Day 21. March 21, 1862.
21
Hi, if anyone’s reading this, I just want to say thank you, & that I’m trying to figure out how to add white space between these sections, passages. No, control/shift won’t work. I have plenty of white space in my document so it’s easier on the eye, but it won’t translate here no matter what I do. So in the meantime– & actually, knowing my luck, it will be forever– it may take a while to get these posts more readable, &c. And I still can’t figure out how to put all March entries in any kind of menu, either. Also, am still working on the introduction but it’s about 75 pages. No one needs that. 🙂 At this point? I’m just grateful I managed to get anything online for the 160th. FFS
The below material probably needs a trigger warning, but screw that. What did we expect? It’s the Civil War.
Do you thank God….
March Friday 21
It looks very much like winter this morning.* I got up and I found the ground all covered with snow about one inch. This is the Equinoctial storm and I hope that we may have good weather. I looked down into the camp. There was not much stir as the soldiers are all very tired of their 22 mile march yesterday. Some of the men with scarcely any part of the soles of their shoes on and their feet very wett and there is no wonder that there so many sick or will be in a few days. I hope the war may soon be over and peace and prosperity may attend our country again. The snow is all gone again and is very mudy snow don’t lay so long here as in Penn. We are in Frederick Co Va Camp Shields
*The sun just keeps backing away and laughing as snow hinges forward like a trip wire released. It ceases at 10:30 am., having left two inches on the first day of Spring when the Meridian Line is passing over. Ephraim is ridiculously calm about the situation they’re all in. No self-pity, no victimhood, just straight talk of the sitch. And that, ladies & gentlemen, was the 19th century in a nutshell.
See: The Howling Storm: Weather, Climate, and the American Civil War, by Kenneth W. Noe (2020)
Civil War Weather in Virginia Robert K. Krick P. 51
“7a.m. 36; 2p.m. 45; 9p.m. 45.”
Note: The inalterable, indelible, in-everything dead sheer misery thrust upon the 110th:
Nature’s Civil War: Common Soldiers and the Environment in 1862 Virginia Kathryn Shively Meier P. 138
“In Shield’s division, one 110th Pennsylvanian committed suicide from exhaustion on March 21, while only one in five of his comrades reported present for duty. April discipline was likewise lax, as the men continued to trickle away in search of much-needed supplies and shelter. Shields complained to Banks that he had had to arrest Col. George H. Gordon’s men from the 3rd Wisconsin and 2nd Massachusetts, who had been “loitering” around Edinburgh. Gordon gruffly countered in a letter that his men had been foraging because of a severe lack of rations, attempting to draw attention to the source rather than the result of the problem to little effect. June brought more physical torment and, thus, more straggling. Shields’s men were at half rations, prompting the army to act as “a marauding party, plundering everyone.’”
Note: For more on the 2nd Mass., see May 25. This regiment was the second one raised in the state to fight in the war (62 officially raised, plus various cavalry, artillery, light artillery, sharpshooters, & numerous unattached companies). Ormand Francis Nims (down-the-line grandson of Godfrey Nims, who is my 8th? great grandfather: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/40659937/godfrey-nims) was Captain of the 2nd Massachusetts Light Horse Artillery, otherwise known as “Nims Battery.” It mustered in July, 1861, & was organized response to Lincoln’s original call on May 2, 1861 for troops. They were the first 3 year battery from the State. Here is Ormand: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/178945046/ormond-f-nims
For a long history on Ormand, & the Deerfield Massacre, see May 25. The Nims family lost more than any other family in the dead of night on February 29, 1704, in the French-led Deerfield Massacre. You may have heard the story of Abigail Nims, & others kidnapped to Canada, & the Nims who died along the way there in the snow. 112 taken, 89 survived the 300 mile trek to QuĂ©bec. According to Kim Kujawski at her excellent website https://www.tfcg.ca/deerfield-captives-nims-rising-allen, “…anyone that wasn’t able to keep up or became sick or wounded was killed and left behind. Sadly, this included mostly young children, infants, and pregnant women. Reverend Williams’ own wife Eunice, having given birth only 6 weeks prior, was one of the first to be killed. Abigail’s mother was also killed.” “Of the captives taken by the Abenaki and Pennacooks, all except three were sold to the French.”
