Day 86. May 25, 1862. FIRST WINCHESTER.
Ormand F. Nims.
Findagrave.com pics above by Lynn Feingold.
86
He laughed at the futility of trying to execute the order….
May Sunday 25
Quite cool this morning and a very heavy dew. We received orders last night to march at 6ocklock this morning but could not get ready as part of the men had to have shoes and cloathing and was buissy getting ready & cooking & provision to march at 4 1/4 oclock in the afternoon. Gen Shields Division had all gone and our Regt. 110th P.V. took up the line of march and we had to go back the way we came. We are to go back to Catells Station on the Alexd & Orange R.R. Franguin Co Va. We came some 8 miles and haulted for to camp. We came from Fredericksburg and it was very warm. We camp in a grain field that was in head. Haulted at 9 oclock to camp. It was very cold this evening and I think will be very cool in the morning. We came through Falmouth near Fredericksburg
First Battle of Winchester is today.
Note: https://www.mortkunstler.com/html/store-limited-edition-prints.asp?action=view&ID=147&cat=192
https://kingjamesgalleries.com/products/especially-for-you
https://www.nps.gov/cebe/learn/historyculture/first-battle-of-winchester.htm
Civil War Weather in Virginia Robert K. Krick P. 58
“7a.m. 54; 2p.m. 70; 9p.m. 56. Heavy dew.”
Note: Ephraim notes same as Brand below, we live in the stupidest timeline, another day retracing steps, as if starring in the Blair Witch Project. See also Bruce Catton P. 36 below.
Army Life According to Arbaw: Civil War Letters of William A. Brand 66th Ohio Volunteer Infantry Edited by Daniel A. Masters P. 66 by Aaron Riker
“The heart sunk under its load of disappointment and with feelings that cannot be described we turned our faces and started back on the road which we had but so recently passed over then with spirits buoyant, but now that we must go back it seemed that everything went wrong. The mud seemed deeper and it was all the men could do to drag along while the teams were sticking in the mud at every turn of the road.”
Beleaguered Winchester: A Virginia Community at War, 1861– 1865 Richard R. Duncan P. 212
“Lt. William Clark Corson of the Cumberland Light Dragoons was also mystified: “The campaign is a perfect mystery to me: Gen. Early is either advancing or retreating and the cavalry is never out of sight of the enemy skirmishing daily.” An exasperated Col. Mason Whiting Tyler of the 37th Massachusetts confessed, “What is to be the end of all this marching and counter-marching up and down the Shenandoah Valley, I cannot imagine.” Eugene Blackford became tired of “marching up and down this horrid pike under the burning sun. Early is never still.” For “the average soldier,” as Pvt. Charles Lynch of the 18th Connecticut confided, “Many movements and manoeuvers are often made that are puzzling and hard to understand.” Private Fisk shrewdly observed, “The Shenandoah Valley is a queer place, and it will not submit to the ordinary roles of military tactics. Operations are carried on here that Caesar or Napoleon never dreamed of.” Poignantly one Ohio soldier wrote, “Strange place this Valley! Beautiful beyond description, and yet, against the tired soldier marched and remarched it again and again, for him, it loses its beauty.’”
In the Presence of Mine Enemies: The Civil War in the Heart of America, 1859-1864 Edward Ayers P. 263
“Jackson, having done what he could to keep the two branches of the Union forces from joining, now began the second stage of his plan: attacking the Yankees far to the North in the Valley at Front Royal. He told his officers to prepare to march long and hard, fifty minutes out of the hour. Every man had to keep up, no matter how fast the line marched. The pouring rain made the march through the mountains even harder than it would have been otherwise. Shoes disintegrated and wagons mired. Despite the conditions, Jackson made sure the troops covered at least fifteen miles per day. They arrived back on the rolling ground of the Valley, near Harrisonburg. Jackson consolidated the troops under his command and headed north in the Valley.”
Stonewall Jackson Valley Campaign Shenandoah 1862 Peter Cozzens P. 355-6
Note: May 25, 1862 battle, also known as the First Battle of Winchester:
“Riding up the Valley Pike with Gen. Charles S. Winder at the head of the Stonewall Brigade column at daybreak, Lt. McHenry Howard: “’As we went on this road, the general in front, with a guide or someone, there came several shots from a small hollow or break in the high ground on our right which rattled like stones against the plank fence. The general put spurs to his horse and got safely past the mouth of the hollow. Next came Captain O’Brien, assistant adjutant general, and myself. We too spurred our horses to get by the dangerous point as rapidly as possible. Two or three shots came, and as I bent my head low to my horse’s neck I was astonished to see the creme-colored tail of O’Brien’s horse suddenly turn red all over. A bullet had passed through the root. No other harm was done, but the horse went faster.’”
Note: Again, without horses there would have been no war.
How the South Could Have Won the Civil War: The Fatal Errors That Led to Confederate Defeat Bevin Alexander P. 277, Footnote 16
“To make doubly sure that Fremont remained caged in the mountains, Jackson dispatched his topographical engineer, Captain Jedediah Hotchkiss, with few cavalry to block all the passes through the Alleghenies to the eat by means of felled trees and burned bridges. Jackson also ordered John D. Imboden, recruiting troops in Staunton, to seal off any routes by which Fremont might reach Harrisonburg. Imboden knew of a spot four miles east of Franklin on the road to Harrisonburg (present-day U.S. Route 33). “There was a narrow defile hemmed in on both sides by nearly perpendicular cliffs, over 500 feet high,” Imboden wrote. “I sent about fifty men, well armed with long-range guns, to occupy these cliffs, and defend the passage to the last extremity.” On May 25 Fremont, under orders from Stanton to cut off Jackson’s retreat up the Valley, sent his cavalry to feel out passage to Harrisonburg. “The men I had sent to the cliffs let the head of the column get well into the defile, when, from a position of perfect safety, they poured a deadly volley into the close column. “Another volley and the ‘rebel yell’ from the cliffs turned them back, never to appear again.” Fremont abandoned the effort to reach Harrisonburg, went north to Moorefield, and emerged into the Shenandoah Valley far to the north at Strasburg.”
Note: https://www.shenandoahatwar.org/history/first-battle-of-winchester/
https://www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war/shenandoah-valley-campaigns
Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson S.C. Gwynne P. 292
‘The Battle of Winchester began on the foggy morning of May 25 at 4:30 a.m. With the sharp crack of Jackson’s muskets and the rolling thunder of his artillery. He and his division were drawn up just south of town, on the western side of valley pike. Ewell, with smaller numbers– some two thousand troops– was on the right, east of the pike. Union regiments were in place on the high ground in front of them. The battle lines stretched east to west for a mile and a half. For three hours, the two sides engaged. Eight Union rifled Parrott guns and sixteen mostly smoothbore Confederate cannons issued forth sheets of flame and smoke, shook the earth, and rattled windows in Winchester, while pulses of crackling musket fire swept across the fields south of town. Soldiers who were there that morning described a strange and terrible beauty in the battlefields, an effect of swirling fog and bright sunshine, dew sparkling on wheatfields, and shells bursting over the town in perfect white spirals, with jets of white flame piercing billows of white smoke.”
Destruction and Reconstruction: Personal Experiences of the Late War Richard Taylor New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1879 P. 53
“The proper ground gained, the column faced to the front and began the ascent. At the moment the sun rose over the Blue Ridge, without cloud or mist to obscure his rays.”
Shenandoah 1862: Stonewall Jackson’s Valley Campaign Peter Cozzens P. 359-360
“Campbell Brown: “Taken altogether there was more of the picturesque connected with this battle than with any I have yet seen. The view was one of singular beauty in itself– the town of Winchester just beneath us in the hollow and tending half-way up the slope of the opposite range of hills, looking as if enclosed in a perfect cup, and only the turnpike leading from it and winding round the base of the hills to indicate where the outlet is.
The distance from the hills on the Front Royal side, which we held with Courtney’s and Brockenbrough’s batteries, to those opposite held by the enemy was a little over a mile. Hence a good many of their shells and ours burst in the air over the town, and the little expanding globes of smoke made by them, with the two mingled heaps of flame and smoke where the pieces of either side were posted, and a little later the line of little fires from the musketry on the hill beyond, and the burning buildings in the town, seen when the sun had just burst out brightly, formed a beautiful but terrible whole.’”
Note: The apocalyptic nature of so many Civil War scenes come through in these diary accounts, but imagine the surreality of actually having taken part.
P. 359-360
“‘In their eagerness to reach the protection of the stone wall, officers and men forgot the nicities of military formations. Most started for it as fast as they were able to run. Not a few, however, paused to fire before settling in behind the wall. There the men reloaded and fired furiously. ‘”The line officers urged the men vehemently to hurry, but also to be careful to aim correctly,” related the regimental historian. Not that there was much chance of missing. Taylor’s Louisinans were packed so tightly that even wild shots found their mark. Sgt. Edmund Brown was surprised to see how many Rebels were hit: “A large number were falling down. Some dropped all in a heap, some turned half way round and fell sideways, some fell forward, some backward, some fell prone on the ground, while others caught themselves on their hands. A still larger number were dropping their guns and starting to the rear, most of them clapping both hands to the place where they were hit. It was but a momentary glance, taken while loading, but what it revealed can never be effaced from memory.’”
The Civil War Archive: The History of the Civil War in Documents Henry Steele Commager P. 142 Richard Taylor
“It was a lovely Sabbath morning, the 25th of May, 1862. The clear, pure atmosphere brought the Blue Ridge and Alleghany and Massanutten almost overhead. Even the cloud of murderous smoke from the guns above made beautiful spirals in the air, and the broad fields of luxuriant wheat glistened with dew. It is remarkable how, in the midst of the most absorbing cares, one’s attention may be fixed by some insignificant object, as mine was by the flight past the line of a blue bird, one of the brightest-plumaged of our feathered tribes, bearing a worm in his beak, breakfast for his callow brood. Birdie had been on the war path, and was carrying home spoil….
