Day 8. March 8, 1862.
8
Diarists recorded the rage militaire….
March Saturday 8 1862
Cool this morning. The ground frozen some little and quite cloudy and Doctor Hays gone to Cumberland and we got orders to draw and have three days rations on hand to go on the B&O R.R.* to Martinsburg and be ready to march at any time. I packed up all the medicine and was ready to march at any time. There will be one company left behind to guard this place. I see 5 Locomotives now and all a heavy train to them loaded with wagons and soldiers and camping utensils. There was quite a number of soldiers going to Martinsburg our whole Division. There is quite a throng time on the Rail Road here today. Gen Shields has come to take command in Gen Landers** deceased place. It looks pleasant out this evening
*The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, one time the oldest rail line in the U.S., now dead ends at a rinky dink railyard where a photograph from the war shows, through a haze, off in a distance, a distance eerily not filled by anything whatsoever, the Capitol Building, where, in 1800, the first session took place. When war broke out, the line had 236 locomotives, 128 passenger coaches, & 3,451 rail cars to traverse 513 miles. The B&O was critical to the Union because it was the main supply line between D.C. & the northern states (army’s supply & telegraph line), & the 110th had the main responsibly of guarding it. Map: https://www.loc.gov/resource/g3701p.rr003400/
Men standing on VA. rail line: https://www.loc.gov/item/2006676176/
Orange & Alexandria Line:
https://www.loc.gov/resource/g3881p.rr006010/?r=0.565,0.227,0.271,0.404,0
African American wood choppers’ hut on the Orange & Alexandria Railroad: https://railroads.unl.edu/documents/view_document.php?rends%5B%5D=photograph&topics%5B%5D=War&id=rail.iw.017
Overview of VA. railroads during war; before the railroad, the fastest one could cross the country was in one month. Current driving (2019) record is 27 hours, 25 minutes. An F-22 Raptor at 1500mph can make it in no time): https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/virginia-railroads-during-the-civil-war/
Great maps & pictures: http://www.virginiaplaces.org/rail/civilwarrail.html
**The NYT article dated today reads, “three vollies fired over the grave.” Lander was just 40, & is buried at Broad Street Cemetery, Salem, Mass. https://www.nytimes.com/1862/03/09/archives/the-funeral-of-gen-lander-at-salem.html
Civil War Weather in Virginia Robert K. Krick P. 48
“7a.m. 36; 2p.m. 37; 9p.m. 36. Rainlike at 2.”
Lincoln Day by Day: A Chronology 1809-1865 Volume III: 1861-1865 C. Percy Powell P. 98
“March 8, 1862: President summons Gen. McClellan to White House at 7:30A.M. Reports rumor that McClellan intends to turn capital and government over to enemy. McClellan protests. Lincoln disclaims intent to accuse him.”
Lincoln’s Spies: Their Secret War to Save a Nation Douglas Waller P. 146
“Lincoln, who made many fruitless visits to McClellan’s headquarters in a luxurious house on Lafayette Square to try to prod him forward, checked out books on military strategy from the Library of Congress and paced back and forth in his bedroom at night digesting them for a crash course in how to wage war. He had no military experience save for his brief fling in the Illinois militia and he could not critically inspect troops (particularly with show parades). But by 1862 Lincoln had learned on the job enough about military operations to dash off notes to McClellan and other generals, with astute suggestions on everything from troop movements to logistic trains that they would have done well to pay more attention to. Soon the War Department, a battered old brick building next to the White House, became the president’s second home.”
Hearts Touched by Fire: The Best of Battles and Leaders of the Civil War Edited by Harold Holzer P. 339-342
THE PENINSULAR CAMPAIGN.
George B. McClellan, Major-General, U.S.A. (excerpt)
“….the President came to my house to explain why he had appointed Mr. Stanton without consulting me; his reason being that he supposed Stanton to be a great friend of mine, and that the appointment would naturally be satisfactory. And that he feared that if I had known it beforehand it would be said that I had dragooned him into it.