I learned about this raid in history class but had no idea they were my relatives. Here at Tufts , by Caroline E. Whitcomb, History of the Second Massachusetts Battery of Light Artillery (Nims’ Battery): 1861-1865, compiled from records of the Rebellion, official reports, diaries and rosters has more about Ormand & Deerfield. Col. Ormand lives to 91, though his however many back grandfather–8th? I think– Godfrey Nims dies of a “broken heart” shortly after the massacre.Â
Excerpt: “Some years after the war a niece of Colonel Nims was visiting in the South and dined at the home of a former Confederate captain. She was told that at one time during the war, orders were given to the Confederate officers to kill Captain Nims at any cost as his battery was inflicting so much damage upon their forces.”
To see a painting of Nims’ Battery, go to maritato.com/store/p41/2nd_Massachusetts_Battery_Of_Light_Artillery_Nims_Battery_1861. More 2nd Mass. history can be found in various books, including at Project Gutenberg, Tufts University, & even at Walmart. For further information, see the Nims Family Association in Deerfield for works such as The Story of Godfrey Nims of Old Deerfield. A large boulder with a plaque about Godfrey Nims stands on Main Street in front of the Deerfield Academy. Pictures by Sue Downhill & Lynn Feingold, findagrave.com.
And David Strother will write on May 25th that a cavalryman of the 2nd Massachusetts warns him of danger.
Note: And then, this happens:
Shenandoah 1862: Stonewall Jackson’s Valley Campaign Peter Cozzens P. 151-152
“At noon on Thursday, March 20, Shields marched the division back to Winchester. Rain had fallen steadily throughout the night and continued in spurts during the day. The turnpike was sloppy and the going hard. Shields permitted only one halt in twenty-two miles. “Tired and a little cross,” men drifted from the ranks by the score, and fatigue drove one soldier of the hapless 110th Pennsylvania to suicide. The next morning only one hundred members of that regiment, or one man in five, were counted present for duty.”
Nature’s Civil War: Common Soldiers and the Environment in 1862 Virginia Kathryn Shively Meier P. 63-64
“One 18th Massachusetts soldier remembered that in January 1862, “Private Booth of Company A, entered the guard tent, hung the trigger of his musket over a nail, put the muzzle to his breast and sent three buckshot and a bullet through his body. We knew that he was despondent: that he said he had rather be dead than to be a soldier, but never dreamed of his ending his enlistment in this manner.” A hospital worker on the Peninsula described the heartbreaking illness of hundreds of men after the battle of Williamsburg, followed by several attempted and two successful suicides as men hurled themselves into the water to end their suffering.”
P. 172, Footnote 75
“It was not just Confederate surgeons who were denied the possibility of moving camp for health reasons; Union surgeon Alfred Castleman had a similar complaint in winter of 1862. Castleman recalled in January of 1862 how carelessly the men were left to suffer in the winter. “The time has passed to move. But why are we not ordered to winter quarters? There seems to me to be great recklessness of the soldiers’ health and comfort in this army.’”
Living Hell: The Dark Side of the Civil War Michael C.C. Adams P. 114
“For some volunteers, just one exposure to the experience of exploding shells proved too much. At the Battle of Cumberland Gap, 1862, a shell burst tossed Daniel Cupp, a Union rookie from Tazewell, Tennessee, into the air. He ran off and, afraid to go home, never went there again. Captain Jacob Roemer, 2nd New York artillery, recorded that a lieutenant of the 34th New York Light Artillery lost his wits under artillery fire at Second Manassas. He crawled quivering under a bush and had to be removed gibbering from the field. A New Jersey boy, lightly wounded physically at Fredericksburg, nevertheless had waking nightmares according to his nurse, Louisa May Alcott: “often clutching my arm, to drag me from the vicinity of a bursting shell, or covering up his head to screen himself from a shower of [canister] shot.” Billy Vaught, of the Washington Artillery (C.S.A.), got caught in a shrapnel blast at Marietta, Georgia, June 18, 1864. suffering deafness and neuralgia, he went home to recover but never returned. Shell shock had morphed into PTSD.
