Day 24. March 24, 1862.
24
I could only stagger toward the door….
March Monday 24 1862
Quite cold this morning. I slept on the battlefield 4 miles South of Winchester and 1 ¼ West of the Pike. It was very cold all night I had not any breakfast or but one meal on Sunday I had a few pieces of hard crackers. We took up the line of march at 6 ½ oclock this morning for towards Strausburg. The cannonading commenced at 7oclock this morning the enemy falling back* at 8o½ clock. Our cannon opened on them again on this side of the stone mills on the other side of [illeg. looks like Turnersville]. They soon began to fall back our forces following and on the other side 3 ½ miles of Newtown our cannon opened on them again. Our forces following up all the time reinforced by some 4 or 5 Regiments of Banks Division. There was some 3 or 4 Battaries came on our men was fighting them at Cedar Creek. There was some of the enemy killed today and wounded when we was 11 ½ miles from the town Winchester. Doct Hays** got a dispatch to come back to Winchester to help to attend to the wounded so I had to come back get in this evening at 8oclock. I was nearly exhausted. When I got into that town I came to the Hospital the Union Hotel*** where I stayed all night. I slept on the floor all night. It was a fine day all day but we are of sadness too many more that have been wounded. The enemy retreated on over Cedar Creek and made a stand there and our Battaries soon made them get out of the way and some of the enemy was killed and their baggage train soon got off or they would have been captured our forces following up. The enemy had a grate manny killed. Our number not so many. We must expect something before long and I think down on the lower Potomac river and I hope we may soon return to our Quiet homes and be at peace. I hope and trust that I may live a life that I may die in peace
Note: Ephraim’s entry today is far different from his tomorrow. I think the war starts to go wrong for him at the Winchester Hotel/Hospital tomorrow.
Note: Strother writes of likely of the same soldier with his head blown off whom Ephraim saw yesterday:
A Virginia Yankee in the Civil War The Diaries of David Hunter Strother David Hunter Strother P. 19
“MARCH 24, MONDAY.—… There had been a battle at Winchester. Shields was certainly wounded and all General Banks’ division was on the march from Snicker’s Ferry to Winchester.
After dinner I started to Winchester overtaking en route Gordon’s brigade. As soon as I could, I visited the field of yesterday’s battle. It was two or three miles beyond the town on a ridge partially wooded and partially cultivated and some distance from the Valley pike. The fences were torn down and the ground marked with artillery wheels where the Federal troops had first taken position. A dead horse or two were visible and the body of a soldier with the top of his head blown off lay protected by a rail pen. Crossing a field and a wood I came upon an open ridge where marks of artillery wheels and another body of a United States soldier lay. Near here a picket guard lay by a fire and beside them upon a rail trestle lay fifteen dead Federalists. In a thicket and rock break about two or three hundred yards distant the Confederate dead lay. Entering the break I observed the bushes and trees cut to pieces with musketry in a manner terrible to witness. Here within a very small space lay forty bodies of the bodies lay among the bushes and trees just as they fell, and were without exception shot through the head with musket balls. The sun had set and the dull red light from the west fell upon the upturned faces of the dead, giving a lurid dimness to the scene that highlighted its ghastly effect.”
Hearts Touched by Fire: The Best of Battles and Leaders of the Civil War Edited by Harold Holzer P. 321 Editor’s note bottom of page
“General Jackson’s first announcement of the battle to General Johnston, dated March 24th, contained the following:
“As the enemy had been sending off troops from the district, and from what I could learn were still doing so, and knowing your great desire to prevent it, and having a prospect of success, I engaged him yesterday about 3 P.M., near Winchester, and fought until dusk, but his forces were so superior to mine that he repulsed me with the loss of valuable officers and men killed and wounded; but from the obstinacy with which our troops fought and from their advantageous position I am of the opinion that his loss was greater than mine in troops, but I lost one piece of artillery and three caissons.”
Shenandoah 1862: Stonewall Jackson’s Valley Campaign Peter Cozzens P. 234
Note: What Jackson will write about Kernstown:
“Though Winchester was not recovered, yet the more important object for the present, that of calling back troops that were leaving the Valley and thus preventing a junction of Banks’ command with other forces was accomplished. Under these circumstances I feel justified in saying that, though the field is in possession of the enemy, yet the most essential fruits of the battle are ours.”
