Day 116. June 24, 1862.
116
worth a lifetime to see and live through such a fight….
June Tuesday 24
Quite cool this morning. A Harnishes Mrs Burket and myself went down to John Huyetts* eat Dinner and Supper.** There we left there at sun down and went to Daniel Neffs. We stayed there all night. Some of the farmers mowing
*Likely the brother of Captain Huyett, Ephraim’s hometown friend and Captain of the 110th he roomed with and who appears before the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War June 21, 1862 regarding Doctor Hays, whom Ephraim worked directly under.
**Dinner is lunch; supper is dinner (the night meal). Interestingly, Ephraim writes nothing of tonight’s supper discussion which likely included questions about the war, & Ephraim at it. He writes nothing about any political leaning of the people present. It’s like the moment he stepped on his farm soil he shut down, and now the deepest he goes is to say he’s tired. Nothing emotional whatsoever. “I’m bloody not going back to it,” he may have told someone. He may have told all of them. They may have all sat there & agreed. They may have sat in shame they would never go. And someone may have sat & decided right then to go.
Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era James McPherson P. 464
“All this time McClellan was sending a steady stream of telegrams to Washington explaining why he was not quite ready to launch his own offensive: the roads were too wet; his artillery was not all up; it took time to reorganize the divisions crippled in the Seven Pines/Fair Oaks fighting, and to incorporate the one division of reinforcements finally received from McDowell; and when, asked McClellan, was the rest of McDowell’s corps going to join him? By June 24, McClellan had penetrated the rebel smokescreen to learn of Jackson’s approach; on June 25 he wired Stanton: “The rebel force is stated at 200,000, including Jackson [it was actually less than 90,000] . . . I shall have to contend against vastly superior odds. . . . If [the army] is destroyed by overwhelming numbers . . . the responsibility cannot be thrown on my shoulders; it must rest where it belongs.’”
The Mind of the South W. J. Cash (1941) P. 104-106“Local patriotism was far from being dead in them, but nobody remembered now that they had ever gone out to die merely for Virginia or Carolina or Georgia. In their years together, a hundred control phrases, struck from the eloquent lips of their captains in the smoke and heat of battle, had burned themselves into their brains—phrases which would ever after be to them as the soundings of trumpets and the rolling of drums, to set their blood to mounting, their muscles to tensing, their eyes to stinging, to call forth in them the highest loyalties and the most active responses. And of these phrases the great master key was in every case the adjective Southern.
Moreover, four years of fighting for the preservation of their world and their heritage, four years of measuring themselves against the Yankee in the intimate and searching contact of battle, had left these Southerners far more self-conscious than they had been before, far more aware of their differences and of the line which divided what was Southern from what was not. And upon that line all their intensified patriotism and love, all their high pride in the knowledge that they had fought a good fight and had yielded only to irresistible force, was concentrated, to issue in a determination, immensely more potent than in the past, to hold fast to their own, to maintain their divergences, to remain what they had been and were.
Nor were they to be long about putting this determination into evidence. For as soon as Andrew Johnson began to hand them back to the governments of their various states, they everywhere set themselves, before everything else, to the enactment of the famous vagrancy and contract laws—everywhere, that is, struck, with characteristic directness in action, straight to the heart of their problem and sought at a stroke to set their old world whole again by restoring slavery in all but the name.
And so inevitably the Yankee, seeing his victory thus brought to nothing, came back. Came back in towering rage and hate, and shorn of all the fine notions of chivalry, the remembrance that he was after all a Christian, with which he had hitherto occasionally toyed. Came back to sit down for thirty years this time, to harry the South first with the plan called Thorough and the bayonet, and afterward with the scarcely less effective devices of political machination and perpetually impending threats. To make the frontier absolute and continual. To rob, to loot, to waste the pitiful remaining substance of this people in riot. To subvert the Southern world again and to hold it subverted. Not only to strip the Southern white men of mastery, of every legitimate instrument of mastery, to stop him more or less fully from every avenue leading to legitimate mastery, but also largely to hand over at least the seeming of that mastery to the black man.