P. 109
Consider as a further instance the plight of General James Longstreet, wounded in the Wilderness in May 1864. At home recuperating, the general appeared “very feeble and nervous and suffers much from his wound.” He “sheds tears on the slightest provocation,” a humiliating experience. “He says he does not see why a bullet going through a man’s shoulder should make a baby of him.” Longstreet could not diagnose his symptoms as those of combat fatigue that reached a crisis when he was wounded.
P. 70
We watch Corporal James Quick stumble back as a bullet enters behind his left jaw and exits through the nose. He is just twenty-two. Next to him, Lieutenant William Taylor has been hit in the neck by a bullet that missed the arteries but severed his windpipe. He clasps his hands to his neck, trying to stanch the flow of blood and air hissing through the wound. Private Keils runs past, “breathing at his throat and the blood spattering” from a neck wound. “His wind-pipe was entirely severed,” Colonel William Oates curtly informs us. We avoid Private George Walker because his right arm is off, severing the artery, and blood “on certain movements of the arm, gushed out higher than his head.” Blood spurts, too, from a Federal officer shot behind the bridge of his nose; he wanders about, continuing to blink even though both eyes are gone, “Opening and closing the sightless sockets, the blood leaping out in spouts.”
Over here, a young Rebel in great pain from a shattered arm runs “up and down, forwards and backwards, by the side of a huge fallen tree, always turning at the same point and retracing his steps to and fro,” agony making him oblivious to the enemy fire attempting to kill him. He tries to avoid men on the ground, writhing and shrieking; some have been pierced through the abdomen, which makes an awful wound, usually fatal. One fellow’s knee shatters. “I never heard a man hallow so in my life,” his captain, James Wren, assures us. There are more head-injury cases. One is New Hampshire soldier Frank Hersey: “The bullet entered his eye and passed through, the blood spurting in jets.” His comrade, Henry Stockwell, has also fallen, shot through the head and “his brains had partly run out.” So, too, have those of a 12th Corps man who lies moaning underfoot while gray matter oozes out at every breath.”
Note: Longstreet was Lee’s “most trusted man,” but the South will later shun & disavow Longstreet for a variety of reasons.
America Aflame: How the Civil War Created a Nation David Goldfield P. 240
“Fortunate families received the remains of their soldiers. Most did not. More than half of the Union war dead, and a considerably larger percentage of Confederate casualties, were not even identified, let alone given proper burial in the soil of their birth. Battles reduced remains to ashes or mud, forever obliterating any remnant of a human being. A shocked Confederate soldier on his way to the battlefield at Shiloh on the second day of fighting reported, “The first dead soldier we saw had fallen in the road; our artillery had crushed and mangled his limbs, and ground him into the mire. He lay a bloody, loathsome the scraps of his blue uniform furnishing the only distinguishable evidence that that a hero there had died.’”
Armies of Deliverance: A New History of the Civil War Elizabeth R. Varon P. 63
“I ate my dinner,” one Union captain recalled of the carnage of battle, “within six paces of a rebel in four pieces. Both legs were blown off. His pelvis was the third piece, and his head and chest were the fourth…. Myself and other amateur anatomists, when the regiment was resting temporarily on arms, would… examine the internal structure of man. We would examine brains, heart, stomach, layers of muscle, structure of bones, etc., for there was every form of mutilation. At home I used to wince at the sight of a wound or of a corpse; but here, in one day, I learned to be among the scenes I am describing without emotion.’”
America Aflame: How the Civil War Created a Nation David Goldfield P. 239
“War was death, and death was war. How to deal with its possibility as a soldier, and how to process its reality if you were a friend or a family member? How do you die when you are lying helpless in the woods and the fire is about to consume you, or a wild pig is tearing at your entrails, or you have lost your legs to an artillery shell and you know you will bleed to death? Do you think about the Union? States’ rights? God? Your family? Or, do you plead for someone to shoot you? Is it better to die as your comrade did this morning as you sat eating breakfast together and a minie ball crashed into his brain and splattered it over your plate? How do you die if you are stretched out on a hospital bed, sweating from fever* and infection, while a young woman wipes your face with a cold cloth and you ask her if you are going to die and you do not hear her answer? Or, if you are moving in and out of consciousness, catching your breath at every draw, and gasping “water,” and maybe your nurse hears “Jesus,” because that is what she writes to your family. How do you respond when you receive a black-rimmed envelope bearing an official seal from Richmond? How do you respond when you are handed a letter from a stranger, a nurse, a comrade, assuring you that your husband or father or son died nobly for his country? Do you thank God?’”
