to writing. Many were pushed into it by requests from sons, daughters, nieces, and nephews for information about their role in the great war. Family friends, usually youngsters, also cajoled veterans for stories about their experiences.
Even more important than family and friends were the former comrades of the veteran; they inspired one another to write. At veterans’ reunions, the call repeatedly rang out to record what had happened before time took its toll on the graying army that had saved the Union. As they had supported one another on the battle line, these aging men now sought to reinforce the bonds of the military family by telling of their time in the army. Their purposes were entertainment, commemoration, and the recording of factual information to keep the story straight. Many also wanted the nation’s memory of the war to be well-balanced; they were afraid that the many memoirs written by generals would give the country the impression that the rank and file had had nothing to do with winning the war. Justice had to be served for the common soldier, civilians had to be informed about the facts of the army and the war, and young men had to be made to “realize what war really is.”
P. 161
The great majority of memoirists had no experience in writing for publication, and some of them openly apologized for what they were certain would be texts “devoid of literary flavor.” Whatever they lacked in terms of accepted style these books, articles, and essays made up for in candor and sincerity. The authors experimented with format, some of them believing that a diary would be more personal and therefore more interesting to the casual reader. Others based their narratives solidly on a rereading of letters or diary entries long since buried in trunks and forgotten in attics. Several veterans were surprised at how difficult it was to write for publication, and they devoted much time and energy to learning how to do it properly. Melvin Grigsby, for example, had been asked to tell his story to so many acquaintances after the war that he decided to write a book to save himself from having to repeat the narrative over and over. Yet he found it so difficult that he postponed the writing until “through reading and education” he acquired “a better command of language.” Other veterans regretted confining themselves to the written form alone and longed for the opportunity to embellish their stories with gestures, eye contact, and sound. A few recognized that when they wrote for a wider audience than their immediate circle of family and friends, their language, style, and even the content of their narratives changed. Yet they all attacked the role of author with the same kind of perseverance they had used to take Vicksburg or Richmond.
Not all veteran memoirists apologized for their lack of sophisticated literary style; some were proud of their rough-hewn writing. Far from “well rounded sentences, or flights of eloquence,” they presented the reader with blunt words, stubby sentences, and stark images. “Those were rugged times,” asserted Charles O. Brown. “The words which would recall them, even briefly, must not be too smooth.” Oddly, numerous soldier-authors felt it necessary to apologize for writing a book about their own experiences, afraid that readers would view them as egotistical. With a charming modesty, these authors graciously acknowledged that other soldiers had shared and exceeded their own experiences. They had no intention of aping the self-serving puffing that characterized so much of the writing produced by generals. They were humble, self-giving men in the war, and they continued to be self-effacing in peace. Some of them even played with this theme. Charles Morton cleverly wrote of his reminiscences of Shiloh:
I desire it to be understood that I am not fully persuaded that I fought that great battle all alone on our side, nor that I can convince you now that it is to be greatly regretted that I was not in supreme command at the time. And I further trust that I will be exempt from any accusation of an egotistical desire to parade my personal prowess in the battle, when I tell you frankly in advance that the most prominent feature of my conduct was the tall running I did; and if the pronouns I and we seem conspicuous, let it be understood that it is merely for convenience of brief expression.
As they struggled with writing, the soldier-authors also began to deal with memory itself. They were fascinated by the process of remembering events, emotions, and images that they had suppressed for so many years. J.T. Holmes had completed his book on the 52nd Ohio; it was 1898, and he had spent most of the night reading proof sheets. It mattered not to him whether the reading public found an interest in his words, for the personal experience of reliving the war had been overwhelming for him. “I have lived over and over again these thrilling years,” he wrote. “No other in my three score can begin to compare with them in depth of interests and feelings, involved and evoked; in the burns and scars from the war that tragedy that passed like a horrid dream, with its lights and shadows, before my youthful eyes.” Writing obviously was therapeutic for Holmes, but it also reminded him of his age and mortality. The war was over, and with the passing of the veterans all would “soon be history, memory, silence, only.”
Holmes realized, as did many other memoirists, that memory lay in the subconsciousness of the veteran to be called upon when he was ready to relive the war. James R. Carnahan of Indiana compared it to a painting, except that the soldier’s vision of war was imprinted by fear, suddenness, and harsh sensual experiences rather than the calm repose of an artist working in his studio. Although vivid, the war vision inevitably grew a bit dull over time and was partially replaced in the veteran’s consciousness by his civil preoccupations. Then, at some point, it came back with something like its old clarity. The sight of a face or the sound of a voice could trigger this process for Carnahan. The connection between sound and memory was so strong for New Jerseyan Ira Seymour Dodd that he crafted an entire essay about his experiences at Chancellorsville around it. Entitled “The Song of the Rappahannock,” it deftly wove together several variations on the theme of sound, silence, and battle. “The Song has been silent for more than thirty years. In another thirty years it will cease to be a living memory save to a handful of very old men. But those who once heard can never forget its weird, fantastic, sinister tones.” At the end, Dodd had heard the whippoorwills singing at night after the sound of the firing had ceased on the corpse-strewn field. He still could not hear the song of that bird, more than thirty years later, without thinking of Chancellorsville.