Note: fRUitS oF tHE BatTlE. The above letter in full by Jackson is pages 380-384 in the O.R., & is the longest report by any commander on Kernstown. Both sides, of course, noted their forces as showing “coolness” and “resolve,” like they’re out picking apples. Jackson writes most of his infantry had “marched between 35-40 miles on the morning of the previous day” so “many were left behind.” He also writes a federal officer relayed that 418 Union soldiers were killed, & that “Our wounded received that care and attention from patriotic ladies of Winchester which they know so well how to give, and our killed were buried by the loyal citizens of that town.”
P. 218-219
“In a letter home, Lt. Col. Wilder Dwight of the 2nd Massachusetts summarized the prevailing respect for Ashby and Jackson, as well as the exasperation with Banks. “The enterprising and clever Ashby, with two pieces of light artillery, is light, active, skillful, and we are tormented by him like a bull with a gadfly. [Jackson] keeps him in the rear. His game is a winning one, even when he loses.” Continued Dwight:
“With his small force he detains twenty thousand men in this valley. It seems probable that his attack on [Kernstown] was in pursuance of a positive order from Johnston… to arrest and detain our force from its intended movement to Centreville. In this aspect it was a success. In my judgment our weakness was in turning back. The force left behind was large enough to take care of this valley. But, indeed, it seems as if we had no plan and no courage or decision. Vacillation is our name. My admiration and sympathy go with the gallant Ashby and the indefatigable and resolute Jackson.”
P. 212-213
Overworked but well-intentioned Federal ambulance drivers brought wounded into Winchester without regard for the color of their uniform.
The same could not be said of the secessionist ladies of Winchester who tended the casualties that fast filled the town. These women hurried to the courthouse and Union Hotel, both of which had been converted into hospitals, bearing baskets laden with food and drink and offering their services as nurses– but only for Confederate wounded. “They demanded admission to our hospitals to minister to the wounds and wants of their brothers and neighbors, and while there was no ministration of love or service for the suffering Rebels to which they did not willingly give themselves with the most untiring devotion, there was no need or want of suffering of any blue-coated soldier than in the least softened their rancor or approached their hearts,” remembered one indignant Federal. He added with only slight hyperbole: “They were as indifferent to the groans of suffering of such as they would be to entangled flies buzzing for dear life in a spider’s web in their gardens.” That sat poorly with their enemy. “The people of Winchester have lost all our sympathy, and some are quite in favor of burning the town,” observed a Union commissary sergeant. “I pity the inhabitants around as the men all feel at liberty to take all they can get and confiscate it, as they say.”
Cornelia McDonald negotiated the rows of dead men– their faces covered with great coats, to which had been pinned slips of paper identifying the remains– that lined the courthouse porch and slipped into the building to bring succor to Southern sufferers. But the theatre of gore was more than she could bear. “I wanted to be useful, and tried my best, but at the sight of one face that the surgeon uncovered, telling me that it must be washed, I thought I should faint. A ball had struck him in the side of the face, taking away both eyes and the bridge of his nose.” McDonald tried to compose herself as the surgeon explained how, and why, the man might be saved, but her gaze remained transfixed on the “fearful wound, still fresh and bleeding.” Then the “awful, eyeless face” spoke, the mangled man raising his hand and, with a weak touch of his left temple, saying, “Ah, if they had only struck there, I should have troubled no one.” when the surgeon asked McDonald to was the wound, “I tried to say yes, but the thought of it made me so faint that I could only stagger toward the door.” as she left the room, her dress brushed against a stack of amputated limbs. “My faintness increased, and I had to stop and lean against the wall to keep from falling.”
Other women found the work counting and tagging the Southern dead and wounded, keeping records that they later smuggled through the lines to Confederate authorities. For some, the afternoon of March 24 offered a brief reunion with friends and loved ones among the living. At 2:00 P.M. The provost marshal’s guard led 234 Southern captives up Market Street to the Winchester and Potomac Railroad depot for transportation north. Women and girls lined the street, waving handkerchiefs and thrusting clothes and food into the arms of the prisoners, who returned the kindness with hearty cheers for Jeff Davis and the Confederacy. The parade grew so rowdy that one Union captain of the escort later told a friend that “he never was so troubled in his life as he was when they were bringing in the prisoners. He said that he thought the women would tear him to pieces. They called him every name they could think of, as they felt sure Jackson would conquer and retake Winchester.