Note: Fevers can fade in & out for decades after a malarial mosquito lands on you & draws blood.
Note: A Minie ball weighed 1½ ounces, & was .58 caliber. Spiderweb & wheat flour were sometimes put on wounds to staunch pouring blood. Imagine all the blood was amniotic fluid & these men were getting born again instead, & would soon rise up & walk instead of sink down to Earth forever. Imagine them getting up, walking right away from the battlefield, pulling down & away the spiderwebs, shaking off the flour flurries, imagine them arriving home, & back through their front door one final time. “A Dead Man’s Dream, he falls asleep walking, then stands at the gate of his own home, Peyton Farquhar, a white light blazes all about him with a sound like the shock of a cannon.”
Touched by Fire: The Best of Battles and Leaders of the Civil War Harold Holzer P. 1178-1179
The following is contained at the end of the essay “Last Days of the Confederacy” by Basil W. Duke, Brigadier-General, C.S.A.
“NOTES ON THE UNION AND CONFEDERATE ARMIES”
Note: These numbers were compiled in 1885:
“In a statistical exhibit of deaths in the Union Army, compiled (1885), under the direction of Adjutant-General Drum, by Joseph W. Kirkley, the causes of death are given as follows: Killed in action, 4142 officers, 62,916 men; died of wounds received in action, 2223 officers, 40,780 men, of which number 99 officers and 1973 men were prisoners of war; died of disease, 2795 officers and 221,791 men, of which 83 officers and 24,783 men were prisoners; accidental deaths (except drowned), 142 officers and 3972 men, of which 2 officers and 5 men were prisoners; drowned, 106 officers and 4838 men, of which 1 officer and 6 men were prisoners; murdered, 37 officers and 483 men, killed after capture, 14 officers and 90 men; committed suicide, 26 officers and 365 men; executed by United States military authorities, 267 men; executed by the enemy, 4 officers and 60 men; died from sunstroke, 5 officers and 308 men, of which 20 were prisoners; other known causes, 62 officers and 1972 men, of which 7 officers and 312 men were prisoners; causes not stated, 28 officers and 12,093 men, of which 9 officers and 2030 men were prisoners. Total, 9584 officers and 349,944 men, of which 219 officers and 29,279 men were prisoners. Grand aggregate, 359,528; aggregate deaths among prisoners, 29,498. Since 1885 the Adjutant-General has received evidence of the death in Southern prisons of 694 men not previously accounted for, which increases the number of deaths among prisoners to 30,192, and makes a grand aggregate of 360,222.”
Note: From page 1179: several caveats at the bottom of these two pages, including that the numbers reflect White men, & that sailors & marines aren’t counted, & “Indian” losses are given at the foot of the table. Yet many states’ tally contains filled-in columns of numbers for the above men, including “Indian Nations” with 3,530 sent to 1,018 dead.
As well in the notes on page 1179 are these four paragraphs:
“The colored soldiers organized under the authority of the General Government and not credited to any State were recruited as follows: In Alabama, 4969; Arkansas, 5526; Colorado, 93; Florida, 1044; Georgia, 3486; Louisiana, 24,052; Mississippi, 17,869; North Carolina, 5035; South Carolina, 5462; Tennessee, 20,133; Texas, 47; Virginia, 5723.
There were also 5,896 negro soldiers enlisted at large, or whose credits are not specifically expressed by the records. Note too: Only New York furnished more men than PA. NY. sent 448,850. Deaths: 46,534. The grand aggregate of deaths (all States combined): 359,528, with a note that the 359,528 number “increased by additional evidence since 1885 to 360,222.”
The number of officers and men of the Regular Army among whom the casualties herein noted occurred is estimated at 67,000; the number in the Veteran Reserve Corps was 60,508; and in Hancock’s Veteran Corps, 10,883.
The other organizations of white volunteers, organized directly by the U.S. authorities, numbered about 11,000.”