The more serious difficulties of my position began with Mr. Stanton’s*** accession to the War Office. It at once became very difficult to approach him, even for the transaction of ordinary current business, and our personal relations at once ceased. The impatience of the Executive immediately became extreme, and I can attribute it only to the influence of the new Secretary, who did many things to break up the free and confidential intercourse that had heretofore existed between the President and myself. The Government soon manifested great impatience in regard to the opening of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad and the destruction of the Confederate batteries on the Potomac. The first object could be permanently obtained only by occupying the Shenandoah Valley with a force strong enough to resist any attack by the Confederate army then at Manassas; the second only by a general advance of the Army of the Potomac, driving the enemy back of the Rapidan. My own view was that the movement of the Army of the Potomac from Urbana would accomplish both of these objects, by forcing the enemy to abandon all his positions and fall back on Richmond. I was therefore unwilling to interfere with this plan by a premature advance, the effect of which must be either to commit us to the overland route, or to minimize the advantages of the Urbana movement. I wished to hold the enemy at Manassas to the last moment– if possible until the advance from Urbana had actually commenced, for neither the reopening of the railroad nor the destruction of the batteries was worth the danger involved.
The positive order of the President, probably issued under the pressure of the Secretary of War, forced me to undertake the opening of the railway. For this purpose I went to Harper’s Ferry in February, intending to throw over a force sufficient to occupy Winchester. To do this it was necessary to have a reliable bridge across the Potomac– to insure supplies and prompt reëinforcements. The pontoon-bridge, thrown as a preliminary, could not be absolutely trusted on a river so liable to heavy freshets; therefore it was determined to construct a canal-boat bridge. It was discovered, however, when the attempt was made, that the lift-lock from the canal to the river was too narrow for the boats by some four or five inches, and I therefore decided to rebuild the railroad bridge, and content myself with occupying Charlestown until its completion, postponing to the same time the advance to Winchester. I had fully explained my intentions to the President and Secretary before leaving Washington, providing for precisely such a contingency. While at Harper’s Ferry I learned that the President was dissatisfied with my action, and on reaching Washington I laid a full explanation before the Secretary, with which he expressed himself entirely satisfied, and told me that the President was already so, and that it was unnecessary for me to communicate with him on the subject. I then proceeded with the preparations necessary to force the evacuation of the Potomac batteries. On the very day appointed for the division commanders to come to headquarters to receive their final orders, the President sent for me. I then learned that he had received no explanation of the Harper’s Ferry affair, and that the Secretary was not authorized to make the statement already referred to; but after my repetition of it the President became fully satisfied with my course. He then, however, said that there was another “very ugly matter” which he desired to talk about, and that was the movement by the lower Chesapeake. He said that it had been suggested that I proposed this movement with the “traitorous” purpose of leaving Washington uncovered and exposed to attack. I very promptly objected to the coupling of any such adjective with my purposes, whereon he disclaimed any intention of conveying the idea that he expressed his own opinion, as he merely repeated the suggestions of others. I then explained the purpose and effect of fortifying Washington, and, as I thought, removed his apprehensions, but informed him that the division commanders were to be at headquarters that morning, and suggested that my plans should be laid before them that they might give their opinion as to whether the capital would be endangered; I also said that in order to leave them perfectly untrammeled I would not attend the meeting. Accordingly they met on the 8th of March and approved my plans.
On the same day was issued, without my knowledge, the order forming army corps and assigning the senior general officers to their command. My own views were that, as the command of army corps involved great responsibility and demanded ability of a high order, it was safer to postpone their formation until trial in the field had shown which general officers could best perform those vital functions. An incompetent division commander could not often jeopardize the safety of an army; while an unfit corps commander could easily lose a battle and frustrate the best-conceived plan of campaign. Of the four corps commanders, only one had commanded so much as a regiment in the field prior to the Bull Run campaign. On the next day intelligence arrived that the enemy was abandoning his positions. I crossed to the Virginia side to receive information more promptly and decide upon what should be done. During the night I determined to advance the whole army, to take advantage of any opportunity to strike the enemy, to break up the permanent camps, give the troops a little experience on the march and in bivouac, get rid of extra baggage, and test the working of the staff–departments. If this were done at all, it must be done promptly, and by moving the troops by divisions, without waiting to form the army corps. Accordingly, I telegraphed to the Secretary, explaining the state of the case and asking authority to postpone the army corps formation until the completion of the movement. The reply was an abrupt and unreasonable refusal. I again telegraphed, explaining the situation and throwing the responsibility upon the Secretary, whereupon he gave way.”