Lt. Randolph Barton of the 33rd Virginia suffered the gut– wrenching experience of being marched past his family home, the doors of which stood open and beckoning. His father and mother stood on the pavement, shouting words of encouragement. Laura Lee’s daughter rushed out with a colander full of biscuits, to which Barton and the other prisoners helped themselves. “The vessel being soon emptied, she waived it over her head, cheering most lustily,” said Barton.
P. 214-215
Riding over the battlefield at sunset on March 24, Col. George H. Gordon encountered a spectral figure who shared none of the sympathy. Lieutenant Lyle’s Yankee held for his enemy, dead or alive. Gordon and his brigade had just arrived in Winchester, recalled that morning from beyond Berryville with the remainder of Williams’s division. Finding the crisis over, Gordon and his aide-de-camp went sightseeing on Sandy Ridge. A ragged red line of blood ran the length of the stone wall. Bullets and canister had shaved trees to within six feet of the ground. “To a novice the scene was awful. The wounded on both sides had been removed, but the dead still lay where they fell.” A curiosity seeker from Gordon’s brigade counted five dead Rebels clustered around an uprooted tree, each shot in the head. One had a plug of tobacco between his lips and a brass snuffbox at his side. The Yankee confiscated the box and the small squares of tobacco it contained. The chaplain of the 2nd Massachusetts also walked over the battlefield that evening. “I found the enemy’s dead scattered in every direction. This was a new sight to me. The expression on the faces of the dead Rebels was horrible; they still seemed to look mad at the damned Yankee, as they call us.”
Gordon’s apparition damned them right back. “Peering into the darkness, I saw a man on horseback, slowly moving towards me, with head bowed low, gazing sternly into the upturned ghastly faces, while denunciations fell from his lips, as without pity in his heart he rejoiced in this carnival of death.”
At last the man drew near enough for Gordon to recognize him. It was David Strother, “a son of Virginia, here upon the soil of his native state, cursing with all the bitterness of his heart his dead kinsmen at his feet; a loyal Virginian, who had been driven from home, who had seen his aged father driven out of his house to die; a man maddened by outrages and gloating over this terrible retribution.”
Strother had been on a brief leave of absence visiting his wife in Charles Town when the battle was fought. He returned to Winchester only a few minutes ahead of Gordon’s brigade. As Strother told it, a “horrid curiosity,” rather than hatred, led him onto the battlefield. Whatever may have been his motive, Strother said he recognized no one familiar among the dead. He accompanied Gordon back to town for supper and a night’s rest at Gordon’s headquarters.
Whether he did so with contempt or from mere curiosity, Strother found plenty of dead Rebels to view. Of the nearly 3.500 Confederates present at Kernstown, 139 were killed or mortally wounded; 312 were wounded (of whom a fair share later died), 253 captured, and 33 listed as missing (and presumed dead)– for a total of 737, or 22.4 percent of those engaged. Federal losses were considerably lower, both in absolute terms and as a percentage of Northern combatants. Official reports broke down casualties as 118 killed, 450 wounded, and 22 missing or captured – a total of 574, or 8.2 percent of the 6,352 Federals engaged.”
Note: For more on the 2nd Mass., see May 25.
Make Me a Map of the Valley: The Civil War Journal of Stonewall Jackson’s Topographer Jedediah Hotchkiss P. 9
(Letter to wife refers to Kernstown)
“We had a bloody battle Sunday resulting disastrously to our arms, though our retreat was conducted in good order, and our front only fell back a few miles. Jackson was deceived as to the numbers of the enemy when he started after them, and they came on him with overwhelming numbers. The Fifth Virginia stood the shock of battle and stopped the advance of the foe. We lost some [forty] killed and some 300 wounded. The enemy refused to let us bury our dead or bring them our wounded, saying they neither asked nor gave quarter.”