Note: BTW, there is no corresponding number of “Confederate dead table” in the book. For the Union, however, the table says Mississippi sent 545 men total; aggregate deaths were 78. Only NY. sent more soldiers than PA. NY. sent 448,850 (deaths 46,534). PA.: 337,936 with 33,183 gone. Ohio sent a good chunk as well, at 313,180, with 35,475 gone. Tennessee: 31,092, and 6,777 gone. Florida: 1,290 to 215. Georgia apparently sent no one to the Union cause? But lists 15 dead. Same with Virginia, at the lone number of 42. West Virginia (became a state 6/20/63) blasted in with 32,068 to 4,017. Then there’s Nevada, gambling small: 1,080, to 33. And Alabama: 2,576–345. Louisiana showed up: 5,224 to 945. Iowa, being Iowa, flew in: 76,242 to 13,001. Kentucky smoking with 75,760 to 10,774. Missouri waltzes in at 109,111 to 13,885. Illinois was determined: 259,092 to 34,834. Indiana was big: 196,363 to 26,672. Massachusetts came in at 146,730 to 13,942. Under Nebraska is an asterisk that reads simply “Indians,” a number which is also classified under “white troops,” and is 3,157 to 239. New Hampshire had spirit: 33,937 to 4,882. The Garden State: 76,814 to 5,754. Cousin Delaware: 12,284 to 882. Kissing cousins North & South Carolina? North (the second to last state that left the Union): 3,156 sent, 360 dead. South: says zero, when actually, five entire volunteer regiments of the U.S. Colored Infantry went. I bet, from each state, men went. But like every last word & number dealing with the war, do your own research. That’s enough for this table (for now; see end of manuscript). Okay, one more: Texas, 1,965–141. Go Cowboys.
“The Nightmare that is a Reality” Arthur Koestler
“A dog run over by a car upsets our emotional balance and digestion; three million Jews killed in Poland cause but a moderate uneasiness. Statistics don’t bleed; it is the detail which counts. We are unable to embrace the total process with our awareness; we can only focus on little lumps of reality.”
Note: “Numbers do not feel. Do not bleed or weep or hope. They do not know bravery or sacrifice. Love and allegiance. At the very apex of callousness, you will find only ones and zeroes.” Amie Kaufman, P. 299, Illuminae
Philip Larkin: 
Note: Dark Valley: A Panorama of the 1930s Piers Brendon P. 491
“There is a chilling cynicism about the aphorisms attributed to Stalin: “Death solves all problems. No man, no problem!” “One death is a tragedy, a million just statistics.’”
Note: The Library of Congress Civil War Desk Reference tables “Selected Sickness and Mortality Statistics in the Union and Confederate Armies,” while listing itch, nostalgia, inflammation of the brain, inflammation of membranes of the brain, gonorrhea, syphilis, scurvy, and insanity, do not list suicide. Other accounts indicate 13 officially documented suicides among Civil War soldiers from 1861-1865; clearly an undercount by several hundred, if not thousands. Out of 2,128,948 United States’ soldiers, and 1,082,119 Confederate States’ men, the likelihood a mere 13 noped-out is laughable. Additionally, postwar, 40 Generals & Colonels took their lives (including PA. 111th, Co.l Schlaundecker, in 1907). Most of the suicides happened from the 1870s-1880s, which points to ongoing PTSD. And no, it wasn’t called “PTSD” back then. No matter the era’s term for it, it was.
Note: Hess, P. 91: “The Northern war effort was carried by the core of highly motivated men who had enlisted in 1861 and 1862, not by those questionable patriots who were bought into the army from 1863 through 1865.”
The Union Soldier in Battle: Enduring the Ordeal of Combat Earl J. Hess P. 90-91
“Finally, a tragic and extreme way for a soldier to escape the horrors of the battlefield was suicide. It was rare, but there were several well-documented cases of its occurrence. Nearly four hundred Northern soldiers were officially identified as victims of their own hand. Most of them accepted this final solution because of mental and emotional problems stemming from their civilian lives, but others did so for war-related reasons. Regular Artilleryman William P. Hogarty knew of a sergeant, mortally wounded at Antietam, who shot himself in the head with a revolver when told that he had only a few hours to live. He was certain that prolonging his life such a short time was not worth the pain. Even more poignant was the sight that greeted Thomas H. Evans of the 12th U.S. Infantry when he relieved a picket on the night following the battle of Fredericksburg. He discovered a Northern soldier who had been so badly wounded that he could not move. The man was dead, his face blackened and shattered, and his rifle lay across his chest. Evans realized that the man had committed suicide and speculated that he may have believed that the regulars were Confederates and killed himself to avoid capture.