Patriotic Gore: Studies in the Literature of the Civil War (1962) Edmund Wilson P. 178-179
“It is impossible to read of this phase without getting the impression that there was a certain amount of comedy in the first squaring-off of the combatants. They did not really want to fight; it was something of a gentlemen’s game. The South took the thing as a tournament, and in the North the inactive McClellan, General-in-chief till March, 1862– thought he, too, had to behave with severity in suppressing the mutinies that followed Bull Run– did much to encourage this spirit. “The trouble with many of our generals in the beginning,” said Grant to John Russell Young, “was that they did not believe in the war. I mean that they did not have that complete assurance in success which belongs to good generalship. They had views about slavery, protecting rebel property, State rights– political views that interfered with their judgments.” It was Sherman and Grant who changed this.”
For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War James M. McPherson P. 6
“The initial impulse came from what the French call rage militaire– a patriotic furor that swept North and South alike in the weeks after the attack on Fort Sumter. Northern cities and towns erupted overnight into volcanoes of oratory and recruiting rallies. “The heather is on fire,” wrote a Harvard professor who had been born during George Washington’s presidency. “I never knew what a popular excitement can be…. The whole population, men, women, and children, seem to be in the streets with Union favors and flags.” In New York City, wrote a young man who enlisted on April 15, 1861, “the feeling runs mountains high, and thousands of men are offering their services where hundreds only are required.” Diarists recorded the rage militaire in Philadelphia. April 20: “A wild state of excitement.” April 22: “Everyone I saw, with the exception of two or three Democrats, is filled with rage and resentment.” April 30: “The city seems to be full of soldiers, most every other man in the street is in some kind of uniform.”
P. 7
In Richmond a huge crowd marched to the state capitol, lowered the American flag, and ran up the Confederate stars and bars. Everyone “seemed to be perfectly frantic with delight,” wrote a participant. “I never in my life witnessed such excitement.” In Goldsboro, North Carolina, a correspondent of the Times of London watched “an excited mob” with “flushed faces, wild eyes, screaming mouths, hurrahing for ‘Jeff Davis’ and ‘the Southern Confederacy.’” In Charlottesville an eighteen-year-old student at the University of Virginia wrote in his diary on April 17: “No studying today. The news of Va.’s secession reached here about 10 oc’lk amid huzzas and shouts….’War!’ ‘War!’ was on placards all about. My company was called at 4:45. All was excitement and ‘go.’”
Note: 96 Southern military schools– vs. 15 in North– were founded between 1827-1860. “Spilling for a fight” became a common expression.
Stony the Road Henry Louis Gates Jr. P. 270
(Quoting Ethan J. Kytle and Blaine Roberts in Denmark Vesey’s Garden: Slavery and Memory in the Cradle of the Confederacy, 1882)
“‘There have been elaborate efforts made by so-called statesmen to cover up the real cause of the war, but there is not a man of common sense in the south to-day who is not aware of the fact that there would have been no war if there had been no slavery.’”
The Mind of the South W. J. Cash (1941) P. 13-14
“It is impossible to say precisely how numerous the South’s ruling class was in 1860. Most often it is made to include all the slave-owners. Professor Dodd had argued, however, that it ought actually to include only some four or five thousand of the greater planters. Even at that it is impossible that the Virginians and all their allied aristocracies should account for them. I have no figures, but I confidently hazard the guess that the total number of families in Virginia, South Carolina, Louisiana—in all the regions of the little aristocracies—who were rationally to be reckoned as proper aristocrats came to less than five hundred—and maybe not more than half that figure. As a matter of fact, any bright Southern schoolboy can tell you offhand the names of all the important ones among them.
How account for the ruling class, then? Manifestly, for the great part, by the strong, the pushing, the ambitious, among the old coon-hunting population of the backcountry. The frontier was their predestined inheritance. They possessed precisely the qualities necessary to the taming of the land and the building of the cotton kingdom. The process of their rise to power was simplicity itself.
P. 233
Such men did not, of course, turn at once into horse-traders. Most of them carried their inherited standards over into the new occupations as far as they could, and that perhaps had some effect in softening the characteristics of the cruder sort. But in the nature of commerce they inevitably lost ground and came more and more to be merely the commonplace business man and less and less the aristocrat.