Breaking into column, we pursued closely. Jackson came up and grasped my hand, worth a thousand words from another, and we were soon in the streets of Winchester, a quaint old town of some five thousand inhabitants. There was a little fighting in the streets, but the people were all abroad– certainly all the women and babies. They were frantic with delight, only regretting that so many “Yankees” had escaped, and seriously impeded our movements.
A buxom, comely dame of some five and thirty summers, with bright eyes and tight ankles, and conscious of these advantages, was especially demonstrative, exclaiming, “Oh! – you are too late– too late!”
Whereupon, a tall creole from the Teche sprang from the ranks of the 8th regiment, just passing, clasped her in his arms, and imprinted a sounding kiss on her ripe lips, with “Madame! je n’ arrive jamais trop tard.” A loud laugh followed, and the dame, with a rosy face but merry twinkle in her eye, escaped.
Past the town, we could see the Federals flying north on the Harper’s Ferry and Martinsburg roads. Cavalry, of which there was a considerable force with the army, might have reaped a rich harvest, but none came forward. Raised in the adjoining region, our troopers were gossiping with their friends, or worse. Perhaps they thought that the war was over. Jackson joined me, and, in response to my question, “Where is the cavalry?” glowered and was silent. After several miles, finding that we were doing no good– as indeed infantry, preserving its organization, cannot hope to overtake a flying enemy– I turned into the fields and camped.”
Note: Women were also sniping:
Stonewall Jackson Valley Campaign Shenandoah 1862 Peter Cozzens P. 368
“In his report of the battle, Stonewall Jackson conceded that in negotiating the streets of Winchester, the Federals “preserved their organization remarkably well.” But neither he nor any other Southern officer spoke of a most shameful impediment to the enemy’s flight– gunfire directed at the Yankees from the windows and doors of homes and shops, much of it by the good women of Winchester.
Union sources, on the other hand, vividly and convincingly described the torment. Muskets, pistols, glass bottles, a pan of scalding water– whatever came to hand was aimed at passing Yankees, particularly stragglers. Women were heard to scream epithets, among the milder of which was “Down with the damned Yankees, kill ’em.”
Col. David Strother counted at least twenty shots fired from houses and yards. Drawing rein near a hydrant at which several soldiers had paused to drink, he saw a muzzle flash from a gateway and one of the men fall over in the gutter, mortally wounded. A rapid crackling of pistol shots diverted his gaze down the street in time to see another man drop. While galloping down a side street, General Williams was saluted with a shot from a second-story window that just missed his aide. The lieutenant colonel of the 8th New York Cavalry escaped four pistol shots a woman fired at him from a window, giving rise to a joke among the regiment’s officers that their lieutenant colonel was bulletproof. A correspondent for the Philadelphia Press saw a cavalryman who was wounded in the foot stop to rest on the steps of a house. A woman opened the door and asked if he was able to walk. When the man said no, the woman asked to see his revolver. The soldier innocently gave it to her. Holding it to his head, she demanded that he leave her steps. As he limped away, the woman shot him in the back.”
Beleaguered Winchester: A Virginia Community at War, 1861– 1865 Richard R. Duncan P. 101-102
“As the Federals retreated down the Martinsburg Pike, Jackson’s men pursued. Fleeing blacks, teamsters, and soldiers created a mad scene. As Julia Chase observed, “Nearly every darkie in town has left.” The fleeing blacks were especially fearful. Booming canons [sic] frightened them. With each explosion they dropped their bundles and sometimes abandoned their infants, who laid squalling until “some soft-hearted soldier” picked them up for deposit at the nearest house. One mulatto woman turned to Strother and cried, “O Lord, masters, save us! They gwine to kill us– they gwine to kill us!” He was very touched by their “very simplicity.” Overtaking them, Confederates assured them “that they would not all be killed, and that their babies especially would not be thrown to the dogs to be devoured.” Instead they sent them back to carry the children, “Clinging to their necks.” Those who did escape clogged the roads northward into Pennsylvania for some two weeks.”
P. 106
“Many slaves and free blacks joined in the exodus of of Banks’s fleeing troops. Some did not reach safety and were brought back to Winchester. In defense many protested that they had left only “because they were afraid they would be killed if there was a battle in Winchester.” Slaves were returned to their owners, but free blacks were held as prisoners of war. Laura Lee noted that many freed slaves lost everything. As she observed, some of their children died from exposure, while others were accidentally killed “in the terror and confusion of the flight.” Finding their household goods lost in the exodus became a pressing problem for many. Ironically, the returning slaves and free blacks would later provide a useful source of intelligence for the Federals in their increasing surveillance of Winchester under Milroy and Sheridan.”
How the South Could Have Won the Civil War: The Fatal Errors That Led to Confederate Defeat Bevin Alexander P. 67
“In stopping McDowell for the third time, Jackson had done his damage. His indirect blow had prevented McDowell’s corps from combining with McClellan’s army in a junction that could have spelled the doom of the Confederacy. Rarely in history has a commander been able to achieve such far-reaching, decisive results with the expenditure of so few resources.”
Note: Another ‘never effaced from memory’ memory, this from the last month of this year:
Touched by Fire: The Best of Battles and Leaders of the Civil War Edited by Harold Holzer P. 468-469
THE BATTLE OF FREDERICKSBURG.
James Longstreet, Lieutenant-General, C.S.A.
“On the morning of the 11th of December, 1862, an hour or so before the daylight, the slumbering Confederates were awakened by a solitary cannon thundering on the heights of Marye’s Hill. Again it boomed, and instantly the aroused Confederates recognized the signal of the Washington Artillery and knew that the Federal troops were preparing to cross the Rappahannock to give us the expected battle. The Federals came down to the river’s edge and began the construction of their bridges, when Barksdale opened fire with such effect each time they were met and repulsed by the well-directed bullets of the Mississippians. This contest lasted until 1 o’clock, when the Federals, with angry desperation, turned their whole available force of artillery on the little city, and sent down from the heights a perfect storm of shot and shell, crushing the houses with a cyclone of fiery metal. From our position on the heights we saw the batteries hurling an avalanche upon the town whose only offense was that near its edge in a snug retreat nestled three thousand Confederate hornets that were stinging the Army of the Potomac into a frenzy. It was terrific, the pandemonium, which that little squad of Confederates had provoked. The town caught fire in several places, shells crashed and burst, and solid shot rained like hail. In the midst of the successive crashes could be heard the shouts and yells of those engaged in the struggle, while the smoke rose from the burning city and the flames leaped about, making a scene which can never be effaced from the memory of those who saw it.”
In the Presence of Mine Enemies: The Civil War in the Heart of America, 1859-1864 Edward Ayers P. 342
“After the guns had stopped, Union soldiers flooded into the city. “The town was all ransacked. books, chairs, and every kind of furniture was lying in the Streets,” Sam North wrote. “Some of the boys got books and some other things. Haze Boyd got Milton’s complete works lying in the Streets.” The Federals sacked Fredericksburg, taking out on the city their months of frustration. “There was abundance of flour fish pork and in short every thing but salt,” North reported, but “the story of the South starving is all a Hoax. they had things just as plenty as we have at least in Fredericksburg. our soldiers helped themselves as well as they could.” Men stole everything from toys to women’s clothes to the communion sets from churches. They feasted and drank among the bodies of their Confederate enemies.”
P. 344
“On the fourteenth, men from both sides began to tend to the wounded. They traded tobacco for newspapers and even shook hands. Soldiers scavenged among the bodies for overcoats or boots; bodies were stripped bare, left white and naked. The next day, after a formal truce,burial crews came out to wrap bodies in thin blankets and throw them into two shallow trenches hacked out of the frozen earth. That night a rare aurora borealis hovered in the sky above the two armies, illuminating the contorted dead who yet lay exposed on the killing ground.”
A Virginia Yankee in the Civil War The Diaries of David Hunter Strother David Hunter Strother P. 41-44
Note: Strother will write about today that a cavalryman of the 2nd Massachusetts warns him of danger; Ormand F. 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. 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.
We’ll get back to Strother after this interlude about Ormand. Ormand F. Nims (1819-1911) was the great-great grandson of Godfrey Nims, Godfrey being my 9th grandfather, or at least 10 generations back starting from my father, who was Ephraim’s great-grandson. After this long interlude about what can inhabit a body to where you can believe it with all your soul— even if it’s not there, then how it can go the same, but in the opposite direction— get denied when it was there all along, plus radiated milk, the Bikini Islands, monkeys, ghost newborns, & landscape paintings, we’ll get back to Ormand, too.
Ormand’s 4th grandfather, Godfrey Nims, his son Ebenezer (1687-1766) was abducted during the Deerfield Massacre of 1704 (see March 21). It went (don’t bother with findagrave; his name isn’t even spelled right), my Nims line: Godfrey, John, John, John, Silas Nims & Eunice Call Nims, to Perlexe Ann Nims Efnor— the “Down East Yankee” (her grave below)— to Henry Sowden Efnor, to Ella May Efnor Brown, who died in 1962 (a picture of her is in 4/12 with newborn me, as well as below), all the way to my father’s mother Ruth Madge Brown Burket (below), who was very proud of her ancestry, the Efnor & Nims’ lines especially, which ran through her mother’s father’s side. She left behind an “Our Family History” book with names, SSN numbers, military records, baptisms, coin & stamp collection information, which lodges belonged to, & insignia received from when, hand-written notes on tiny padbook papers dated 1960 where, on one, she wrote the detail that her mother Ella May was born “just as sun was going down,” and she’d added, “Note: Grandma’s father + mother died in Cuba, Ill. in 1844—just 2 weeks apart. Grandma only 7 years old.”
Ella May in the middle, below. To her right is Edith Efnor Pahre. Left: Lottie Thompson, Harry Efnor’s wife. Grave on left is Samuel S. Efnor, my grandmother Ruth’s great-great grandfather. Right: Perlexe Nims Efnor, Ruth’s great-great grandmother.
