Day 98. June 6, 1862.
98
editors had broken out their blackest type….
June Friday 6 1862
Quite cool this morning but the weather is not settled yet and we had orders to march but it was countermanded again. The men buissy drying their blankets and cloathing. I don’t know of anything new to day. Capt Huyett gone back to Frountroyal as he is not very well and has gone back to [illeg. Possibly “secrete” or “recreate”] his health. Gen Shields came out along the road to investigate it and see if they were fit to travel in the morning. I got very sick this evenning. I got a pain in my hip and breast. I don’t know what was the cause accept the other I got very wet. The boys buissy cooking this evenning for to march in the morning. Cool this evening
Civil War Weather in Virginia Robert K. Krick P. 62
“7a.m. 66; 2p.m. 70; 9p.m. 62. First firefly seen.”
Make Me a Map of the Valley: The Civil War Journal of Stonewall Jackson’s Topographer Jedediah Hotchkiss P. 52-53
“Friday, June 6th. This was about dark and two miles further from Harrisonburg. After we had repulsed the Federal infantry Ashby took some of our infantry and went forward to try and cut off the enemy’s cavalry by going around through the woods. Our men had been firing whenever they saw any of the enemy. Ashby directed them to cease firing and went forward to reconnoiter; just at that time he was shot, it is supposed by one of our men mistaking him for a Yankee. So fell the gallant General Turner Ashby; a loss irreparable. We were at Dr. Kemper’s, on the hill, at Port Republic, and it was late at night when the news of Ashby’s death came. After hearing this Gen. Jackson walked the floor of his room, for some time, in deep sorrow, greatly moved by the sad news.”
Note: General Jackson’s eulogy for Turner Ashby (“The Black Knight of the Confederacy”): “An official report is not an appropriate place for more than a passing notice of the distinguished dead; but the close relation which General Ashby bore to my command for most of the previous twelve months will justify me in saying that as a partisan officer, I never knew his superior. His daring was proverbial; his powers of endurance almost incredible; his tone of character heroic, and his sagacity almost intuitive in divining the purposes and movements of the enemy.”
The Unwritten War: American Writers and the Civil War Daniel Aaron P. 247-248
“Cooke’s cavaliers (Stuart, Turner Ashby, and others) were the flowerhood of chivalry, heroes of “romantic adventures” and “splendid achievements.”
“Terrible fellows they are . . . with their menacing eyes and floating plumes, who think no more of charging and routing a regiment of Yankees than of going down the middle in a Virginia reel with that inimitable grace and courtesy so peculiarly their own; who are irresistibly alike in bower and battle; who ride into the fray gaily humming a snatch of song, pause long enough to cleave a luckless mudsill from chin to chin with the ‘hard steel battle-axe’ which they wield so effectively, and finish in a burst of uproarious hilarity; who fight best at odds four to one and prefer five; who are all so pure and chivalrous and brave, Sir Galahads for chastity, Sir Lancelots for valor. Where shall we look upon their like again? . . . The good die first always; and it was scarcely to be expected that Stuart and Ashby and the rest of them could go on forever with impunity, charging an army while all the world wondered; we knew that some day or other they would surely come to Mr. Cooke’s merciless admiration.” (The Round Table, VI [July 13, 1867], 26).”
Note: Jackson’s eulogy for Ashby: “An official report is not an appropriate place for more than a passing notice of the distinguished dead; but the close relation which General Ashby bore to my command for most of the previous twelve months will justify me in saying that as a partisan officer, I never knew his superior. His daring was proverbial; his powers of endurance almost incredible; his tone of character heroic, and his sagacity almost intuitive in divining the purposes and movements of the enemy.”
Note: The 110th is with Tyler, below.
How the South Could Have Won the Civil War: The Fatal Errors That Led to Confederate Defeat Bevin Alexander P. 72
“On June 6, Frémont got a message through to Shields that Jackson was fleeing toward Port Republic in panic and that a movement by Shields on his flank would break his army into fragments. Shields sent Brigadier Erastus B. Tyler’s brigade to help the advance brigade intercept Jackson. With Frémont pressing from the west and Tyler from the east, Shields expected an easy triumph– this despite the lack of aggression Frémont had shown, and despite the fact that the two small brigades totaled only 3,000 men.”