Well, and if the content of the aristocratic ideal was continually dwindling in so many ways, was the claim to aristocracy—the old concern with coats of arms and pedigree and the mythology of the plantation—at last beginning to wane on? Do not suppose it.
Progress, indeed, had brought in a mythology of its own, where under it had become fashionable in some quarters to lay claim to having been “born in a log cabin” and to have begun life as a plow-boy or a sweeper in a cotton mill—to pass as the man of great energy and intelligence who had made himself rich and powerful by his own unaided efforts. I use the term “mythology” advisedly; for the claim was by no means strictly confined to those of whom it was quite literally true, but, in the upcountry at least, was also made by men who had been born well up in the social scale. That is not to say that they lied outright. There were precious few men of whatever rank born in the Southern countryside before 1900 who had not some time served as plow-boys. And in many of the small towns of the upcountry it was the custom for the young sons of business and professional people, including the executives of the mills, to do a summer’s turn in the factories. But the implication here was clearly false, the measure of reality such as belongs to myth and legend.
For all this, however, the notion of aristocracy continued—and, as I may as well say at once, continues to the present—to dominate social relations and aspirations in the narrow sense. Money, to be sure, was almost a sine qua non of social position now—more even than property had been in the old days. Money, in fact, was as certainly the final arbiter of rank in the South now as in Detroit or San Francisco. Without it, it would take a very great name indeed to hold on to its quondam place in the sun.
Every Southern town had its quota of families, impoverished and playing obscure roles in the economic life of the community, making their livings as clerks, or even sometimes as mechanics, but clinging to the belief that grandfather’s local prominence, real or imagined, somehow made them the salt of the earth. And some of these went on being invited to the “right houses,” though, as years went on, they would tend to be forgotten.
P. 168
For, coming to the matter from this position, the common white inevitably had his attention taken, not so much by the fact that he had now to submit himself himself to the will of another, to take orders from a boss, to work when he would not himself have chosen to to work—bitter though this might be. What fixed his gaze to the eclipse of everything else was the spectacle of himself being reduced to working side by side, and on the same place, with the black man; his Proto-Dorian rank, his one incontestable superiority, threatening to plunge finally and irretrievably down to extinction. What every white tenant and cropper, every white man in peril of becoming such, was crying out for first of all in these years was to have this threat somehow stayed.
On other words, the old scale of values, so far from being overturned by the new conditions, would be once more strengthened and confirmed. Economic and social considerations remained, as ever, subordinate to those of race—and country. And such being the case, why, now, as always in the past, it was ultimately quite impossible for the common white to do anything effective about his economic and social plight; and so, of course, quite useless for him to develop class awareness.”
Throes of Democracy: The American Civil War Era 1829-1877 Walter A. McDougall P. 339
“The coastal South’s semitropical geography, climate, flora, and fauna were unlike anything in the North; and the southern uplands from the Blue Ridge to the Ozarks had no northern counterpart except perhaps upper New England. But whereas impoverished Yankees hastened to improve their lives in places like Iowa, southern hillbillies either stayed put or else replicated their lives in places like Arkansas. That suggests a cultural divide. Northern society was a stew of Puritans, Yorkers, and Quakers seasoned with Scots, Irish, and Germans. The people born in or adapting to those “cradle cultures” defined liberty in terms of law, equal opportunity, and self-reliance. The recipe for southern society, which attracted few immigrants or transplanted northerners, remained to a remarkable extent what it had been in colonial times: Cavalier planters in the low country; Scots-Irish “Bordermen” in the highlands; and Africans, mostly enslaved. Scions of Cavaliers and the cotton lords aspiring to their dignity clung to an aristocratic notion of liberty whereby the obvious inequality of human beings meant that anyone who was not a master was a dependent– a slave of sorts– to somebody else. The Scots-Irish clung to a libertarianism hostile to all external authority. Both southern white cultures bristled at the suggestion that the federal government, much less self-righteous Yankee reformers, had any right to tell them how to manage their households.”