She listed the organizations & chapters (& her national numbers in) she was part of & had positions in like DAR (1950), NSDAC (1956), National Society Colonial Dames XVIIC (1958), & Eastern Star (joined 1922, making her 22). She also recorded my father’s membership in Children of the American Revolution (1951), & Sons of the American Revolution (1957). That a Dr. Norbert Knoch delivered him 3/20/36. (Ruth will wait a decade to have my father, her one & only.) And that her son was in the 3rd Missile Guard Battalion of PA. She writes at the bottom any two-sided paper “(over),” as if the reader wouldn’t turn it around. Some of the Efnor & Nim’s history can be found in the book Past and Present of Jasper County, Iowa Volume 1 by James B. Weaver, 1912. Also see April 28 here. The book is shiny & gold-gilded all the way around. I remember this type of book from growing up.
Ruth also recorded that she had married on June 23, 1926, 11 days before her sister Esther, 2 years older, got married. Oddly, officiating it was a “Minister of Gospel” who turned out to be Dr. Samuel Allan Lough himself, address simply “Edgewater.” Allan was Ruth’s newlywed sister’s husband. Allan & Esther met, I believe, at Denver University where Allan was an honor student in 1924. What made him think he could be holy? Stay holy? What exactly called him to this? When exactly did he start to fail it? Who invested this man with authority to act as minister? And had he a flock, would the AEC have been it? Titus 1:8: A pastor must be “upright, holy and disciplined.” Something was upright, alright. We’ll get back to Allan. Yes we will.
What remains of Ruth in my mind is her sitting at her kitchen table, the fancy one in the pictures at the Chetwynd, & her telling me she simply must start recording her family history, the names, dates, that there was so much she still had to get around to writing down for the record. This was a recurring theme with her, & she spoke with a lot of anxiety about it, as if the fires at Oxford would ensue— the Leviathan itself lost— should she not get around to it… For whom? Where did she think what she put on the papers would land, ultimately? And what would the person whose hands held them conclude about Ruth & her ancestors? I think she was afraid if she didn’t write all she could remember for some future spook to come across, well, it would go forgotten. Unknown. Unseen. Again & again she sat at that table, smoking her PARLIAMENTs, introduced in 1931, with “Only the flavor touches your lips.”
Maybe you can get that taste at YouTube, “Vintage Parliament Cigarette Ads” where the uploader has added in yellow letters (the color of mucous membranes, or how skin goes when a tumor’s present, say, in her eventual lung cancer, or jaundiced from her Manhattan’s with the cherry cut in half reeling on a glass edge, or that pitch skin & eyes get from too much J&B, the brand her son will drink himself to death with just shy of 4 months into his 44th year, though his collapsed lung will differ too in brand: Lucky Strikes): These TV Ads provided for research and litigation purposes only. Litigation. Mike Wallace, that Mike Wallace, narrates this 1950’s commercial, authoritatively informing viewers “A matter of inches can make the all-important difference” & his backdrop is water, smokers in a fake yacht race in Bermuda, Bermuda, about 7,950 miles from the Marshall Islands which, I read, “are slowly becoming less radioactive.” In the video comments, a man writes, “THE LUNGS WERE NEVER MENTIONED” and “Remember— there is NEVER “just one” CIGARETTE— NEVER.”
And Ruth would talk about Quebec, how she wanted to go someday, something about the leaves. Then veer back to all she had to write still, “before it’s too late.” She was hard on herself when saying these things more to the air than to me, with a Joan Didionesque mien crossed with a touch of Joan Crawford, the type to do about in the world with a dead mink straddling her neck, an impenetrable diamond & fur stuffiness. You had to stand straight or sit straight-backed in her presence or she’d bark it at you each & every visit. Her last paper scrap she dated 1960, though she came back years later to her red book & noted I’d been born, that I had brown eyes & hair. Here’s one story she managed to write, about an occasion on July 29, 1946:
“Ella & Ulysses Brown—50th wedding anniversary— flew from Denver to Colorado Springs and then by car up to top of Pikes Peak. Flew back to Denver for evening party at Ruth & Warren Burket’s house at 1915 Locust St., Denver, Colorado. Esther Brown Lough and Esther’s daughter Maryella were there. Their Grandson— JWarren, Jr. helped to celebrate the event.”
Maryella, she’d have been 6 here, playing with my father, 10. Did they fold paper into planes, crash them into each other waiting for their grandparents to fly back & start the party? Whiz them in a blur like tracer rounds? Calculate their winnowing down near the table with the waiting dinner rolls? It’s all statistical probability & deviation. Or maybe they had no formula or equation in the beginning of everything nearer under a gathering sky. That lull before it all goes south.
What’s that quote about unhappy families. Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Tolstoy.
Randomly enough, I’m lucky to have not only photographs, but the negatives too of some of these people I write about here, all dated 9/11/53. They’ve sat in the envelope 69 years now that reads, “This envelope not INTENDED for storage of negatives.” But like anything, what you start with is often what you get, whether your intentions were pure or not. There’s only so much a person can elide in life, & more than this grainy material of a hunched-in gathering of relatives, no one’s arms around each other, & the low octave test tube of time, the first side of which did contain light & the other, & last, only other side, the dark, I don’t have much.
The occasion must have been a funeral: Ella May’s husband Ulysses Grant Brown, “Superintendent of Iowa Schools,” born just 2 months after Appomattox, died in Newton 4 days back, at 88. So nine total stand bunched up to each other posed for a tenth with a camera aimed at them as they stand in the foreground of a cornfield near Monroe, Iowa; included is my teen father towering over everyone else, with his mother’s sister Esther Efnor Brown Lough (1898-?), plus her daughter Maryella Lough in the cornfield crowd too, plus a bonus dog– Border Collie?– wandering in & out of shots. Maryella, age 13 here (born 1/29/40), will lose it soon after, to where by age 16 she’s a goner, becomes the family specter by the early 1960s then rarely spoken of again. Allan? Never made it into any picture passed down to me. Despite all he did in national security, I’ve yet to find one image of him. Maybe that’s deliberate.
Above: Maryella farthest right in skirt. She only smiles when my Dad’s behind the camera; appears to sneer when her mother takes the picture. Looming behind her with the head tilt is her mother Esther, Allan Lough’s wife. Furthest left (from you, the viewer’s angle) is Harold Efnor, who could be a time-traveller any of us could walk outside right now & he’d be on the porch asking What took you so long? We were supposed to meet a century ago for that beer. And Henry Efnor is the one next to Maryella. He looks like Lewis or Clark, constantly turned in any direction but the present. 4th in from the left each time is Warren Burket, my father’s father. My grandmother Ruth is 4th from the right in pic 1 & 3. Ella May is in the center throughout. The Pahre house has the explanation on the back. Samuel S. Efnor died there after thrown from his horse 11/29/1868. There are several photos of the 2 houses in the batch, more than the people pictures.
Maryella’s father— Dr. Samuel Allan Lough, born 1900— was director of the Health and Safety Laboratory, and Chief of the Radioisotopes Branch of the Atomic Energy Commission at Oak Ridge, otherwise known as the secret city behind the fence that the atomic bomb built. 1942.
KEEP MOUTH SHUT: Oakridge billboard, 1944.
Here, in Tennessee, is where Allan worked on the Manhattan Project.
Years after he was their “Senior Physicist” he would drop by our PA. house & talk in hushed, exasperated tones about nuclear bomb tests on islands somewhere. My brother & I were made to go to our rooms & shut the door within the first few minutes he walked in & began talking. Whatever it was he went on & on about, it was unimaginable; something about people, some acts gone deadly wrong on islands, far off from PA., that’s all I could tell after pretending to go upstairs & shut my door but sat on the top step instead, out of sight, & strained to hear.
He’d talk in a low monologue for hours about something that could never be rectified, people’s bad health, that someone or some group wouldn’t listen or help, that it got ruined down there, something about the sea, that there was no future there, that the people he’d tried to warn, to talk sense into with what he knew to be true, that they all somehow kept on their course despite him.
It frightened me to overhear something secretive even if I had no concept what it was about nor why he was so upset. My parents only occasionally interjected, usually my father, just a word or two, or he’d say more, usually a question for Allan or a bit of advice, a suggestion. And then, so long later it seemed, they’d be relieved when he’d finally leave, after which they’d say little between themselves except words amounting to too bad… just awful… & he sure can talk… My father: Oh boy. But it’s clear now he must have had few he could turn to, if anyone but them.
The location proved to be the Bikini Atoll, the AEC testing site from 1946 to 1958, a literal disaster all around. Inhabitants were shepherded to another atoll & left to starve, for one thing. Below is out of the 1968 meeting Allan chaired at the AEC: Radiological Hazards of the Resettlement of the Bikini Atoll, 38 pages of these men deciding whether Bikinians can ever return home.
You can find his thoughts on strontium & plutonium & coconut crabs & radiation, plus the oxidation of cystine and sulphur compounds in vitro & the Stratospheric Monitoring Program. How he was part of the 1949-1950 MIT/QuakerOats/AEC, the 3 separate cereal radiation experiments on 104-167 “feeble-minded subjects” (many actually abandoned at the school by their parents for whatever reason), children at the Massachusetts Fernald School promised if they took part they could join a “science club” & some decided to join as a cry for help so the new nice men about the club-horse they rode in on could see they were being abused at Fernald then help; instead, what they got was “radioactive iron as a tracer mixed into the milk that was served over the cereal,” but the truly lucky “retards” got injections of radioactive calcium tracer plus the cereal, so double lotto! And it took until the 1993 for the gross deception to be uncovered (Boston Globe) & put before the Senate & then 30 now-grown men sued for $60 million; meanwhile the Islanders, remember them? Are still, this year, battling it out with the resettlement trust fund. Then I find on P. 139-140 in Against Their Will: The Secret History of Medical Experimentation on Children in Cold War America by Hornblum, Newman, & Dober that Allan advised “mentally deficient subjects” could “be used in more than one test” but “one time only” for “normal patients.”