In the Presence of Mine Enemies: The Civil War in the Heart of America, 1859-1864 Edward Ayers P. 255
“Kernstown was a defeat for the Confederacy and for Stonewall Jackson, but it brought them an unanticipated benefit.Their Federal opponents mistook the Rebels’ rather heedless attack and fierce fighting as evidence of much larger numbers than the Southerners actually possessed. The Union army, exaggerating the threat that Jackson and his Valley men presented, decided that it could not risk moving any of the Federal troops from the Valley to aid McClellan.”
This Hallowed Ground: The Story of the Union Side of the Civil War Bruce Catton P. 135-137
“Late in March, Jackson attacked a Union outpost in the lower Shenandoah Valley, at Kernstown. He was outnumbered, and after a sharp little fight he had to retreat, fairly beaten, but the battle had strategic consequences: Union authorities were impressed by his aggressiveness, figured that he must be much stronger than he actually was, and were confirmed in their feeling that to protect Washington some of the troops McClellan wanted must be held in upper Virginia.
Then, in early May– about the same time Johnston was beginning his retreat from Yorktown– Jackson really went into action.
First he moved west and jumped Frémont’s advance guard near one of the passes in the Alleghenies. In itself the fight was not especially important, but it completely upset Frémont. The Pathfinder had not changed much since his experiences in Missouri. His hastily assembled army was looking goggle-eyed at his “retinue of aides-de-camp dazzling in gold lace,” and the soldiers felt that the pomp and circumstance that surrounded him- very foreign looking and sounding, most of it was completely out of place in the rugged West Virginia mountains. Frémont seems never to have worked out a clear plan for his projected move into eastern Tennessee, and Jackson’s attack thoroughly disrupted any plans he did have. While he was pulling himself together and trying to get ready for what Jackson might do next he was effectively immobilized for more than a fortnight; Jackson contemptuously turned his back on him and hurried back to the Shenandoah for other adventures.
Reinforced now to a total strength of fifteen thousand men, Jackson moved rapidly toward the lower valley, baffled the expectant Banks by slipping over to the east side of the Massanutten mountain ridge, captured a detachment which Banks had guarding his communications at Front Royal, and compelled the former Speaker of the House to retreat toward Harper’s Ferry. Jackson followed, struck him en route, tore his rear guard apart in a savage morning fight at Winchester, and in the end drove him on in a desperate rout that did not end until Banks and his disorganized men were north of the Potomac. Jackson followed closely, and wild rumors went on ahead of him; Washington got the idea that he was about to invade the North, frantic telegrams went out to alert the Northern governors, and McClellan’s chance of getting any help from McDowell went down to the vanishing point.
There were plenty of Federals in upper Virginia to overwhelm Jackson’s little army, and the War Department barked and sputtered over the telegraph wires to get them into action. Frémont was ordered to march east from the mountains to cut off Jackson’s retreat at Stasburg. McDowell was moved west, with an advance detachment marching on Front Royal. His army was reorganized, Banks was ordered to move down from Harper’s Ferry. Although, something like forty-five thousand Federal troops were converging on Jackson, who was reluctantly pulling back from the Potomac, and it looked as if he might be destroyed.
But there was no co-ordination among the pursuing columns, and Jackson slipped between them unscathed. He moved back up the valley, knocked Frémont back on his heels when that officer chased him, marched east and routed the advance of McDowell’s forces, and then calmly withdrew to a pass in the Blue Ridge and awaited further orders.
The result of all of this was that McDowell never did make his move down to help McClellan, and by the middle of June the Army of the Potomac was still waiting, part of it on one side of the Chickahominy and part of it on the other, in a position that fairly invited attack. And the Confederates in front of Richmond were now under General Lee, to whom nobody ever had to extend such an invitation more than once.”
Note: After the Battle of Kernstown, Louisa May Alcott was at the Union Hotel/Hospital in Winchester, so Ephraim very likely crossed paths with her, or even worked alongside her. Although the doctors left much to be desired, the women today definitely stepped up. Also, because Strother is present at the hospital today, it is probable Ephraim crossed paths with him as well. And all night tonight, Ephraim will stay at the Union Hotel/Hospital, at the corner of Market & Fairfax Lane. At one point the name “Union” on the Hotel sign was seen by town residents as problematic, so locals took off the “U” & “N” which turned it into the “ION” Hotel. Over a foot of snow will fall in less than a week in December, 1864, which will collapse the hotel, & kill seven.