And the result—well, the result in part, of course, was that the tariff gang got what it wanted—that the Republican Party had time and freedom to establish itself in the national trough so solidly that it would never really be got out again until the coming of the great depression of 1929. But for the rest—for that will to wean the South from its divergences and bring it into the flow of the nation, which, as I have said, was the most fundamental drive behind the Yankee’s behavior—there is not among all the ironic results of such efforts of mass stupidity another more ironic than this.
For these thirty years the South was to live with unparalleled completeness under the sway of a single plexus of ideas of which the center was an ever growing concern with white superiority and an ever growing will to mastery of the Negro. And of which the circumference was a scarcely less intense and a scarcely less conscious concern with the maintenance of all that was felt to be Southern, a scarcely less militant will to yield nothing of its essential identity. For these thirty years it was to battle with unexampled fury, for the achievement of this will, the satisfaction of this obsession, and what was obviously necessary to the purpose, the setting up again of a world which should be nearly like the old one the Yankee had destroyed as was humanly possible.
It would not escape change, of course. The world into which it would emerge after these thirty years would be in many respects a vastly different one from that of the Old South. Conditions that had been primary under the ancien regime would have vanished, or at least, and already at the end of the Reconstruction period, would be in the process of vanishing. In more than one significant regard the essential social direction of the South would have been diverted and even reversed. And, as a result of the Yankee’s effort and the South’s own driving necessities, the land would now bear within itself that which was eventually to be productive of even greater social changes. Nor would the Southern mind itself have by any means come off scot-free.
None the less, for immediate purposes, the Yankee was to retire from this thirty-year conflict in what amounted to abject defeat. If the world which he had to leave to the South was a changed world, it was still a world in which the first social principle of the old was preserved virtually intact: a world in which the Negro was still “mud-sill,” and in which a white man, any white man, was in some sense a master. And so far from having reconstructed the Southern mind in the large and in its essential character, it was this Yankee’s fate to have strengthened it almost beyond reckoning, and to have made it one of the most solidly established, one of the least reconstructible ever developed.”
The Unwritten War: American Writers and the Civil War Daniel Aaron P. 340
Sherwood Anderson:
“For four years the men of American cities, villages and farms walked across the smoking embers of a burning land, advancing and receding as the flame of that universal, passionate death-spitting thing swept down upon them or receded toward the smoking sky-line. Is it so strange that they could not come home and begin again peacefully painting houses or mending broken shoes? A something in them cried out. It sent them to bluster and boast upon the street corners. When people passing continued to think only of their brick laying and of their shovelling of corn into cars, when the sons of these war gods walking home at evening and hearing the vain boastings of the fathers began to doubt even the facts of the great struggle, a something snapped in their brains and they fell to chattering and shouting their vain boastings to all as they looked hungrily about for believing eyes.”
Note: “People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.” James Baldwin
Note: “I not only have hopes for the future, I have hopes for the past. I hope it will be found out to be alright for what it was.” Robert Frost
Note: And how far in the past do we have to put it– whatever it may be– before we say it’s too far back to matter? It’s 157 years since 1865 & the Civil War’s going strong, both itself & interest in it. What about 2065? 2165? 2265? 3065? Assuming we’re not all made meals of by hungry Polar Bears teetering in to shores on the last of the ice floes… This can all– all of it– only last so long.
Note: Walt Whitman, from “Reconciliation”:
WORD all over, beautiful as the sky!
Beautiful that war, and all its deeds of carnage, must in time be utterly lost”
The Civil War Archive: The History of the Civil War in Documents Henry Steele Commager P. 35-36
“As every student of evidence knows, people do not always see what they think they see and do not remember what they saw. There are doubtless many instances where soldiers, writing fifteen or twenty years after the event, deluded themselves, as well as their readers. They embroidered on their original stories; they incorporated into their accounts not only what they had experienced but what they had heard or read elsewhere; they went back and consulted official records and doctored their manuscripts. Soldiers whose companies did not actually get into battle appear, in written recollections, in the thick of it; hangers-on, who have entertained their friends with the gossip of the capital for years, remember through the haze of time that they themselves directed great affairs of state.