But back to syphilis. Which we weren’t on yet. The statistical processing of the data for Selective Service registrants, their serological blood tests for at least 6 months from 1940 into 1941, was Allan’s responsibility. “Detected suspicious early lesions” & all that…. jazz. At the time, he worked for the Public Health Service in Michigan. What in the world does this have to do with the Civil War, anyway? I’d be a fool to think Allan had nothing to do with Tuskegee. After all, he, well, see the above, & the U.S. Government’s fucking over its people, especially poor minorities, that never seems to end. By May 1959, he’s director at the AEC & initiating studies on human milk, the strontium-90 in women “fed a known diet starting immediately postpartum.” Then he’s gone on to the “Fallout Studies Branch” of the AEC, a gaggle of 254 white males at a conference, the minutes of which show them debating acceptable levels of “human radiation exposure due to fallout” from our troposphere & stratosphere, that after calculating the fallout & latitudes & longitudes & horizons & equatorial tests & debris & horizontal transport at the North Pole, the downslope winds & altitude & unexpected wind shear conditions, the turbulent eddies & weapons tests with those those radionuclides, then conclude ground water is safe & the insects, birds, aquatic organisms, marsh & pond plants are just fine from nuclear war if it happens cuz the bad stuff stays on the tippy top layer of soil dontcha know despite the 1958 New Mexico milk levels of the “body burden” in the population & sick cattle & sheep & pastures & valleys & whatnot now being on “the upward deviation on the high level side.” Then by 1969, Allan is Assistant Director of Radiological Physics, Division of Biology and Medicine at the AEC & now saying there needs to be better control efforts for radon & the epidemiology program increased. Meantime, “Sanitarians and their wives are asked to indicate their preferences for entertainment” which includes a floor show at the Copacabana, a Ladies Tour of Test Kitchens at General Foods, & a trip in an elevator to the Empire State Building’s Deck, why not, maybe they can see the Bikini Atoll exploding from up there.
Back to his daughter Maryella. She had fallen into the belief that her mother (at 42, she had waited 14 years after marrying Allan to have her, her one & only child who wasn’t wanted anyway, everyone somehow knew, so I picked up on that, then my mother told me decades later that Maryella could not stand her, her own mother, absolutely not); again, Maryella had fallen into the belief that her mother kept trying to grab her infant away from her, out of her arms, her tiny precious newborn she had just joyfully brought into this world. So Maryella would hold it tight to protect it so no one could get it away from her but it got so bad one day, at 16, after this all had been going on for quite some time, that something broke through the levels of atmosphere & Maryella lunged through gravity at the malevolent-mother-baby-snatcher with a whole pair of scissors. It was the scissors. Not the fact she never gave birth but insisted to everyone she had. That was what landed her in the bughouse, far away, an upstate NY private hospital at the tailend of the lobotomy & electroshock era. But then “somewhere near 1960” the cash ran dry so she got transferred to “a state mental institution.” What state, it’s unclear. NY? “Maybe Long Island.” Then that was it for her. Over & out, Gone Elvis. Like Maryella was a coyote no one wanted to hear howl. Updates were periodic & bad, as in no improvement, then trickled down to nothing, nothing ever said again, as it got impractical, the tenor of inquiries & answers clipped, plaintive, & all I overheard as a child was there was a crazy woman no one would talk about who disappeared into the silence of padded white walls with no visitors at some fast point. The look on my grandmother’s face in her apartment standing near the couch she’ll eventually have me pose in that blouse I haven’t forgotten. Dark, pinched, looking down. Shaking her head no. Nowhere to land after that but in a white silence.
Maybe it was the milk. Maybe Maryella had some of that Quaker Oats.
Nevada, 1953: the Badger Test, part of Operation “Upshot-Knothole,” which encompassed 11 tests where troops stood around while the government they pledged allegiance to hundreds of times detonated nuclear bomb to see how fast this new thing radiation wiped them out. Far right: 15 minutes after Nagasaki, 9/8/45, 15km away. Hiromihi Matsuda, photographer.
See it: “Operation Upshot Knothole Badger, atomic bomb test.”
Then 20 years after that test, her dad Allan is at our house from D.C., & my brother & I are in our separate rooms playing with the latest present he’s brought us; this last visit we ever saw him was ’74; it was a Jolly Chimp Cymbal-Banging Monkey Toy, & we both got one. It screeched out its open mouth & sounded at once like a train coming or a tornado on its way or if you had acute hearing, a detonation from the Nevada Desert & the white radiated sky sinking down upon it. And the chimps through their antics were determined to hear no evil, see no evil, but just howl. We sat in my brother’s room, & he had his on his desk & we watched closely it as it took both paws & slapped them together with thin cymbals stitched into them, clanging each time it was ordered all the while shrieking with the clapping it made, but the apogee was when we tapped its head & it went EEEEEEEEE & bulged its eyes out of their sockets, wide out, & its mouth opened again & again like it wished to say words to make us understand but got reduced to screeching instead. My brother & I figured the monkey worth recording on one of those Kodak Instamatics, the 110 if I remember right. We took of picture of his. I still have that picture.
Yet every single damn time I refind it, I tell myself I must put it here then forget, & lose it again. Again, again, & again. There is something not right about that photograph not wanting attention, exposure, to, what?– be found? So here is a stand-in Chimp until the very next instant I hold it in my sweaty trembling hand, whereupon I swear I will drop what I’m doing & rush to my phone & it will gain a permanency. Proxy Chimp, close enough:
And though it’s now known as Pseudocyesis, or phantom pregnancy, at least right up to the part where you actually are so psychotic you think the phantom baby’s in your arms & someone’s trying to take it from you— which was far more common in the 1940s & 50s than it is now, so you have to wonder at the social contagion that made that possible in teen girls— I have to wonder too whether on some level she knew more than any of us, she didn’t lose it; she found it, figured it out through her father so she had to protect something sacred she knew was getting poisoned. That she saw or overheard something from him about Strontium-90 circling the globe, the worst constituent of fallout, with a 28.9 year half-life. She saw the limits of reason.
She became The New Daughter, heard the incessant growling that came out of the woods, so learned how to slip through the window & run for the woods quietly, crawl into the mound one last time holding tight her strange doll with the spider in the center that would multiply by morning in Kevin Costner’s kitchen drawer. Maybe she was a changeling, holding a changeling, a spirit unseen she still clutches in her arms against anyone in an oncoming wind. Or one of those Scottish Trows from back in her line of ancestors got to her. As I write this my first cousin once removed’s out there somewhere because she doesn’t show up on the Social Security Death Index. I’ve done everything short of hiring a private detective over the years (I’d like to but no $). To my mother’s credit, she says she did, sometime in the 1970’s, call where she was to try & see if she could visit her. But like any doctor who lacks common sense, this one told her unless she could visit on a consistent basis, to not come at all. She never went. I found her name associated with a hospital years back in 2015 but they emailed back they had no record of her ever checked-in. Odd, as it’s a rare name, & I did mention HIPAA, & to pass a msg. to her if they could. Maybe down the decades there was no next of kin to notify, so no one followed through on the Death Index. I don’t want to believe it was a situation darker than I can conceive but it could have been. She…. just…. disappeared in one of these institutions, no one ever held accountable.
But the fallout. They know where that landed: India, Australia, Japan, Europe, the U.S., everywhere. Each continent. Most of all down onto the 23 Marshall Islands. Read about red bone marrow, stomach walls, thyroid gland intake of radionuclides due to “deposition of fallout,” annual estimates of cancer “risks,” how the NCBI, the NLM, & our National Institute of Health bald-face lied that only 170 “excess” cancers happened. How Castle Bravo’s (castle: a retreat safe against invasion, like Edinburgh Castle, Scotland; bravo: started out in the 1590s as “desperado, hired killer”) unexpected wind shears caused “heavy fallout of debris” resulting in “high radiation doses to the populations of nearby atolls.” This too is part of the Real War, & one of the most distressing events in world history, probably the most malignant on the Earth’s biosphere, because these American’s little reindeer games will have affected the entire terrene until the sun burns out.
The irony of losing your own child, especially to something unseen, when you’d managed to poison so many others. And those Bikinians meant nothing beyond their value as research subjects to the U.S. government, same as the Fernald School students, & same as the enslaved, what they could supply to, once again, White male corporate crime profit. Bikini Atoll: the AEC had a B-52 drop, at 50,000 feet, the first “improved” hydrogen bomb over Namu in ’56, the year Maryella turned 16. A 4 mile fireball, the sky “brighter than the light from 500 suns.” The Atoll, both land & sea, stays contaminated with high amounts of cesium-37. Bikinians still can’t move back after their “temporary,” now ¾ of a century, relocation. See: “A history of the people of Bikini following nuclear weapons testing in the Marshall Islands: with recollections and views of elders of Bikini Atoll” at https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/0199216.
Four mile fireball. Picture it. Or watch it. Watch this without fear your eyes’ll melt out for even peeking at a house that faces & reflects that white: HD Redwing Navajo 4.5 Mt atomic bomb hydrogen bomb 1956.
And now if I cast back in my mind’s eye, I can reel in him cutting across our front yard that last time, carrying two plastic bags that will be the monkeys, & he will knock on our storm door when he reaches it, but then that coming June, 1975, the 11th, we’ll get a letter to the same front door he died. I’ll write in my diary that night, “We got a letter today—Uncle Alan died. He was so nice. Oh well. My favorite slogan. Oh well.” Much like Ephraim, the words that don’t make it to paper would have meant so much more later than thought at the time. I was 12.
I Google Allan’s name in various permutations & get a lot on the AEC, plus front pages of Nevada’s old newspapers about the tests, but no image of him. Just the blank white bottom of the page telling me Looks like you’ve reached the end. It’s a strange slice of history, this branch of our tree, the Reverend-Cereal & Island-Poisoner with the daughter who had the fake baby then dropped off Earth. Maybe she did have a baby after all. Maybe it was given up. That’s what they did back then to so many teen girls, force them to relinquish. I have a first cousin I have no explanation for on a DNA site. Did she or anyone related to her survive the 1940s to now? I took her outside, to x-ray her in the sun, because it doesn’t really matter if the negative gets destroyed: she’s smiling here. You know, it’s a brave thing to bother to be alive. Because so much ends badly.