*At the start of the war, the largest Army hospital had just 40 beds (P. 26, Adams in Doctors in Blue). As far as contemporary Virginia hospital bed capacity, at the outbreak of the 2020 Coronavirus, in the state were 18,500 hospital beds, & 2,000 ICU beds. The NYT nationwide map of Covid hotspots by summer 2021 made it apparent the Confederacy was rising again, said some, oddly. P. 172-173, Adams: “With all their flaws the Civil War Hospitals may be considered a credit to the nation. A country which lacked experience with military hospitals, and had had very little experience with large civil hospitals, had created a vast system with a capacity of 136,000 beds. This had been done in less than four years and in the midst of the confusion of a war which had not been prepared for. The hospitals had not fed their patients well, some had faulty plumbing, and complaints indicated neglect of the individual ego; but their mortalities were low. Samuel Johnson remarked apropos of a dog walking on its hind legs, the significant thing was not whether it was done “well or ill,” but that it was done at all.”
**To be contrasted with other accounts that “the ladies” paid no attention to Union soldiers: that’s debatable. This isn’t: Ephraim’s having written three times in three days– March 25, March 26, March 27— that “the ladies” helped does contradict Cozzens’ claim that they refused. Since Cozzens wasn’t there & my Grandfather was, I’ll take my Grandfather’s word for it. It could also be that because Ephraim was a Hospital Steward, he had a vested interest in getting along with the secessionists– female or male– around him no matter what so that he could successfully treat the wounded. Tomorrow, Ephraim is angry, plain & simple, about doctors not working hard enough. I think he’s angry at Dr. Hays, but isn’t willing to put that on the page.
That said, it was not uncommon for medical personnel on both sides to prioritize care for their side’s soldiers. Next year, Lincoln will sign Gen’l Order No. 100 (Lieber Code); article 79 says, in part, “Every captured wounded enemy shall be medically treated, according to the ability of the medical staff.” As well, the Red Cross (birth, 1863) and Red Crescent will eventually come to be recognized as universal symbols on clothing that reads, “Don’t shoot– we are not part of the fight.” The IHL– International Humanitarian Law (Geneva Convention laws) was created in 1859, but not yet followed in 1862. It was signed into law in 1864.
Note as well: Women were a constant & significant on-site presence both before & after battles. After the Battle of Port Republic (see June 9, 1862 in this manuscript), the following line appears at the end of a June 19, 1862 NYT news report: https://www.nytimes.com/1862/06/24/archives/movements-in-shenandoah-valley-gen-fremont-at-strasburgh-forward.html from Winchester titled MOVEMENTS IN SHENANDOAH VALLEY; Gen. Frémont at Strasburgh Forward Movement of Gen. Banks’ Command The Hospitals at Winchester List of Surgeons and Attendants, also of Sick and Wounded,during the Rebel Occupation of the Town Articles of Agreement between Surgeons: “I feel it but just to add that the ladies sent by the New-York Central Aid Society, when it was known that JACKSON was coming, resolved to stand and did stand by their posts in the hospitals, and are still here. J.A.” As well, the article includes a long list, plus names of the “sick and wounded prisoners left in Winchester by the rebels during their occupation of the place from May 25 to June 1, 1862,” and also lists “Surgeons and Assistant-Surgeons [who] were captured, and volunteered their services in the hospital” & it notes “they performed with devotion and skill.” Also listed are “Federal Prisoners of War employed in the Union Hotel Hospital” and “Ladies Attending the Sick and Wounded Prisoners of War in the Union Hotel Hospital” which numbered 8. The lists continue with several from the 2nd Mass. named as male nurses under “List of Nurses Attending in the Union Hotel Hospital, Prisoners of War from May 25, 1862.” Then a “Register of the Sick and Wounded Prisoners at Union Hotel Hospital, Winchester, Va., 1862,” & after the names, ailments are given, like “James Hewlet, drummer, Co. D, 1st Maryland – head and shoulder.” A full 26 of the 2nd Mass are listed ill or injured, & the PA. 110th are as follows: Jas. Hicks, Co. D. 110th Pennsylvania – fever; D. Ramsey, Co. B, 110th Pennsylvania – fever; Oliver Funk, Co. D, 110th Pennsylvania – fever; Geo. Hubbard, Co. F, 110th Penn. — convalescent; Hugh Donelly, Co. G, 110th Penn. — convalescent; J. Nearhoof, Co. A, 110th Pennsylvania – fever; A.J. Henderson, Co. B, 110th Penn. — fever; M. Wortz, Co. A, 110th Pennsylvania – fever; Chas. Wilson, Co. G. 110th Penn. — convalescent.” I recommend looking up this NYT archive to get a sense of the absolute magnitude of the swarm that descended on the “ION” Hotel. Note that Jackson Hicks (with the fever above), a laborer before the conflict, will desert the 110th on May 5, 1862. He was in Ephraim’s company D.