The Civil War, A Narrative: Fort Sumter to Perryville Shelby Foote P. 457-58
“Saturday, after an early start, Ewell’s division stopped just beyond the hamlet of Cross Keys, six miles from Harrisonburg, to stand in Frémont’s path when he came up. Jackson’s plodded another three miles and went into position on the heights above the confluence of the rivers at Port Republic, overlooking the low-lying opposite bank of the South Fork, where the road wound southwest from Conrad’s Store; this would be Shields’ line of advance, and the guns on the heights would enfilade his column at close range. Neither of the Union forces was yet in sight, however, so the Valley soldiers had time for reading their mail, which had just been forwarded along with the latest newspapers. Elated by their victories, the editors had broken out their blackest type. The Charleston Mercury called Stonewall “a true general” and predicted that he would soon be “leading his unconquerable battalions through Maryland into Pennsylvania.” By way of contrast, gloomy reports from the northern press were reprinted in adjoining columns, and the Richmond Whig combined a mock protest with a backhand swipe at the Administration: “This man Jackson must be suppressed, or else he will change the humane and Christian policy of the war, and demoralize the Government.’”
This Hallowed Ground: The Story of the Union Side of the Civil War Bruce Catton P. 147-148
“In northern Mississippi a soldier was writing to his sister: “Our men are using this country awful rough. Such animals as chickens, fences, swine, etc., are entirely unseeable and unfindable within fifteen miles of where our camp has been this last week.” Oddly enough, this reflected high morale: “I never saw men in as good spirits and as confident as this army now appears… I can’t see why people will stay at home when they can get to soldiering. I think a year of it is worth getting shot for to any man.’”
Armies of Deliverance: A New History of the Civil War Elizabeth R. Varon P. 145-146
Writing about Battle of Antietam, 9/17/62:
“The raw excitement of combat itself could, paradoxically, provide relief from such solemn dread. Rufus Dawes of the 6th Wisconsin Volunteers remembered the fighting on the morning of the seventeenth, at the cornfield, this way:
“As we approached the edge of the corn, a long line of men in butternut and gray rose up from the ground. Simultaneously, the hostile battle lines opened a tremendous fire upon each other. Men, I can not say fell; they were knocked out of the ranks by dozens. But we jumped over the fence, and pushed on, loading, firing, and shouting as we advanced. There was, on the part of the men, great hysterical excitement, eagerness to go forward, and a reckless disregard of life, of every thing but victory…. “Forward” is the word. The men are loading and firing with demoniacal fury and shouting and laughing hysterically.”
Dawes and his comrades were experiencing what modern historians have called “combat narcosis” or “fighting rage” or the “glaze of war”: a physiological condition, brought on by the rush of adrenaline at a moment of extreme stress, causing an altered state of consciousness.
Officers were expected to act as beacons in the storm, inspiring their men with conspicuous acts of bravery. Thompson remembered “seeing an officer riding diagonally across the field—a most inviting target—instinctively bending his head down over his horse’s neck, as though he were riding through driving rain.” Private Edgar Warfield of the 17th Virginia Infantry described his company’s bravest lieutenant, Tom Perry, as “calm and serene” in battle, “as if waiting for the dinner horn to blow.” In his postwar memoir, Confederate artilleryman Royall Figg recalled the stirring speech of Colonel Stephen D. Lee as he rallied his troops at Antietam. The words were “written in letters of fire on the tablet of memory.” Lee had proclaimed, “You are boys, but you have this day been where only men dare to go! Some of your company have been killed; many have been wounded. But recollect that it is a soldier’s fate to die!” The fearless Lee seemed to Figg “a very god of war, and his eyes flashed command, not entreaty.” William J. Barnett of the 53rd Pennsylvania Infantry wrote his parents an account of the stoic death of the “most gallant Officer,” a Lieutenant Weaver, in his regiment. “Tell my Mother I died like a brave man” were Weaver’s last words—a message intended as much for his men as his mother.