What else can last so long as fallout, as lives like theirs, how their own gravity felled them, & how I hold a 13 year old Maryella in a picture, just that, that one photo, her mother looming in back of her, & she doesn’t appear fat but her skirt does bulge out where it shouldn’t, but maybe that was the style, a pleating, some elastic, though nothing in the skirt indicates any poof was designed in, & in the end, the real end, the cold fact is I never would have known she existed had I not overheard as a child then started asking questions decades down the line, or found the photos of the day that had them all bunched into each other, some with smiles, others not. Sadly, Maryella isn’t even listed as Allan & Esther’s offspring on ancestry.com’s public page. Where is my baby? I pray she is not still somewhere, asking.
Along with blank white Google search filter results, with no image existant of him, after all he was party to, the Ellen’s Isle Loch Katrine painting fills his space instead. His blank absence astride likenesses of actual Scottish loughs & lochs, the Lough Allen Lake in Ireland, then results meld, no matter how many times I type “Lough,” into Sluagh, because the internet doesn’t understand the sounds going into its mouth. Sluagh, Sluagh na marbh, turns out to mean the hosts of the unforgiven dead in Scottish Gaelic folklore.
Since the AEC sits with “Ellen’s Isle, Loch Katrine,” staying swathed across every Allan Lough result, I look further; Robert Seldon Duncanson was, it turns out, half-Black, half-White, “born free,” a self-taught painter. 1821-1872. Duncanson had a breakdown preceded by the belief he was “possessed by a dead artist and exhibited other forms of unusual behavior.” (Alex Greenberger, Art News, 1/29/21) Or was it the schizophrenia, Greenberger asks. Or the racism targeted at him. So here’s Ellen’s Isle, Loch Katrine, 1871:
And while we’re on cows & sheep & pastures & valleys:
Landscape with Sheep, 1850:
“Landscape with Sheep was inspired by the countryside around Robert S. Duncanson’s home in Cincinnati. He painted domestic scenes of farmland to emphasize the beauty and perfection of nature and its relationship to man. In this image he created a gentle landscape bathed in soft pinks and yellows to create an intimate, enticing view. Scenes like this would have been popular with nineteenth-century Americans, who felt cut off from nature as more and more land was taken by industry.”
https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/landscape-sheep-7602
Valley Pasture, 1857, which would have put it a handful of years before the war:
Landscape with Cows Watering in a Stream, 1871, after the war was all over, & still a quarter century before Becquerel comes along about the radioactivity of uranium salts, which will eventually turn the sky into 500 suns:
And Uncle Tom and Little Eva, 1853:
And finally, Young America, 1846:
But really finally, his painting of of 1852 land which sold in 2003 for $343,500, The Garden of Eden, because everything is for sale in America, even Eden:
And because a rainbow plunging out of a sky is sightlier than a nuclear warhead, or even Duncanson’s various Pompeii paintings of the Mount Vesuvius lava aftermath (asphyxiating 16,000, the population of Chernobyl before it changed the name to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone), here’s a last hopeful sky: Landscape with Rainbow, 1859, currently at the Smithsonian:
So it’s just Allan now, living on in publications with titles like Against Their Will: The Secret History of Medical Experimentation on Children in Cold War America, or Premeditated Deceit: The Atomic Energy Commission Against Joseph August Sauter, Clifford T. Honicker’s 1987 Master’s Thesis at Tennessee, who quoted Allan to Charles Dunham on 11/10/58 (Director of Biology and Medicine, Division of Military Applications), P. 94: “The analytical data submitted by the contractors have been so unreliable that some participating investigators have been unwilling to use them in the preparation of scientific reports in connection with the overall fallout program. To me it appears entirely indefensible for the Atomic Energy Commission to continue expenditure of funds for additional contractor-performed analyses which we are confident will be unsatisfactory.”
Apparently some reports were off by over 89 percent about the Sr90 in vegetation, soil, feces, bones, & Honicker goes on to write that Dunham agreed with Allan. Do read, in New York Times Magazine, 11/19/89, Honicker’s stunner of a piece “America’s Radiation Victims: The Hidden Files” to learn about the AEC’s desperate malfeasance & subterfuge conducted against government workers who either died after radiation exposure or sickened after the 1946 Pajarito Accident. It’s all there: the withholding of “classified” files, the outright denial these files existed (until Honicker, as a student at Tennessee, located them just sitting in cardboard boxes in AEC’s own archive at his school), the lack of compensation, the utter disregard in the AEC’s policy of no acknowledgement of claimant injuries. This was a literal half-century-long cover-up of hundreds of claims. Honicker hones in on the story of Allan Kline (1920-2001), who wipes away a tear while talking to him: “What they did to me… lies, all lies.”
There’s reams neverending about this period of American history. So if anyone’s interested, check out Oregon State’s Archives of the History of Atomic Energy Collection, 1896-1991, the entire list. https://scarc.library.oregonstate.edu/coll/energy/catalogue/full
And see Chapter 13: “The Practice of Secrecy” in the ACHRE Report at biotech.law.lsu.edu/research/reports/achre/chap13_3
Above: Ruth’s parents on the left: Ulysses Grant Brown, Ella May Efnor Brown. 3rd from left, Warren Burket, Ruth’s husband. Then Esther (Maryella’s mother & Ruth’s sister). Sitting is Ruth with my father on her lap, who was Ephraim’s great-grandson. I think there’s something straight-edged in Ephraim’s grandson Warren (3rd from left). It’s in the face, a countenance to the bones that stays him standing though he sits, like the war has been slowly diluted away but it’s never regarded the same from one generation to the next. By now of course he has TB, running his oil company by mail all the way from PA. He’ll live out his line’s genetic insistence on pushing through to the end when he dies out of nowhere in that Chetwynd apt. in the dark amber chair my mother unaccountably moves to our front room. Much later I’ll try to sit in its velour plushness but spring out of it so as to not get trapped there too. The photograph is signed in pencil “S Toeffel, ’38.” I tore open the back of the frame in case anything hid there. Nothing did.
Back to Ormand: He had two brothers, both named George Washington Nims (1809-1811, then 1812-1888). His parents were determined, come hell or high death, they’d have a lasting son named that. A number of histories have been composed on the 2nd. History of the Second Massachusetts Battery (Nims’ Battery) of Light Artillery, 1861-1865 by Caroline E. Whitcomb has a concise passage about the Nims (no page number given): “A history of the 2d Massachusetts Light Artillery will hardly be regarded as complete unless it contains a sketch of the life of its commander, Capt. Ormand F. Nims.”
“From the time of the early settlement of America down to the last war in which the United States has been engaged, the Nims family has participated in the offensive and defensive campaigns of the country save only in the war with Mexico. Indeed it may truly be said that the commander of Nims’ Battery came of good fighting stock. The family of Nims is descended from the old Huguenots of France, coming from that part of the country where is situated the city Nismes, from which is derived the family name de Nismes, or as it is now written Nims. Godefroi de Nismes, or as known here, Godfrey Nims came to this country in the 17th century, the first mention of his name being found in the records of Northampton under the date September 4, 1667. He was in Turner’s Fight, May 18, 1676 and was a soldier in King Philip’s War. He was twice married. His first wife was Mary, daughter of William Miller and widow of Zebadiah Williams. His second wife was Mehitabel, daughter of William Smead and widow of Jeremiah Hall. He had six children by his first wife and five by the second. Rebecca (died young), Rebecca, John, Henry, Thankful, Ebenezer, Thomas, Mehitabel, Mary, Mercy and Abigail. The family of Godfrey Nims were victims of that terrible Indian tragedy which resulted in the destruction of Deerfield, Mass., to which place Mr. Nims had moved in 1686. This calamity occurred February 29, 1704. On that fatal day, Mrs. Nims was captured and was slain on the way to Canada. Her dwelling was destroyed by fire. The eldest surviving daughter, then Mrs. Mattoon, was slain, together with an only child, Henry; the eldest son was captured and slain. Ebenezer, the second son, was captured and carried to Canada. Mehitabel, Mary and Mercy were burned with the house. Abigail, the youngest was captured at the age of four years and carried to Canada, where she married another captive, Josiah Rising, then christened Ignace Raizeune, received a permanent home, and a large domain.
It does not appear that Godfrey Nims was captured at this time. The suggestion has been made that he was with a military company elsewhere. An inventory of his estate was taken at Deerfield, March 12, 1704, or 5, the presumption being that he had died there just previously.
Ebenezer and John were the two surviving sons of Godfrey. John has many descendants in Michigan and other parts of the West. Ebenezer was carried to Canada as was also another captive, Sarah Hoyt. These two were married in Canada and had there one son also named Ebenezer. They were redeemed by Stoddard and Williams with difficulty in 1814 and returned to Deerfield, where four more sons were born, David, Moses, Elisha, Amasa. David, son of Ebenezer, was born at Deerfield, March 30, 1716 and died in Keene, July 21, 1803. He came to Keene while a boy and was appointed scribe by the proprietors July 25, 1737. At the first town meeting after the town was chartered by New Hampshire which was held May 2, 1753, he was elected first town clerk and after that held some town office nearly every year till 1776. In 1740, he was granted 10 acres of upland in Keene, for hazarding his life and estate by living in the place to promote the settlement of the township. Still later he was granted 104 acres in that part of Keene, which is now in the town of Roxbury. This estate is at present occupied by David Brigham Nims, his great great-grandson. He had ten children one of whom Asahel fell at the battle of Bunker Hill. “On the morning when Captain Wyman and his men left Keene for Massachusetts, Asahel came into town from his home on the Sullivan Hills where he was clearing land and getting ready to settle with one whom he hoped soon to marry. He saw the military movement and was fired with that spirit of military and patriotic fervor which has been such a characteristic of the Nims family. One fellow who had enlisted did not have the courage to start. Asahel consented to take that fellow’s place and lost his life in his first battle. He was buried on the battlefield and his name is recorded on one of the gates of Bunker Hill Park.”