Note too: Doctors were overwhelmed in this intense scene:
Shenandoahcivilwarhistory.blog/2020/01/11/the-union-hotel-and-unconditional-release
The Union Hotel and Unconditional Release by Peter Dalton
(Excerpt)
“On March 25, just two days after the battle, Mary Greenhow Lee, a woman who had repeatedly acknowledged she could barely stomach the sight of Yankees, went to the Union Hotel to take care of injured Southern soldiers. “The dead, the dying, the raving Maniac, & agonizing suffering, in its revolting forms, were before us; our men and the Yankees, all mixed together. She found herself “down on the floor, by the Yankees, feeding them. Mary discovered her humanity in this facility. She found she “could not give to one sufferer, and pass another by in silence.”
Mrs. Lee would return to the hotel the following day. She observed: “The poor men are neglected as the doctors are overwhelmed with the numbers of patients they have to contend with.” “The surgeons do not dress their wounds, even once a day, and there is no one to hand them a cup of water, after the ladies leave; they promise things will be better tomorrow;” but they never are.
Mary soon avowed that it “made no difference between Yankees and Rebels, when both were wounded and helpless.” “The dreadful scenes of the day, are before me so vividly, that I fear they will haunt me again to-night.’”
***Ephraim’s entry today corroborates where Dr. Hays was on 3/23: helping at the Union Hotel/Hospital (Hathitrust, P. 507). Dr. Hays had been placed in Winchester on the 23rd & is now in charge of the Union Hotel-slash-Hospital in town. Hays is taken away– “detailed away”– from the 110th and the battlefield, camp, & regiment in general. An important addition to the record is that Ephraim worked directly under Dr. David Sterret Hays, an infamous doctor who, summer of ’62, made newspapers across the North for abandoning a trainload of injured men fresh off the Port Republic battlefield, after which some condemned him for what they saw as his basically sneaking off to drink champagne at the D.C. Willard Hotel (is how his actions were viewed by the Joint Committee, 37th Congress, at the time). William A. Hammond (Surgeon General) will write to Stanton (Secretary of War), “Surgeon Hays has exhibited a total want of comprehension of his duties, if not the grossest inhumanity.” Hays’ testimony before the 37th Congress, 3rd Session, Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War can be found in the Senate Report of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, 1863. The overall testimony regarding Dr. Hays abandoning the trainload of injured soldiers fresh from the battles on June 8 and 9 runs from pages 492-548 and is titled “Wounded From Front Royal, Virginia.” The dispatches & interrogations appear will here in the June 16thentry.
Hays will be interrogated by Hammond & Stanton on June 20, 21, 1862. As well, Ephraim’s hometown friend Huyett (misspelled in the record as Hewitt), with whom he bivoucked on the field was called to testify, & so does in support of Hays on the 21st. Henry H. Smith (Surgeon General of Pennsylvania) will pen a letter from Willard’s Hotel to Stanton in support of Hays. In part, it reads, “After the battle at Winchester, March 23, 1862, I personally witnessed your untiring devotion to your duties in the Union Hotel hospital, and on my return to Pennsylvania I repeatedly spoke of them in terms of praise. The charge recently made against you of “gross negligence of your wounded and inhumanity” has surprised me and all who know your energetic habits, and, I trust may be entirely disproved before a court of inquiry, as, I doubt not, they will.” He was both right & wrong.