P. 37
As we give both Federal and Confederate accounts the errors often cancel out. The vainglorious give themselves away, and so too the the ignorant and the timid, while those who write with an eye on the verdict of history proclaim that fact in every line.”
The Union Soldier in Battle: Enduring the Ordeal of Combat Earl J. Hess P. 1
Note: General William T. Sherman
“Who but a living witness can adequately portray those scenes on Shiloh’s field, when our wounded men, mingled with rebels, charred and blackened by the burning tents and underbrush, were crawling about, begging for someone to end their misery? Who can describe the plunging shot shattering the strong oak as with a thunderbolt, and beating down horse and rider to the ground? Who but one has heard them can describe the peculiar sizzing of the minie ball, or the crash and roar of a volley fire? Who can describe the last look of the stricken soldier as he appeals for help that no man can give or describe the dread scene of the surgeon’s work, or the burial trench?”
Note: Time & again, American soldiers will try to describe the indescribable, then give up, writing to the effect that words are useless, that you can’t know unless you were there. We will see several instances of this. So at what juncture do words come in? If the people present can find no words fit to describe war, how can we now? As General George Pickett writes to his wife** about the Irish Brigade from America Aflame: How the Civil War Created a Nation David Goldfield P. 265: “Your soldier’s heart almost stood still as he watched those sons of Erin fearlessly rush to their death. The brilliant assault… was beyond description.”
Inside the Army of the Potomac: The Civil War Experience of Captain Francis Adams Donaldson 1998 Edited by Gregory Acken P. 121
Note: Donaldson (1840-1928) was in the 71st PA. Vols., then the PA. 118th Vols. (the Corn Exchange Reg’t.). He had a Confederate soldier brother in the 22 VA. & was afraid he might run into him in battle. A prisoner in Richmond, his brother secured his release to wander the city limits, & he would visit the same church services where Jeff Davis appeared & worshipped. Excerpt of letter home to his brother dated 9/23/62:
“On reaching the summit, or Boonsborough Gap as it is called, a sight unfolded itself that probably was never before witnessed on this continent—80 to 100,000 armed men assembled together. Down in the valley lay the Army of the Potomac, massed, the the whole face of the country being covered with troops. I never before saw such a sight. From where I stood the men below looked like ants, and indeed the writhing mass resembled that of an ant battle, seemingly to work around and and over one another like them, so closely were they packed. To the right was seen a dark line of men moving off in evident intention of taking position in line of battle, as it was clear the enemy had halted to deliver a battle. The stacks of muskets gave back flashes of fire as a passing cloud, unveiling the sun, would let its rays strike them. Curls of thin blue smoke from the camp fires ascended and permeated the atmosphere, only to make the panorama more wonderful without obscuring it in the slightest this marvelous scene, and how utterly impossible to convey the impression so grand a spectacle made upon me. Think of it! At my feet lay the whole Army of the Potomac, cavalry, artillery and infantry, in mass. What a picture, what an awfully grand spectacle.”
The Unwritten War: American Writers and the Civil War Daniel Aaron P. 265
Sidney Lanier “looked back to the late summer days of 1864 with nostalgia”:
“Our life during this period was full of romance as heart could desire. We had a flute and a guitar, good horses, a beautiful country, splendid residences inhabited by friends who loved us, and plenty of hair-breath ‘scapes from the roving bands of Federals who were continually visiting the Debateable Land. I look back on that as the most delicious period of my life, in many respects: Cliff and I never cease to talk of the beautiful women, the serenades, the moonlight dashed on the beach of fair Burwell’s Bay (just above Hampton Roads), and the spirited brushes of our little force with the enemy.”