Zadok, another son and the grandfather of Col. Ormand Nims fought at Lake Champlain, and it is a tradition concerning him that at this time he became so exhausted that his commander and comrades believed him dead. They were preparing his body for burial, when to their delighted surprise he came to his senses and afterward fully recovered.
Col. Ormand F. Nims was born in Sullivan, N. H., August 30, 1819, his father, Philander Nims, being a farmer in that vicinity and his mother, the daughter of Col. Solomon White of Uxbridge, Mass.
Colonel White served seven years in the War for Independence and later commanded a Massachusetts regiment at the head of which he marched to Worcester at the time of Shay’s Rebellion. An uncle, Frederick Nims, served during the War of 1812 performing creditable military service.
Ormand Nims was twenty-three years old when he left the farm in Sullivan and came to Boston, where in 1854 he bought a drug store on Cambridge Street and set up in business for himself. His first taste of a military career had been when, a boy of fifteen, he had joined the Sullivan Militia commanded by his brother. In 1853 he with his two brothers joined the Lancers and this branch of the militia of Massachusetts had no more ardent members than these three young men from New Hampshire.
It happened that about this time General Sherman’s Battery of United States artillery came to Boston from Newport for the purpose of giving an exhibition in encampment, parade, and drill on Boston Common. Young Nims saw the drill and was delighted; after this nothing would do for him but the artillery.
Early in 1854 he enlisted in a new battery raised under command of Capt. Moses G. Cobb, and was made first sergeant on the night of his enlistment. After three years of service, he was made fourth lieutenant and later received command of the battery. During his term of command he made this battery famous for its efficiency and perfect organization.
“I resigned from my command in 1860,” said Colonel Nims in an interview some years since, “and my last appearance with it, my last parade in fact, was on the occasion of the review on Boston Common by the Prince of Wales, the late King Edward, who was on a visit to America.”
Then came the Civil War. The battery with which Colonel Nims had been connected was among the first to volunteer and although he was not a member he rendered efficient aid in equipping and drilling the men, accompanying them as far as New York when they started on active service. Just as he took the train, a prominent official said to him, “Nims, we will have six guns ready for you when you return.”
The organization of the 2d Massachusetts and its service in the field has already been recorded in the pages of this book and this naturally includes the military career of its captain.
A few quotations may serve to show the more personal side of Colonel Nims and the relations existing between the commander and his men.
The following extract is from a letter written by an officer while at Franklin, La. “Captain Nims is the hardest working officer I ever saw, always looking out for the interests of the battery and the men. Hardly ever in his quarters, nothing escapes his observation. He is a man of strict probity and has none of the minor vices, always reliable and reminds one of the hero Garibaldi. Although proud of his battery and its reputation, and pleased at anything written or said in its praise, he thoroughly detests personal flattery and indeed I would not venture to say this much to him for my commission.”
A quotation from the Boston Transcript at the close of the war: “It is a remarkable fact that during the three and a half years that Captain Nims commanded the 2d Battery, punishment was to its members almost unknown. Splendid discipline was maintained solely by esprit de corps and by the respect and affection entertained for the commander on one hand and by the fatherly care and solicitude always exhibited by Captain Nims for his men under all circumstances. The slight mortality by disease in this battery is attributed by the members to the efficiency of their leader.”
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.
After the discharge of the original Nims’ Battery at the end of three years, Captain Nims immediately secured enough enlistments for another battery and at once returned to New Orleans. But an injury to his ankle received while he was at home to muster out his men, and the fact that most of his boys were no longer with him led him to resign his commission and accept a position in the Chief Quarter-Master’s department at New Orleans, where he remained till after the close of the war. After peace had been fully restored and the work of reconstruction had been begun, Captain Nims returned to Boston and bought back the little drug store he had left at the beginning of the war, where he remained for nearly a half century until at the age of ninety he retired from business, in 1910. After the return of peace the attention of the government was directed to Captain Nims’ services and on March 13, 1865, by special enactment of the Senate he received the titles of “Brevet Major—Brevet Lieutenant-Colonel—and Brevet Colonel, for gallant and meritorious service during the war,” thus explaining the title Colonel Nims.
After leaving the army, Colonel Nims took almost no part in military or political affairs—except in connection with Nims’ Battery Association and for a short time serving as commander of Post 7, G.A.R. He was also a member of the Loyal Legion. He would never accept a pension. To quote his own words on the subject, “I don’t want a pension. It doesn’t seem right to me that a man should be paid by the Federal government simply because he was in the army. I served my country to the best of my ability and I don’t want any pay for it either. If one were incapacitated for earning a living that would be a different matter.”
During the half century that Colonel Nims maintained his drug store at the West End he saw many changes in that neighborhood. Someone has said that he served the poor and needy from his little store as faithfully as he ever served his country in the days of the war. Everyone in that section regarded him as a friend and helper, and he was always ready to give aid to those who needed it. He made it a practice to give away one prescription at least, every day. If the families of any of his men were in need, it was his delight to care for and assist them.
Colonel Nims died at his home, 42 Blossom Street, on May 23, 1911, at the age of 91 years. His funeral was held at Trinity Church on May 25 and was attended by the remaining members of the battery and by members of the Loyal Legion together with many friends who honored and loved him. He was buried in Mount Hope Cemetery.
A Christian patriot and soldier.’”
Note: 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.
Back to Strother today, one of my favorite of his entries: A Virginia Yankee in the Civil War The Diaries of David Hunter Strother David Hunter Strother P. 41-44
“MAY 25, SUNDAY.—Bright and pleasant. I rose late, dressed myself in a leisurely way, and went out for breakfast. I found the house in some confusion and nearly deserted. It was seven by the hotel clock. I asked the landlord if breakfast was ready, he said apologetically that all his Negroes had left, but that they were trying to get something ready. I asked if anything was going on. He said there was cannonading outside of town, but he knew no particulars. I supposed it was Ashby’s battery and determined to go out and see as soon as I could get my breakfast. In the meantime I walked out to the stable to see how my horse had been treated. To my surprise I found the stable nearly deserted and my mare standing in her stall, saddled, bridled, and equipped. Several officers were at table, generally quartermasters and surgeons. I got a cup of coffee and a roll. A soldier came in and said to one of them, “They have driven our men off the hill.” I took another roll and cup of coffee, paid my bill, when I saw a number of soldiers straggling rapidly by toward the Martinsburg pike. As I wondered at this, Lieutenant Horton, adjutant of the 2nd Massachusetts, rode by at a gallop. As he passed, he shouted, “Mount and ride. You have not a minute to spare. They are in the town.” The rattle of small arms in close proximity reinforced his recommendation.
I mounted and as I rode, pistol shots were fired from windows and enclosures at myself and some straggling footmen that were passing. I saw the smoke and flame rolling up from our burning stores and saw our troops in full rout sweeping up the main street. There was a rapid crackling of small arms, chiefly pistol shots, all along the street. I saw at least twenty shots from houses and yards. Doubtless there were many more. As I drew up my horse within ten steps of a hydrant where several soldiers stopped to drink, I saw the flash of a piece from a gateway and one of the men fell over in the gutter apparently mortally wounded. I turned about and down the street saw another man falling, supported by his comrades. At the same time I saw Ruger’s regiment (3rd Wisconsin) marching in organized column. I joined him and learned that we had formed in battle array on the other side of town, but after some maneuvers and some firing, we were outflanked and retired from the field, with the impression that we were greatly outnumbered.
As we passed out of Winchester on the Martinburg Road, I saw our straggling columns pouring out by every avenue with stragglers, horse and foot, covering the fields. When I got about two hundred yards down the road, the enemy rose the ridge on the northern end of Winchester and poured in a sharp fire of musketry into our confused rear. This quickened the movements. Accouterments and knapsacks began to be strewed along the route. Presently cannon boomed and the shot whistled and the shells hurtled over our heads. This seemed likely for a time to renew the scenes of Bull Run. At every report, the living mass started and quickened its motion as if shocked by electricity. Overcoats and knapsacks strewed the fields. I did not see many arms thrown away, however. Most of the regiments also kept their organization, but awfully diminished by losses and stragglers. One fellow rode by me with a groove ploughed in his horse’s rump by a shell, a ghastly wound, but the animal traveled surprisingly.
Two or three miles out I joined the staff. I saw General Crawford first, who with a drawn sword was endeavoring to stop the fugitive stragglers. Seeing a dismounted trooper leading a sorely wounded horse, I got his sabre and assisted Crawford. General Banks then ordered some guns in position and with the rest of the staff gave his personal exertions to rally the retreat. By these means a considerable column was formed of loose infantry and several squads of cavalry organized. The sound of our own guns opening on the enemy’s cavalry was very near disorganizing the men we had rallied, but at the junction of the dirt road from Charles Town we met two squads of Maryland cavalry who rushed forward with hearty cheers responded to by our men with the welcome cry of reinforcements. Although but these two squads appeared, the effect was good and the retreat was conducted better. Hatch’s cavalry and the artillery kept the enemy more cautious in his pursuit and things began to assume a more hopeful appearance.
In the meantime the scenes along the road were pitiable and ludicrous. Droves of Negroes increasing at every step thickened the column. An enormously obese Negress and a mulatto woman dragging a heavy baby were weeping and gesticulating, “O Lord, they will kill us. They will kill us.” Farther on was a grotesque fellow on a mule with a Negro wench behind him. Here half a dozen light wagons loaded with plunder and sprawling with babies were shoved out of the road to make room for a battery. Every black face wore an agonized and anxious expression. They said that Jackson had sworn to kill them all if he ever came back to this valley, which they seemed to believe religiously. Yet their masters tried to impress them with the belief that the Union troops would kill them if they got them. This latter story they did not accept at all and hence the retreat of the army. All that could move at all took up their bundles and walked, doubtless despoiling their masters as they left of everything they could lay their hands on. As the cannonade in our rear would increase, their bundles and stuffed pillow cases strewed the wayside. Broken wagons and dead horses now occasionally stopped the trains and were dragged aside….