What Caused the Civil War: Reflections on the South and Southern History Edward L. Ayers P. 93
“Studying the past is like studying scientific processes of which we have the data but for which we cannot run the experiment again, in which there is no control, and in which we can never see the actual process we are describing and analyzing. All we have is information in various forms: words in great abundance, billions of numbers, millions of images, some sounds and buildings, artifacts.”
Note: In a letter to Chastellux, 9/2/1785, Thomas Jefferson claims differences between Northerners & Southerners, juxtaposing them down the page, which I’ll list in 2 paragraphs:
“In the North they are cool, sober, laborious, persevering, independent, jealous of their own liberties, and just to those of others, interested, chicaning, superstitious and hypocritical in their religion.”
“In the South they are fiery, Voluptuary, indolent, unsteady, independant, zealous for their own liberties, but trampling on those of others, generous, candid, without attachment or pretentions to any religion but that of the heart.”
“These characteristics grow weaker and weaker by gradation from North to South and South to North, insomuch that an observing traveller, without the aid of the quadrant may always know his latitude by the character of the people among whom he finds himself. It is in Pennsylvania that the two characters seem to meet and blend, and from a people free from the extremes of both vice and virtue. Peculiar circumstances have given to New York the character which climate would have given had she been placed on the South instead of the North side of Pennsylvania. Perhaps too other circumstances may have occasioned in Virginia a transplantation of a particular vice foreign to it’s climate.”
Note: The black heart center of the Lost Cause– that slavery didn’t cause the 1861 Rebellion plus they never had a chance to win anyway– is a spectacular amount of wrong & rests on particular definitions of this war that goes by different names. In period writings it was called The Revolution of 1861. Overseas they termed it “The American Question,” this thing they also called The American Nightmare.
For a long time it was called the War of the Rebellion– the official term used most in government documents– or the War Between the States, but after around 1907 they settled on simply the Civil War, like a breeze made by a single-flamed word, Civil, came in on a round of ammunition & a good tail wind so the previous names for it had blown off like the other names were pick-up sticks floating down a river’s high reach, water that goes out the mouth into other rivers, then eventually to the ocean. In 1862, when the Gen. Grant tried– and failed– to reroute the Mississippi, the war had a while to settle into its name. From the April 10, 1907 Scranton Republican: “The definition is amble enough to cover all disputed phases of the question, and accurate enough to suit the greatest stickler for exactitude.” “Had the proposition been advanced twenty years ago it would have probably provoked opposition of the most intense description.” They didn’t call themselves Rebels until late, & found “War of the Rebellion” an offensive name for what they brought about. Who was this group who despised the term “rebellion” but went on to term themselves “Rebels”? Eventually, it became a dimensionless, internecine war called by at least 30 names, like incantations:
The Civil War
War of the Rebellion
Great Rebellion
War Between the States
War for Southern Independence
War of Northern Aggression (Tha Wah uh Narthern Aggreshun)
Freedom War
War of Secession
War of Separation
American Slaveholders Rebellion
Second American Revolution (still used by Sons of Confederate Veterans organization)
The Second War for Independence
The Third War for Independence
The Revolution of 1860
The War For the Union
War of Yankee Aggression
Great War of Yankee Aggression
War of Southern Aggression
Mr. Lincoln’s War
The Confederate War
Mr. Davis’s War
Holy War
Slavery War
War for Union
The Late Unpleasantness
The Recent Unpleasantness
The War of the Sections
The Brothers’ War
The Scorpion War
Battle between North and South side of the United States
American North-South War
Queen Victoria: “hostilities… between the Government of the United States of America and certain States styling themselves the Confederate States of America”
Note: “YANKEE GO HOME” – you could write it in 100 different languages– in Tsalagi, in Urdu, in Welsh– you could write it past all the names you hear given in that description & it would still come out the same. Everyone would know what it meant. Yanqui, yanki, der Nordstaatler, Yankee ve a casa. They chant it in Baghdad decade after decade. Panama. Haiti. Hawaii. A nickname or a title, there’s a difference. You could pair it with a list of people who say they can’t breathe. Instead of using the word crime, say the thing that happened. Say a shot was fired. Say a weapon somehow discharged. No one knows you’re not telling the truth. Witnesses begin to drop dead. Just say Northern Aggression instead. It has a better ring than We Declared War, illegally shot out a Fort & then lost what we started but it took years & about a million down for the count. That the hill stopped shining, & the city was so far gone, & nothing left but one side won the battle, & the next battle the other side gets it, & in the end it just turns out how it turns out. 160 years later the best guess of the cause is still human greed, hatred, & delusion. Any demon will tell you its name if you just ask.