The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant: The Complete Annotated Edition P. 761
Note: General Grant:
“After our rebellion, when so many young men were at liberty to return to their homes, they found they were not satisfied with the farm, the store, or the workshop of the villages, but wanted larger fields. The mines of the mountains first attracted them; but afterwards they found that rich valleys and productive grazing and farming lands were there. This territory, the geography of which was not known to us at the close of the rebellion, is now as well mapped as any portion of our country. Railroads traverse it in every direction, north, south, east, and west. The mines are worked. The high lands are used for grazing purposes, and rich agricultural lands are found in many of the valleys. This is the work of the volunteer. It is probable that the Indians would have had control of these lands for a century yet but for the war. We must conclude, therefore, that wars are not always evils unmixed with some good.”
Note: Because the White man did such a superior job stewarding, or? Below said to be the last picture taken of Grant, just 4 days before he slipped on out of here. This is obviously a colorized photograph.
Note: Grant finishes his memoirs 48 hours before dying. He just stares. The water comes swimming into his eyes and the page floats closer. It’s right up to him now, asking him to take it, what he knows, to write anything, anything for God’s sake, here we are, just put anything down. He rocks in his chair with the shawl his wife made him around his shoulders. His organs have already begun the shutdown process. Somewhere in his mind he senses it. Even his own smell has changed. Any animal nearby knows what’s coming. So he does his best one last time. Grant, 1875: “If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon’s but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition and ignorance on the other.” In 2021, on the mall near Grant’s statue, a wood guillotine, a rope at the top its stairs, hanging, waiting for the ghost of him to show itself, then step right down off the horse & tie it around his own neck.
The Union Soldier in Battle : Enduring the Ordeal of Combat Earl J. Hess P. 13-14
“The siege of Vicksburg offered Northern soldiers a stunning view of the beauty and power of the huge mortars fired from vessels in the Mississippi River. Jacob Switzer of the 22nd Iowa left a graphic description.
“The firing of the gun or mortar caused a flash of of light in the west, similar to a faint flash of lightning; immediately a beautiful star would arise from the horizon and mount into the sky, ascending to a great height; just as it reached its highest point and turned to descend, the roar of the gun would be heard, and the swish or roar of the shell as it mounted was terrific and continued long after explosion of the shell. The star would continue to descend until it reached a height of probably one hundred yards and then a puff of smoke would be seen, but still the roar of the oncoming shell would continue for some time until the sound had time to traverse the intervening distance when the noise of the explosion would be heard, and then the buzzing, whizzing sound of the pieces as they flew in every direction over the Confederate works. I have lain for hours of a beautiful starlit evening when all other firing had ceased except for the occasional shots of the mortars– about one per minute– watched these stars mount to the zenith, descend and explode, and counted the time from the puff of smoke at the explosion of the shell until I would hear the noise of the explosion, and thought that no more beautiful sight could be witnessed, not giving a thought to the death and destruction contained in each one of the terrible missiles.”
A Missouri cavalry officer genuinely felt sorry for his wife, for she had “none of the excitement of the camp the march and the battle field” to take her mind off the anxieties felt by those who remained at home. He described a fight at Osage, Missouri, in October 1864 as “one of the most beautiful battles that was almost ever fought being on an open smooth prairie…. You may think it strange but it is worth a lifetime to see and live through such a fight as that was. I often think that if there had been an artist there that he could have got some beautiful sketches for pictures.’”
The Paris Review “Shelby Foote, The Art of Fiction No. 158” Issue 151, Summer, 1999
“Foote: Everything I have to say about the writing of history was summoned up by John Keats in ten words in a letter, more or less like a telegram put on the wire nearly two hundred years ago. He said, “A fact is not a truth until you love it.” You have to become attached to the thing you’re writing about– in other words, “love it”– for it to have any real meaning. It is absolutely true that no list of facts ever gives you a valid account of what happened. The bare-bone facts are what you use to shape your description of what happened. There are those historians who, I’m afraid, all too often think that good writing gets in the way of the history. In other words, you hide the facts behind blankets of prose. I believe the exact opposite. I believe that the facts told with some art are true narrative. Which you then absorb into your being and understandings as well as you do a great novel, whether it’s a short one like Gatsby or a long one like Remembrance of Things Past. That’s the way I feel about writing history. Now it sounds as if I’m making an all-out attack against academic historians. I am making some attack on them for their lack of concern about learning how to write. It is as if they thought it an onerous waste of time, which they might better spend doing research rather than learning how to write.”