At Bunker Hill some talk was made of halting, but it was not attempted. I here saw a light wagon full of Negro women and children thrust off the causeway into the mill dam in imminent danger of turning over. I looked for the catastrophe at every moment, but left without witnessing it. I suppose they got out. From this place until Martinsburg there was no disturbance of our retreat. During the day I saw a number of wounded with bloody gills and bandaged limbs riding on mules and horses of the abandoned teams…. As we neared Martinsburg I went forward with Captain Scheffler to find a position for making a stand. I chose the Big Spring. Scheffler thought the position too confined and one that could be turned. Nearing the town I again selected the rise at the southern end of town. Faulkner’s house and enclosures made a strong point covering the old Charles Town road while three parallel stone fences and a ridge for cannon covered the Winchester turnpike. Scheffler also thought this too limited and we passed on into the town. The streets were crowded with people all gazing with white lips. I heard my name several times but I rode rapidly on to show Scheffler the position beyond the town commanding everything.
In the public square the officers of the provost guard came out. There was no news from Harper’s Ferry. The telegraph operator had run off and carried his machinery. The cars had all been run back to Harper’s Ferry. Not a breath of information could be gathered from that point, inducing the belief that the enemy had cut off the wires and the road. This was the greatest oversight in those conducting reinforcements. A word of information advising us that Harpers Ferry was intact would have decided us to remain at Martinsburg. As it was, this absolute isolation was ruinous and I ordered the trains to keep steadily toward Williamsport. We got into Martinsburg about 1:30 P.M. I rode over the position, which was a grand one, but had little hope that it would be taken advantage of, in the meantime the cannon opened and a brisk fire was kept up between our batteries. Returning to the public square I found the staff and General Banks at Staub’s Hotel….
Riding to the depot I saw Miss Lizzie Campbell with some other women at the depot ready to serve out the stores to the soldiers and people before the enemy came in, it was determined to use them in that way rather than destroy the buildings. Joined the staff and rode toward Williamsport. The cannon had been booming at intervals during our whole stay but now ceased…. It was now near six o’clock. I with General Gordon and Dr. King rode forward to Williamsport to secure food and night’s lodging so much needed. The evening air was cool and delightful. The road was filled with straggling infantry dragging themselves along with difficulty, now and then dropping off into the fields and fence corners utterly exhausted. Gordon’s brigade still kept the route but totally disorganized. Although nearing the terminus of a thirty-six mile march, many of them still marched strong and free…. An order came to General Gordon to halt his brigade and take position at Hainesville, the scene of Jackson’s skirmish with Patterson’s advance. He laughed at the futility of trying to execute the order. His men from mere exhaustion could not have stood up in line for five minutes. This was about sundown. Later our way was lighted by wagons and stores overthrown and burning. At Falling Waters a dozen or so were blazing together. The soldiers fell by dozens by the roadside and slept on the earth. They were scarcely distinguishable from stumps and stones in the twilight. I saw a woman leading a child about five years old and asked her how far that child had walked today. She replied, “Thirteen miles.”
At length we arrived at the brow of a hill opposite Williamsport. Here were a hundred blazing campfires illuminating the wreck of Banks’ army. A Ferry of one scow run by a wire rope was all the means of crossing and this was engaged in getting over the sick and wounded…. The ford was swelled and only passable for high, strong horses. The entrance was blocked up by swamped wagons, which had stuck in the road and deep water while men were trying to extricate the braying and drowning mules. Seeing no better chance for a night’s lodging, I dashed in and presently the water was sweeping over my horse’s back. Keeping my eye upon the fire on the opposite bank, I pushed on. Several times my faithful mare was brought to a swim and once made a bad stumble so that her head went under. About midway I was pleased to see a dragoon following me and my animal being light I fell back and kept her under the lee of his more powerful animal to shield her as much as possible from the force of the current which threatened to sweep us away. In this way I got across wet to the middle and thus rode into town. I found things less crowded than I expected and by dint of perseverance managed to have my horse put away. The first man I saw here was Colonel Clark who had just got in from Washington and told me that Frémont and McDowell would forthwith throw forty thousand men on the enemy’s rear at Front Royal and Harrisonburg. This was a good soporific. Getting off my wet clothes I got to bed and thus for me ended the eventful 25th of May, 1862.”
In the Presence of Mine Enemies: The Civil War in the Heart of America, 1859-1864 Edward Ayers P. 264
“Back in Staunton, no word came. They could not know that Jackson and Ewell were pursuing Banks by stealth and speed. The Confederates now had 17,500 men joined together. They deceived Banks into thinking they were attacking in one place and then attacked elsewhere. They overran one Union stronghold after another, taking back Valley towns lost earlier to the Federal forces. On May 25 they caught up with Banks in Winchester.”
Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson S.C. Gwynne P. 298
“Even more important for the Confederate war effort, Jackson’s men had captured an enormous stockpile of matériel. It contained $125,185 of high-quality quartermaster supplies; 34,000 pounds of commissary supplies, including bacon, hardtack, salt pork, and sugar– so much of it that Jackson’s men began calling their opposing general by a new name, Commissary Banks: 500,000 rounds of ammunition; rifled cannons; 103 head of cattle; and 9,345 stands of small arms. (A “stand” consisted of a rifled musket, bayonet, cartridge belt, and ammunition box.)”
Note: This treasure was actually more medicine and supplies than already existed in the entire South according to Gwynne below. Banks had lost 3,500 men by this point in the charade; Jackson can claim roughly 3,000 as his prisoners.
Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson S.C. Gwynne P. 298
“$125,185 in quartermaster supplies, 500,000 rounds of ammunition, 34,000 pounds of food, 103 head of cattle; and 9,345 stands of small arms, and more medicine and supplies than already existed in the entire South.”
How the South Could Have Won the Civil War: The Fatal Errors That Led to Confederate Defeat Bevin Alexander P. 64-65
“Banks’s situation was desperate. He had lost his Front Royal garrison, and about 1,500 men of his rear guard had been scattered at Middletown. He had no more than 7,500 men, and they were discouraged by retreat. Jackson, on the other hand, had about 16,000 men, and they were invigorated by success.
Banks did not help his situation when he failed to deploy more than a skirmish line on the first group of hills south of Winchester. Rather than mount his artillery and main line of defense on this crucial elevation, he set up the Federals’ main army on another ridge eight hundred yards father north.
The Rebels along the crest of the hill, seeing the Union soldiers reeling from the flank attack, rose as a single body and charged forward, 10,000 men bearing down on the Union lines from two directions and joining in the wild “Rebel yell.” The Union soldiers gave way. Jackson rode down the rocky slope waving his cap at the retreating enemy. “Press them forward to the Potomac!” he shouted.”
Terrible Swift Sword Bruce Catton P. 36
“Shield’s men began their countermarch, beset by rumors that Jackson with twenty, thirty, or even forty thousand men was about to attack Washington. They had made a hard march to reach McDowell, and now they were retracing their steps with even greater speed, they understood perfectly well that somebody was panicky, and as before they swore vigorously. One of their number wrote: “I trust that the Recording Angel was too much occupied to make a note of the language used in Shields’s division when we learned, with mingled feelings of rage and mortification, that we were to return to the valley by forced marches.”
P. 35
On May 25, Jackson attacked the Federal line at Winchester and broke it, and Banks’s shattered army continued its desperate flight to the Potomac. Temporarily, at least, a good part of the army was disorganized, and although a measure of order was restored once the battlefield was left behind, the retreat was little better than a rout. Jackson pressed hard, trying to force one more battle and turn retreat into destruction, but his men were exhausted, and the cavalry which had screened him so well tarried in Winchester to loot the rich stores the Federals had abandoned. Banks got away, reached the Potomac at Williamsport, and got his frazzled army across the river to safety. Jackson accepted the situation, moved his own army up to the outskirts of Harper’s Ferry, and let his men pause for breath.
The people of Winchester looked on them as saviors and gave them a hysterical greeting, seeming to be “demented with joy and exhibiting all the ecstasy of delirium.” From the captured Federal supply dumps the needy Confederates could acquire unimaginable riches, which one man tabulated breathlessly: “Brand new officers’ uniforms, sashes, swords, boots, coats of mail, india rubber blankets, coats and boots, oranges, lemons, figs, dates, oysters, brandies, wines and liquors, the choicest hams and dried meats and sausages, all the contents of a large city clothing establishment and miscellaneous grocery and confectionery.”
But the real effect was felt in Washington, where the gathering fog became absolute. Nothing was clear except that the Federal force which had been holding the Shenandoah Valley had been knocked off the board, and that a Confederate Army of unknown size but aggressive intent had reached the Potomac. The counterstroke aimed at Washington had been anticipated for months: this, possibly, was it, taking form in the wake of Banks’s desperate flight. McDowell was ordered to suspend his movement on Richmond and to get at least 20,000 men over to the valley as rapidly as possible. Lincoln notified McClellan that “the enemy are making a desperate push against Harper’s Ferry and we are trying to throw Frémont’s force and part of McDowell’s in their rear.” Frémont was ordered to move east to Harrisonburg and get into Jackson’s rear. McDowell ordered Shields to head back to the valley, notifying Mr. Lincoln that he was doing what he had been told to do but that the move was a bad one and that “I shall gain nothing for you there and I shall lose much for you here.” Mr. Lincoln sent a slightly amplified report to General McClellan, saying that he believed the enemy thrust at the Potomac “is a general and concerted one, such as could not be made if he was acting upon the purpose of a very desperate defence of Richmond.” He added: “I think the time is near when you must either attack Richmond or give up the job and come to the defence of Washington.’”