The Myth of the Lost Cause and Civil War History Gary W. Gallagher and Alan T. Nolan, Editors (2000) P. 207 “The Immortal Confederacy.” Lloyd A. Hunter
“….the struggle for Southern independence was no “War of the Rebellion,” as the federal government persisted in calling it, and adherents of the myth squelched the use of that term at every available instance. If the war was not a rebellion, then obviously the warriors in gray were neither rebels nor traitors.”
“We believe in making treason odious:” U.S. Veterans of the Civil War Attack the Lost Cause angrystaffofficer.com Angry Staff Officer 6/20/21
“In 1922, the National GAR decried the use of the phrase “The War Between the States”– invented by the former vice president of the Confederacy, Alexander Stephens– rather than the War of the Rebellion, as it had been termed for decades: “The designation the ‘War between the States’ is to us peculiarly hateful and insulting. It is false in fact. There never has been a war between the States. While there have been causes of dispute and even threats of conflict, the American people have always found a way of peaceful settlement within the law and under the Constitution which was formed with that very end in view. We as participants did not go to war at the behest of a State or against a State but under the flag of the Federal Union and for its preservation.” The old veterans continued their appeal, in near agony, knowing just how few of them were left, “If the Civil War was no more than that [a war between the states], then it was a gigantic mistake and an unspeakable crime on the Federal side; its heroism and sacrifice, its waste, its heartbreak and rivers of blood, all went for naught. What we looked upon as the defense of the national life was not worth a day not an hour of the four years of agony. The fondest hope of our lives– that we had been useful in our day and could leave to our children’s children the example of patriotic duty well performed and a worthy object attained by devotion and sacrifice– dissolves before our eyes into the fond delusion of old men who have had their futile day and who have need to hide away from the pity or reproach of a wiser generation.”
From this plea, the veterans who had defeated the rebellion with shot, shell, and steel went on the attack: “We recognize in the movement we deprecate an effort two generations after it was slain to revive the corpse of secession and obtain for disunion a standing that it could not win on the field of battle. Who are they who set at naught the verdict of a sovereign people and would turn back the current of national development. We protest against any phraseology in public documents that afford even so tardy a recognition of the so called Southern Confederacy.’”
Note: Is this where I should mention GAR membership locked out the Irish? Black vets? Native Americans who fought for the Union? Yeah, this is where. See P. 505 in America Aflame.
On 3/8/62, Harper’s Weekly runs an illustration called “Seeking For The Wounded, by Torch-Light After The Battle.” http://www.sonofthesouth.net/leefoundation/civil-war/1862/march/after-battle.htm An ad under it is attempting to sell one a large “Catlin and Liston” knife that promises to cut through flesh, and also act as a large saw that can cut through bone.
Note: About Camp Tyler, which will become an insane asylum, where Ephraim & the 110th trained before arriving at VA. March 1st: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Summersville-Virginia-Colonel-Tylers-Camp-1861-Civil-War-Print-/353257927109
Note: At Camp Tyler (from 1864 to 1889 the largest stone-cut masonry building in the world second only to the Kremlin), in Weston, W.V., about 6 months before Ephraim joined the war, the 7th Ohio– led by Ephraim’s future Col. Erastus Tyler of the 110th Tyler’s Brigade– arrived after a 25 mile march, walked into town 6/30/61, and robbed the local bank, making off with a half million in today’s gold standard, which were wages for laborers constructing the asylum at the time. The 7th Ohio swept up all Confederate sympathizers, and turned the asylum into Camp Tyler. Like Winchester, throughout 1862 and 1863, the camp would change hands after raids. Ephraim trained at here at Camp Tyler (he mentions leaving the camp March 1, then having to return after General Lander dies). Camp Tyler was once the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum (designed for 250 patients, at its peak in 1950 2,400 patients lived here, making it something of a land-Sultana).