Note: Here is the Willard Hotel– please note this is NOT today’s Winchester Hotel/Hospital where the wounded from Kernstown are treated– (for more on the Willard hotel, see various other points in the manuscript, incl. June 16): https://www.whitehousehistory.org/the-willard-hotel. This is a wonderful description of the hotel milieu (written I think, but haven’t confirmed yet) on the day of March 26, 1861, from My Diary North and South: Volume 1 Sir William Howard Russell P. 33-34:
“Close to these rises the great piles of Willard’s Hotel, now occupied by applicants for office, and by the members of the newly-assembled Congress. It is a quadrangular mass of rooms, six stories high, and some hundred yards square; and it probably contains at this moment more scheming, plotting, planning heads, more aching and joyful hearts, than any building of the same size ever held in the world. I was ushered into a bedroom which had just been vacated by some candidate—whether he succeeded or not I cannot tell, but if his testimonials spoke truth, he ought to have been selected at once for the highest office. The room was littered with printed copies of letters testifying that J. Smith, of Hartford, Conn., was about the ablest, honestest, cleverest, and best man the writers ever knew. Up and down the long passages doors were opening and shutting for men with papers bulging out of their pockets, who hurried as if for their life in and out, and the building almost shook with the tread of the candidature, which did not always in its present aspect justify the correctness of the original appellation.
It was a remarkable sight, and difficult to understand unless seen. From California, Texas, from the Indian Reserves, and the Mormon Territory, from Nebraska, as from the remotest borders of Minnesota, from every portion of the vast territories of the Union, except from the Seceded States, the triumphant Republicans had winged their way to the prey.
There were crowds in the halls through which one could scarce make his way—the writing-room was crowded, and the rustle of pens rose to a little breeze—the smoking room, the bar, the barber’s, the reception-room, the ladies’ drawing room—all were crowded. At present not less than 2,500 people dine in the public room every day. On the kitchen floor there is a vast apartment, a hall without carpets or any furniture but plain chairs and tables, which are ranged in close rows, at which flocks of people are feeding, or discoursing, or from which they are flying away. The servants never cease shoving the chairs to and fro with a harsh screeching noise over the floor, so that one can scarce hear his neighbor speak. If he did, he would probably hear as I did, at this very hotel, a man order breakfast, “Black tea and toast, scrambled eggs, fresh spring shad, wild pigeon, pigs’ feet, two robins on toast, oysters,” and a quantity of breads and cakes of various denominations.’”
****Dr. Hammond created the world’s largest medical library. 9/63 he was court-martialed for “conduct unbecoming of an officer and a gentleman.” “Court martial records list over 100,000 incidents of sexual misconduct, and the Surgeon General of the United States Army documented 183,000 cases of venereal disease in the Union Army.” artsci.case.edu “The Civil War: Sex and Soldiers” (no author given.)
Note: James Hanger– reportedly the first amputee of the war– invented prosthetic limbs & founded a company still in existence (publicly traded billion dollar company). States like Mississippi spent large amounts of their budget shortly after Appomattox– 1/5 to sometimes even half– to provide artificial limbs. All while, 35 years after slavery’s end, only 6% of Black Delta farmers owned land in the “American Congo,” population 907,630 Black to 641,200 White people. These landowner & population numbers are out of page 215 in “A Dreadful Deceit” by Jacqueline Jones, as is the term “American Congo,” coined in 1921 by the NAACP for the Mississippi Delta region. Now that we’re on a Mississippi tangent:
Photos above courtesy of historian Kevin M. Levin, from 4/8/22.
America Aflame: How the Civil War Created a Nation David Goldfield P. 420
“Mississippi refused to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery, yet Johnson accepted the state’s new government anyway. South Carolina repealed rather than nullified its ordinance of secession, implying that the ordinance was legal. Many southern whites refused to believe that anything should change as a result of the war.”