Note: Absolutely. For more along these lines, see James Grossman, Executive Director of the American Historical Association, who, along with Barbara Gannon (who told me, You are a historian by the way. You do history, we academics do not own it ) suggested the only hope for Ephraim’s diary’s was to put it online, so that’s how it ended up here: https://www.historians.org/perspectives-article/the-diffusion-of-knowledge-toward-a-wider-definition-of-scholarship-december-2020/
An excerpt from the above, Grossman: “Beyond conventional publication, various other modes of historical work elicit appreciation or applause but are too often dismissed as mere popularization, and hence a distraction from “real scholarship.” These endeavors include but are not limited to op-eds, blog posts, magazine articles, museum exhibitions, public lectures, congressional testimony, oral history projects, expert witness testimony, media appearances, and podcasts. Some of these could lie within the blurry boundaries that encompass public history, and hence worthy enhancements to a CV, but inadequate as central qualifications for promotion without also the requisite standard monograph and traditional scholarly articles.’”
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we left there at sun down….
It was sliding toward toward midnight. How we were in this suburban tropical sky. He had come to find us deep in the pages’ aftermath. Who knew what he wanted. Waterproof pages to fill your bible. A minor setback when the New York Times reprints them. But by then, nothing surprised anyone anymore. Shortly after, they wash out to sea too. Skin slides further south to meet the devil at last. The normal hotspots. Water masses grow when we turn our backs. Eclipses run rampant. Things are dated close to expiration now, & if everyone knows what’s coming, like looking through a stone that’s clear to the other side. But going back to setting fire to fat unoccupied highrises doesn’t bring the old relief. Animals come walking out, you can’t ignore them. You wanted them then and now. But not like this. They lead to the edge, back to where they came from, the face that holds dry land. The edge of where the rest of the world went but you can’t see it, until there’s nothing left but you, standing around the fire with a dim memory of an ice blue aural haze floating up the ocean severally, how things moved by themselves. A fugitiveness. It’s what can be divided in your consciousness too. They say there is no such thing as the perfect crime, but you’ve never seen that blue tint on anything but that ice. It starts moving away, becoming a smaller and smaller dot. Tense shifts around with the heat. Animal bones, time zones. All these objects can do is reflect the light that hits them. You don’t expect to sleep through the night: you, & everyone else, played the numbers and lost. Greenland’s ice was 10 story buildings. Icing. Iced. All bets are off. You’re a quantum fluctuation away from nothing. The solar flares. The trees lifted out. You had no idea. You have to ask how much further. Going going gone. Necklaces of human bone would have shown up in the pictures later if anyone could have taken them. Collecting the collected. Who you were in the last life. It will be on your head. Because it comes down to this: Someone will write the last words ever read. Too late to toss a gold coin to see who goes. After all, the devil walks lightly, really, his color is bad, & everything was covered by a heavy layer of sand but they will ask What did you know and when did you know it? When the sun crosses the line at last you’ll want words but so much of the story that could prove who’s right and who’s wrong is gone. Even stars scream when sucked into a black hole. It’s going to go on with or without you. Governments who kept it quiet. Blare of CNN runs out empty over the water, a flat round Vegas fountain whose bouquet petals scratch the surface of the last chlorine sea. You fish them out for copper in pennies to get a bus ticket North. You can get around the danger but you can’t get around the death. Everyone who took off, speaking in tongues, were found later at sea. Or not. It’s true what they say about how when a body fills with air it waves goodbye.
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