Again and again, soldiers who sought to convey the lethality of this battle and the stoicism of the troops noted that corpses lay in perfect rows, where men had stood their ground. “Their battle lines can be distinctly traced by the heaps of dead… they did not run—they melted away in their places,” Barnett wrote of the Confederates, adding, “They fought with a desperation worthy of a better cause.” “We mowed the Rebbles like grass before the mashine,” wrote Ephraim Brown of the 64th New York to his parents and siblings back home. “Such Death Grones was never heard.” Many men who survived Antietam professed their inability to capture the experience in words. “The wildest flights of imagination can not possibly create a picture so horrible, but what it would be a parradice compared with that bloody field.’”
It’s My Country Too: Women’s Military Stories from the American Revolution to Afghanistan Jerri Bell and Tracy Crow P. 23-24
“The words of Loreta Janeta Velazquez who “….enlisted as a man from a desire for adventure, rather than from patriotic idealism or love of a man.” In a section of her memoir titled “The Pleasures of Fighting”:
The sensations of a soldier in the thick of a fight battle description; and, as his hopes rise or sink with the ebb and flow of the battle, as he sees comrades falling about him dead and wounded, hears the sharp hiss of the bullets, the shrieking of the shells, the yells of the soldiers on each side as they smite each other, there is a positive enjoyment in the deadly perils of the occasion that nothing can equal….”
The Union Soldier in Battle: Enduring the Ordeal of Combat Earl J. Hess P. 113
“Other soldiers spoke of a “curious electric thrill” that merged their self-awareness into a “composite consciousness” on the battlefield. This bound all regimental members into a colective will that enabled the regiment to act as a united whole. Jonathan P. Stowe of the 15th Massachusetts was moved beyond measure by the cheering of his regiment and many others during an engagement of the Seven Days campaign. Along the battle line that stretched four miles, one unit after another took up the shout. “I assure you the effect is electric,” he wrote to friends.”
The Union Soldier in Battle: Enduring the Ordeal of Combat Earl J. Hess P. 1
“You wanted to know how we felt in the battle. I don’t know as I can tell you how I do feel. I have a dread of it at first when I know I have to go in, but when you come to see the wounded carried by you and… hear the shouts of them that are at it. It isn’t long before you won’t think or care whether you are in it or not and as was the case at White Oak Swamp, I wanted to go in and give the Rebs a try, but it is awful work.” John Burrill 2nd New Hampshire
P. 73
“As I look back upon it, it seems astonishing how soon all the natural feelings of apprehension and fear give way to what has been aptly termed the “battle rage,” which lifts a man up to a plane where the things of the body are forgotten. Amid the roar and din of musketry and the horrible swish and shriek of shells, the intellect seemed to be disembodied, and, while conscious of the danger of being hurled headlong into eternity at any moment, the pressure upon the brain seemed to deaden the physical senses– fear among them. Fear came later when the fight was over, just as in the waiting moments before it began; but throughout the day while the battle was on I remember having a singular curiosity about personal experiences. I seemed to be looking down upon my bodily self with a sense of impersonality and wondering why I was not afraid in the midst of all this horrible uproar and danger. I suppose this was the common experience of soldiers, for if it were not so, battles could not be fought.” Lewis H. Hosea, 16th U.S. Infantry
Note: https://medium.com/@_EthanGrey/the-message-of-the-republican-party-dont-tread-on-me-i-tread-on-you-936037958bce
Gen Shields came out along the road to investigate it….
Historians have been confused about numbers, always.
They can read the same account & come out swinging in opposite directions & from different hemispheres. You can’t even believe the paintings of the battles because after a line fires once, you can’t see for all that smoke (they drift in & out of heavy smoke & everything starts to narrow in front of you & all you hear are echoes, plus your heartbeat thudding. And everything swings back & forth, the cries for relief from suffering radiating outward into the universe, this universe, where there’s nothing to do but throw salt over your shoulder in a mile wide swath where everyone flies up & lands elsewhere, & nothing gives an inch). Controversy about the exact time, location, nature and number of, aim of, result of, and even who the principal actors were is ongoing. Like we’re just one witness away from it all, whatever is missing between here, the 21st century, & there, 1861-1865. Meantime, we have Jimmy Stewart in Shenandoah filmed at Universal Studios in a 10-gallon hat. Or Robert Duvall transmogrifying into Lee with just the right makeup in Gods & Generals. But none of anyone was there.
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