Note: Mississippi did at last, in 1995, vote to ratify the 13th Amendment, yet didn’t officially ratify it until 2013. Some Americans don’t know the 13th Amendment abolished slavery except as a punishment for a crime. The centuries kept it in view: Alabama in 1898, 73% of state revenue came from convict leasing (1874-1890, 164,000, curious surge in minor offense arrests come cotton pickin’ time); nothing but a rebirth of the thing that began in the 1600s. Again. And again. Again. And again. Men were rented out for forced labor after very minor offenses, forcibly leased to private industry or factories by the state for a fee so just like slaves, leased convicts built the U.S. & need remembered the same as slaves in history books (labor that had an incredibly high mortality rate). 9k prisoners on chain gangs died, worked literally to death. Recall, southern slaveholders were forced to “loan” their slaves to the army & were paid for those slaves, that slavery is still here, incarnated via the U.S. prison-industrial complex but does not present itself by that name. One thing is clear: by the 1890s Black folks were worse off: 19K by 1890 in prison, 90% African-American. Slavery corrugated into convict leasing, dolled that up like a homemade silencer:
We Can’t Breathe: On Black Lives, White Lies, and the Art of Survival Jabari Asim P. 54
“But it was nonetheless slavery—a system in which armies of free men, guilty of no crimes and entitled by law to freedom, were compelled to labor without compensation, were repeatedly bought and sold, and were forced to do the bidding of white masters through the regular application of extraordinary physical coercion. Convict leasing, begun soon after the Southern Rebellion was crushed, officially ended in 1928, when Alabama terminated its program. Unofficially, states continued it under different guises. For example, in the state where Trayvon Martin breathed his last, prison officials added license plate, laundry, and shirt factories to their facilities after the state ended convict leasing. The practice continues today as a mainstay of private prisons, whose owners reap huge financial profits by using their inmates as low-wage and unpaid laborers. Companies such as CoreCivic (once named Corrections Corporation of America) and Geo Group owe their success to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which they in turn sponsor through financial contributions. ALEC’s work includes creating the template for the Prison Industries Act, a state legislation enabling the employment of inmate labor across the country. Just as Southern legislatures created Black Codes to establish a captive labor force, ALEC has abetted modern lawmakers’ attempts to push through “three strikes” laws, mandatory minimums for nonviolent drug offenders, “truth-in-sentencing” laws, and anti-immigration measures designed to keep African Americans and Latinos off the streets and behind bars where, presumably, they’ll be most useful. New agreements between state governments and private prisons can also include guaranteed minimum occupancy rates….”
Note: Shields is promoted to Major-General; a promotion which was withdrawn. He will resign from the army. It’s said that Lincoln “informally offered” him full command of the Army of the Potomac. He declined, in part due to difficulty with Stanton. Ah, Stanton, strikes again.
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hope and trust that I may live a life that I may die in peace….
War. What’s it good for?
Humans have been around 0.004% of Earth’s history and this is what we’ve come to: A flat amphibian-style head. And a million & a quarter per day to keep this thing going, 600 tons a day the Union army needs just to get to that flat amphibian-style head.
In 160 years you can watch an Easter egg hunt on the Kernstown Battlefield. Egg places obvious. Eggs laying on the dead brown grass. The drone zooms in on one crushed egg. The cranium is more like a ball than anything else. The jaws attach ½ way around on each side.
Walmart Supercenter, Motel 6, Dollar General: the sound of the highway at once bland and deafening at the edge of acres of bones here. But what crosses here should know what lives here. The still unparaphraseable stays here, a layer over over the tinsy eulogistic plaque marking the spot for wreath layings & reenactments.
The wall at Kernstown waits for you to reach it. But you might not even know anything had happened here. Stand in antidenouement.
Or you can stand stock-still and wait it out, the battle passing through your blood; it will colden it, it will pump through your arteries in a way that is different and necessary, it will stay there waiting on you & it wants you to know men were cut straight out of this world at this plaque, that people were there then not there, right where you stand & you can’t reach them now.
It’s still in the air. It is in our bones, it’s in holes & scars in surfaces, & it’s a reinscription because the graves rest unvisited when we’re all out here wondering what happened to them. You have to go claim them. They wait on your trying.
500 generations of human beings and this was the best we could do. Winner, winner, chicken dinner.
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