It is impossible to to accurately gauge the number of Northern soldiers who refused to obey orders on the battlefield, ran away from battle never to return to duty, or committed suicide rather than face a horrible wound. All the collateral evidence indicates that the numbers were small and the incidents infrequent. In contrast, there were many examples of men willingly throwing themselves into assaults that they knew were futile, accepting terrible losses to accomplish very little, and reenlisting to continue serving to the bitter end. The Northern war effort was carried by the core of highly motivated men who had enlisted in 1861 and 1862, not by those questionable patriots who were brought into the army from 1863 through 1865. Those soldiers among that core who crossed the dark margins of bravery into cowardice were a distinct minority. Others were good soldiers pressed to the breaking point. Their moral courage and the latitude granted them by officers to take themselves out of a trying spot on the battlefield carried them through the worst and allowed them to recover their composure. Nearly all men among the core of veterans who saw the war through gained some familiarity with the dark underside of courage, but few were permanently compromised by that contact. They knew, usually only briefly, what battle looked like while running away from it, but their view of it was mostly straight ahead.”
Note: The Civil War in 500 Photographs, Time-Life, P. 116, has it at 391. Sunstroke at 313, execution 267, murder 520, accidents 4,114, and drowning 4,494. Don’t believe any of it. For now, April 5 will mark the next suicide on record, where David Strother writes of meeting a man in the Vermont cavalry “who talked in monosyllables.” Not for long.
“The Northern Virginia Shen Vall” is what the area they marched through is called now. 160 years later, in the Shen Vall, the suicide rate is higher than both the State of Virginia and the country’s national average: it stands at 19.8%. (You have to wonder what the land still calls forth. After all, Lorena Bobbitt cut off her husband’s penis with a 12 inch kitchen knife at Manassas.) The national average is 13.7% per 100k people. (2018 stats: 27 gunshot, 14 hanging/suffocation, 3 drug suicide, 2 other.) Without a note left behind, it can be a tough call, & most don’t leave a note. Interestingly, West Virginia in 2016 killed 50 per 100,000 via opioids. (PA. the rate is 40 per 100k.) The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties, Christopher Caldwell, P. 245: “In 1975, rural America had meant banjos, bait shops, and cornbread. By the election of 2016, it meant SNAP cards, internet pornography, and OxyContin.”
A ½ mill Union Vets disabled– a low number which will, some decade in the future, be upgraded; the disability was called “insanity,” then upgraded to “shell shock” after World War I. One hundred and fifteen years after Appomattox, PTSD was added to the DSM. For more about soldier mental health & trauma, see Diane Miller Sommerville’s Aberration of Mind: Suicide and Suffering in the Civil War Era South.
Aberration of Mind: Suicide and Suffering in the Civil War Era South Diane Miller Sommerville P. Introduction
“Those living in Civil War America used a different lexicon; they remarked about those plagued with “nerves,” “melancholy,” and “the blue devils.” They described extreme or unusual forms of mental illness generally as “insanity” or “lunacy.” Medical practitioners tending to Civil War soldiers offered diagnoses like nostalgia and irritable heart, no longer recognized by the medical profession.”
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this is the Equinoctial storm and I hope that we may have good weather….
The water’s already turning by 1776, creeping closer to their blood, & not just a wild DNA strand now, & they knew what gets caught in that blood stays running in that blood. All along war was there & coming in the Secession Ordinances, the indications & warnings already a thin column of Blue & Gray firefly light forming by 1776 (because the beginning had less to do with what was here than the places it had already been), then by the 1810s, 1820s, 1840s, as late as 1859– check the years that make the Congressional Record the most– just look– light they could have caught in a Mason jar & quarantined. But it’s far too late for that.
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