Not only sound, but also smell, served the veteran as a trigger for memory. James O. Smith had wandered over the field of Antietam to satisfy his morbid curiosity about death. The smoke from the fighting had not yet dissipated, but the smell of rotting flesh had already begun to fill the air. It mingled with the odor of pennyroyal, an aromatic plant with small blue flowers. The contrast of the smell of the wildflower and the smell of death was so vivid for Smith that it “added horror upon horror to the scene. The smell of pennyroyal will to this day bring vividly to my mind all the terrible sights and events of that afternoon.”
After familiarizing themselves with the mechanics of writing and calling up the stored memories of their youth, Northern veterans turned their attention to the content of their memoirs. These writings fell into four broad categories. First and most significantly, authors recalled and reasserted their faith in the cause that had impelled them to enlist in 1861. Second, a small number of veteran-authors completely rejected the cause. They became something of a “lost generation” of the Civil War era, believing that ideology and patriotism were hollow incentives for war and that their own lives had been warped by their battle experiences. Viewing their sacrifice as useless and their youthful enthusiasm for service as naive, they had clearly lost their faith in the cause. A third group of authors held somewhat similar views but came to a different conclusion. They avoided any expressions of faith in the cause but found new faiths to believe in. Instead of ideology, they used devotion to comrades or to a philosophy of personal development as valuable concepts around which to build a satisfying view of their war experiences. Finally, a fourth and more complicated group of authors avoided the dark side of their war experiences as much as possible in their memoirs, preferring to concentrate on the “good” aspects such as amusing camp stories, the excitement of living outdoors, the comradeship of good friends, and the novelty of military life. These men did not dwell on the cause or paint war as a horrible experience or search for new faiths to believe in, yet they were not necessarily antipatriotic, disillusioned about the war, or insensitive to battle’s true nature. A variety of factors explained why they refused to either denounce war or praise it as a useful endeavor.
The proportion of men who fell into each of these four categories was uneven. Of the fifty-eight memoirists consulted on this topic, nineteen were overtly ideological in their judgements of the war experience. Three were “lost” soldiers, and four searched for new faiths to believe in. Twelve veterans were careful to avoid describing the horrors of war, and twenty men frankly described death and battle but made no judgment on it. Overwhelmingly, these memoirists asserted faith in the cause, chose to avoid negative reporting on the war, or displayed no difficulty in dealing with its memory.
P. 170-171
Veterans who remained committed to the cause used a wide range of forms, from the novel to unpublished memoirs, to express their faith. Public speaking, especially before veterans’ groups, was the venue for the most strident assertions of ideology. The style and passion of those speeches struck at least one modern historian as suspicious, possibly indicating that the veteran felt compelled to deny the horrible reality of war in order to perpetuate jingoistic attitudes toward the conflict. But there is no reason to assume that veterans changed their views to suit their audiences. The speeches they delivered to regimental reunions were not false or exaggerated simply because they were patriotic. If veterans did not dwell on the horrors of war, it was because they had a resilient faith in the results of the conflict and a recognition that, despite its horrors, it had been essential to save the Union and destroy slavery. Veterans reiterated the same ideological faith in all its forms, including unpublished memoirs, which they assumed would be read only by members of their families.
It was hardly surprising that these veterans were particularly strong in their assertions when speaking to fellow veterans or to the public at large, for they considered themselves guardians of the cause. The convictions that moved them began to lose much of their power and clarity as the decades passed. By the twentieth-century, new generations were much more interested in the romantic images of the South that the lost-cause writers were producing than in the moralistic political sermons of Union veterans. The men who had saved the Union and retained faith in the cause had to be content with their own self-assurance that right had been on their side, even if society as a whole did not always recognize it.”
Note: Jeff, too, who later said fake news that slavery had anything to do with the war, making the call from the cheap seats, & it’s all a lie down to the ground just the same as Columbia got burned down to its knees. “The truth remains intact and incontrovertible, that the existence of African servitude was in no wise the cause of the conflict, but only an incident.” The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government Vol. 1 Jefferson Davis (1881) P. 80. As David Blight called it in the NYT (6/10/15) https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/06/10/disunion-the-final-q-a, “…perhaps the longest, most turgid and most self-righteous defense of a failed political movement ever written by an American…. The book also stands as one of the most open and aggressive defenses of slavery written by a former Confederate.”
“Anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic.” Flannery O’Connor
Note: Juneteenth becomes a holiday commemorating the end of slavery that originated in Galveston this day, 1865, when, as the myth goes, General Granger arrived &, standing on the deck of a hotel, shouts to the town war had ended, so slaves were all free. In actuality, slaves were freed in 1863 but defiant Confederates refused to emancipate them until Granger arrived with firepower to back the proclamation up. However, not until 6/15/21 did the Senate unanimously pass the bill to make Juneteenth a federal holiday (& the first Civil War related one in the U.S.). “We’re going to have big corporatized Juneteenth celebrations where discussion of ongoing structural racism is considered political & a detraction from the focus on how the white Union army freed us. I’m not sure what counts as a holiday until a body of 100 wealthy & overwhelmingly white ppl declares it so. One day a critical mass of people are truly going to wake up & recognize that these are the people who are killing us & stop getting excited at any small bit of white acknowledgment. And then maybe we can actually get free for real. We never resolved the central conflicts of the civil war which is another reason the proclamation around Juneteenth today is ironic. Apart from confederate monuments & flags littering the landscape, the 13th, 14th & 15th amendments remain at issue & in dispute.” Bree Newsome, twitter, 6/15/21
@scasca16 June 17, 2021: “Courts are closed tomorrow for Juneteenth. My incarcerated clients, all of whom are black men, will remain in jail to celebrate the emancipation of slaves. This is America.”
Finally, on Juneteenth 2021, of all days, RE Lee’s Alma Mater West Point (“West Point AOG Official Alumni association of the United States Military Academy at West Point”) tweeted out like a piece of gravity broke loose, “#OTD – June 19, 1865, #Juneteenth (with an emoji of a raised Black Power fist) is celebrated every year in the U.S. marking the end of slavery. #WestPoint Grads GEN. Gordon Granger ’45 and GEN. Robert E. Lee ’29 delivered the news in Texas.” Picture RE Lee down in Texas, riding in on his white horse, & in a Virginia drawl, smoothly informing the men, “Alright, y’all, my bad. All y’all kin guh home naw…. Happy Trails tuh yuh.” Lee freeing the slaves, pure comedic gold.
Needless to say, this was either an extraordinarily stupid joke, or an attempt at spreading propaganda that further deifies the traitor Lee, & a fitting example of how the Lost Cause still operates in America. Obscene. An aside: Lee was a Colonel in the U.S. Army, never a General. (Took about 3 hours for the tweet to come down, wordlessly, no apology, with 197 comments, 95 retweets, 33 total likes. The comments & retweets were delicious. Over 30 hours later, “We deleted the posts so as not to extend the offense and are reviewing our process for approval of social media posts.”)
Dear Future Generations: Please expect & fight back against LC propaganda where you encounter it because we all know it will continue until the heat death of the universe. Tell the truth about American history it said, beamed in black block letters on Lee atop his horse on Monument Avenue by light of a projector late one night, & the next, & the… words able to jumb the fence & barricades erected to protect the 60 foot tall, 12 ton bronze & marble monstrosity currently facing removal appeals in court. The stone cold fact is this: the South still came unnervingly close to being the dog dirty winner. And they will never forget that. This too is the Real War. But a white flag cannot be divided into something else without becoming something else.
I was at home all day….
Doesn’t feel well, stays home all day….
“I see it at night, it never leaves, I can’t close my eyes for it,” a land that will never get back to normal for the bodies across it, in it.“I can’t get away from that sound,” Ephraim thinks. The long drum roll. Jolts awake to it now in the delirium tremens of place-disorientation.
Right now the peak experience of many men’s lives unfolds not a hundred miles south, left with words that can’t actually say what it was like, an atrocity story they lived, an unwriteable werewolfian bloodguilty American incident about relics of the Confederate kingdom-empire now so far gone yet ever-present.
“I’m bloody well not going back to it,” he may have told them at the table. He may have told all of them. They may have all agreed. They may have all sat in silence, in shame they themselves would never go fight. And someone may have sat there at supper, decided right then & there to go.
No way to know.
Dwight D. Eisenhower posing in front of an American flag. 19th June, 1945, 123 years from today:
FAIR USE NOTICE. Terms of Use. This non-profit, non-commercial, for educational purposes only website contains copyrighted material for the purpose of teaching, learning, research, study, scholarship, criticism, comment, review, and news reporting, which constitutes the Fair Use of any such copyrighted material as provided for under Section §107 of the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976.