The following were reasons given for admission at http://trans-alleghenylunaticasylum.com/main/history5.html
“Kicked in the head by a horse, exposure in army, intemperance & business trouble, ill treatment by husband, imaginary female trouble, immoral life, jealousy and religion, marriage of son, masturbation for 30 years, menstrual deranged, novel reading, nymphomania, domestic affliction, uterine derangement, women trouble, the war, time of life, vicious vices, gathering in the head, rumor of husband murder, seduction and disappointment, fell from horse in war, death of sons in war, bad whiskey, decoyed into the army, business nerves, fits and desertion of husband, sexual derangement, bad company, laziness, bad habits and political excitement, fever and loss of law suit, religious enthusiasm, superstition, time of life, venereal excesses, snuff eating for 2 years, fighting fire, excitement as officer, exposure and quackery, excessive sexual abuse, dissipation of nerves, egotism.”
***You can just look at a picture of the two of them (Stanton & McClellan) to see how they would have had a problem with each other; both look arrogant & pig-headed.
Note: March 8-9, 1862: Battle of Hampton Roads (to stop the blockade on southern cities): 261 Union killed; 7 Confederate. First ever combat between ironclad ships, caught the world’s attention: “The U.S. Navy suffers the worst day in its eighty-six year history because the Confederate ironclad C.S.S. Virginia (formerly U.S.S. Merrimack) destroys two wooden vessels and runs others aground near Hampton Roads, Virginia. Virginia‘s battle with the U.S. ironclad Monitor the next day (March 9), through a draw, will mark the eclipse of wooden warships and the beginning of a new era in naval warfare.” (Library of Congress Civil War Desk Reference)
Note: Lincoln demotes McClellan from General-in-Chief to Commanding General of only the Army of the Potomac. The Army of the Potomac saw more action & had a higher casualty count than any other Union army in the war. Parallelly, the Army of Northern Virginia was the hardest hit. Note too that many soldiers on both sides never saw combat, depending on where they were stationed & what their duties were.
.
.
Gen Shields has come to take command….
Meantime they keep watching the skies for signs, a dark dust thrown up, or for cardinals, the American crows, the mourning doves that gather & circle over one spot to indicate a disturbance in the surface of things, the Rebels gathering but still hidden by natural obstructions just out of sight. I picture him writing these words, as though nothing else was to do, & he’s looking over the scene, maybe straining in the half light, leaning into a wind coming for all the night while sitting in noise, motion whir, on a log or container, a box from the hardtack or ammo, legs crossed, balancing the tiny diary on his knee, straining to see the words he writes in a dying light. The shifting, moving shadows. The throngs on the lines walking, loping beside the rails in the falling light, dark gold. Are glowing & sheening with the last of that light. The mass of men. Gone.
Note: Hitchcock writing at night:
Marching with Sherman: Passages from the Letters and Campaign Diaries of Henry Hitchcock, Major and Assistant Adjutant General of Volunteers, November 1864–May 1865 (1927) Major Henry Hitchcock P. 61-62
Note: Hitchcock writes from his “first day’s march out” at “Latimer’s X Roads” on November 16, 1864, at 7:30 P.M.
“Our tents pitched S. of road on hillside, in young orchard,—open field, but good rail fences when we came. Gentle slopes to road on both sides, near woods, and with springs in rear on left, and small “spring branchwe are behind—brigade: others followed us for three hours, but at last column halted by darkness and in camp all round. As I write, in my tent—book on knee, sitting on bed of blankets on pine boughs (too much trouble to open cot—mem. no more cots, I think) the sounds of camp are all around. My tent (with G.W.N.) next left of General’s, and till a few minutes ago he and Dr. Moore* and others sat chatting at camp fire in front, telling stories, etc., I hearing as well as writing. From the road for a time came sounds of troops passing, then bugle “halt,”— cries and oaths of teamsters,—and then “tattoo” beats, far and near, and now the voices of men, laughing, talking, and shouting to mules, etc., etc.
*Surgeon John Moore, of Sherman’s staff.
This non-profit, non-commercial, for educational purposes only website contains copyrighted material for the purpose of teaching, learning, research, study, scholarship, criticism, comment, review, and news reporting, which constitutes the Fair Use of any such copyrighted material as provided for under Section §107 of the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976.