In the Presence of Mine Enemies: The Civil War in the Heart of America, 1859-1864 Edward Ayers P. 266-268
“They captured nearly 10,000 small arms, a half million rounds of ammunition, 15,000 pounds of bacon, 2,400 pounds of sugar, and 350 bushels of salt. The hospital supplies alone were worth a quarter of a million dollars. It took John Harman of Augusta, Jackson’s quartermaster major, a week to drag all the supplies to Staunton.
The day after the battle Joseph Waddell noted that “an order has come for ‘all the wagons in the county’ to go down to remove the captured stores.” Harvey Bear took time from his farming to “go round to hire teams to start to Winchester to morrow for stores taken by our army from enemy succeeded very well.” Jacob Hildebrand wrote that a neighbor’s “team was pressed to haul the stores from Winchester which we captured from the Yankees. The Government wants 400 wagons for that purpose, it is soposed that we got a million Dollars worth of property.” The following day he “met a great many wagons hauling stores which were captured by the army at Winchester mostly medacines.” Waddell heard of the “immense amount of medical stores taken there– 500 pounds of opium, several thousand dollars worth of quinine, etc.”
The medicines and hospital supplies would be needed, for wounded men flooded Staunton. “Great mortality among the sick and wounded soldiers– as many as 15 a day have died,” Waddell sadly commented. “Tents in the grove about the R.R. Depot are used for the accommodation of a part of the wounded. About 1000 in the Hospital.” A bit annoyed, the Confederate clerk noted that “the ladies are using my office for preparing food for the wounded soldiers in the tent hospital near the Depot.”
The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln
“To George B. McClellan
United States Military Telegraph
War Department, Washington, D.C.
To:/ May 25, 1862.
General McClellan: The enemy is moving North in sufficient force to drive Banks before him in precisely what force we can not tell. He is also threatening Leesburgh and Geary on the Manassas Gap Rail Road from both north and south in what precisely what force we can not tell. I think the movement is a general and concerted one, such as could not be if he was acting upon the purpose of a very desperate defence of Richmond. I think the time is near when you must either attack Richmond or give up the job and come to the defence of Washington. Let me hear from you instantly.
A. LINCOLN.”
Terrible Swift Sword Bruce Catton P. 36
“The panic which Stonewall inflicted on Washington was really rather brief, and not all of its effects were bad.
To be sure, it killed the prospect that McDowell’s troops would reinforce McClellan, and it led Secretary Stanton to send a tense message to the governors of the Northern states, urging them to send forward all available volunteers and militia as rapidly as possible. The recruiting stations which had been closed so fatuously at the beginning of April were reopened, an d steps were taken to round up the vast number of absentee soldiers and get them back to their regiments. In addition, Mr. Lincoln and Secretary Stanton soon recognized Jackson’s thrust for what it was– a daring maneuver rather than the beginning of a massive invasion of the North– and they realized that when he marched to the outskirts of Harper’s Ferry, Jackson actually took a very long chance. If the available Federal troops were handled properly he could be cut off and destroyed; and so these two civilians– who at the moment were in their own persons the Army’s high command, board of strategy, and general staff, all combined– undertook to bring this about.
In a way this was the beginning of wisdom, and Mr. Lincoln here came to see something which he never forgot. The Southern Confederacy lived by its armies. While they lasted it would last and if they died it would die, and so whatever it did with them it could not afford to lose any of them outright. But any Confederate Army which moved out of its own territory must always face superior numbers. If it invaded the North, or even moved out into the border area to threaten an invasion, it gave the Federal power the chance to make the best possible use of its greater resources –to fight the kind of war in which the Federals held all of the advantages. When it sent its armies north the Confederacy risked more than it could bear to lose and presented its enemies with a rich opportunity.
This much Mr. Lincoln was beginning to see. But to see an opportunity is one thing and to take advantage of it is something quite different, as the President and the Secretary of War discovered.
They worked on a good series of moves, and if wars were fought on chessboards with pieces that would infalliably go to the precise squares chosen for them, Stonewall Jackson would have come to grief quickly. As soon as they heard about what had happened to Banks, they ordered Frémont with something under 15,000 men to march at once to Harrisonburg, to cut off Jackson’s retreat, while McDowell brought three divisions to Strasburg, the town from which Jackson had just flushed Banks. Since the Potomac itself was held by 15,000 or more, all of the exits would be blocked, and Jackson could be rounded up and defeated.
This chessboard, however, was full of mountains and atrocious roads and it was swept by heavy rains, and some of the pieces had minds of their own. Frémont, at the town of Franklin, faced muddy going, he was short of supplies, the mountain roads between Franklin and Harrisonburg had been blocked by Jackson’s engineers, and Frémont felt that he ought to use his discretion; instead of marching east to Harrisonburg he chose to go roundabout to Strasburg, which was much farther away but which somehow seemed easier to reach. McDowell’s troops also encountered rain and muddy roads, and although McDowell did not move toward the place he had been told to move toward the going was slow, and there was further delay when Shields, who led the advance, paused at Front Royal because of a wild story that Confederate James Longstreet was coming down the valley of the South Fork of the Shenandoah from Luray with a large force. Still, the combination nearly worked. On May 30, for instance, both Frémont and Shields were much closer to Strasburg, which Jackson would have to pass through on his retreat, then Jackson was himself. But Shields took a wrong road when he left Front Royal next morning, and time was lost while the column was pulled back and redirected, and Frémont’s advance was most hesitant about driving on into Strasburg, and in the end Jackson just made it. Pushing 2,300 unhappy Federal prisoners ahead of him, plus a wagon train loaded with booty captured at Winchester, Jackson got his rear guard out of Strasburg just as the first Yankee patrols entered the place, and thereafter the Federals could do nothing but chase him. Frémont followed along the Valley Pike, and McDowell sent Shields up the Luray Valley on the chance that he might head Jackson off or strike his flank somewhere beyond the Massanutten Mountain… but the big opportunity was gone.”
Stonewall Jackson Valley Campaign Shenandoah 1862 Peter Cozzens P. 375-6
Note: Banks wired the War Department that “We [shall] all pass the Potomac tonight safe– men, trains, and all, I think, making a march of thirty-five miles.”
“At the Potomac that night Banks continued his efforts to boost morale. They were sorely needed. The river at the Williamsport crossing was three hundred feet wide, and recent rains had swollen the ford to a depth of nearly five feet. The descent into the river was exceedingly muddy, and only the strongest animals could resist the swift current. Scores drowned. Only a single scow was on hand to ferry the army across. Banks had the wagon train coralled on the broad, open plain above the riverbank– “in a convenient position for burning, provided such a measure should become necessary,” observed a New York lieutenant– and set about ferrying the sick and wounded over first. He did what a good commander should under the circumstances, making himself visible and accessible to the men. Banks offered both words of encouragement and a strong shoulder when necessary.
Praise for his performance was general. “When the teams were crossing the river and getting stuck, horses and mules drowning, he took hold, lifted, and tugged in every way to give aid,” attested a New York soldier. A Wisconsin officer said: “General Banks was untiring in his efforts to bring our train safely over, even riding into the water to save mules that had lost their footing and were in danger of drowning.”
Reassuring words could go only so far in comforting a defeated army that had retreated thirty-five miles in less than twelve hours. The last of the infantry staggered into makeshift camps near the water’s edge at about 11:00 P.M. With regimental wagons coralled, or in some cases lost, food was scarce and a cup of coffee worth its weight in gold. The crossing of able-bodied men began in earnest at 2:00 A.M. “The night, on whichever side of the river it was passed, was very cold,” an Indianan recorded, “The writer is willing to put down in black and white that, all in all, it was the most uncomfortable night he has ever seen. Utterly exhausted, apparently not able to take another step, every joint, muscle, and tendon in his body as sore as a blood boil, an inordinate, sickening craving for food, too much overcome with sleepiness to be able to stay awake, even when standing up or moving around, seemingly on the point of freezing to death, and withal, low-spirited and discouraged, what could add to one’s misery?’”
Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson S.C. Gwynne P. 293
Note: Again the 2nd Massachusetts, “’which had harassed Jackson’s vanguard the night before– to extend his battle line on the Union right, the logical prelude to an attempt to turn the Confederate flank” strikes; Colonel Gordon sicks them on the south but they don’t turn the flank… they’re immediately pushed back by Winder’s troops.
P. 298-299
Something else had taken place, too, at Winchester, something less tangible though quite as real as the battle itself. The moment of victory also marked the birth of the legend of Stonewall Jackson, of the idea of the man as warrior and hero that would soon loom much larger than the man himself. What the Confederacy had desperately needed, in a war it was obviously losing, was a myth of invincibility, proof that their notions of the glorious, godly, embattled, chivalric Southern character were not just romantic dreams. Proof that with inferior resources it could still win the war. Jackson, in his brilliant, underdog valley campaign, had finally given it to them. His personal eccentricities, his often brutal treatment of his own men and officers, his devout and zealous Christianity– all would from now on be seen as the attributes of genius. His dazzling stand at First Manassas would be seen in a new light. No one on either side of the Civil War would ever look at him the same way again.
“He had driven Banks clean out of the South.”
“…Edwin Stanton seemed to come completely unhinged. That afternoon the bearded, bespetacaled secretary of war sent what amounted to an SOS to the governors of thirteen Northern states asking for their help in saving the nation’s capital from Jackson’s raveing army. “Intelligence from various quarters,” he wrote, “leaves no doubt that the enemy in great force are marching on Washington…”
P. 297
While Jackson’s men that night ate their first meal in days, “Banks’s men got no such break. That day they lugged themselves thirty-five miles north toward the sanctuary of Maryland, after having marched eighteen miles from Strasburg to Winchester the day before, all under extreme duress and the threat of death or imprisonment. (Jackson’s legendary “foot cavalry” never made such a march after fighting a battle.) In two days they had eaten a single meal. They were at the limits of their endurance.
“…they were a beaten army. All the way north they were acutely aware, as General Williams put it, “of the probabilities that we should be followed to the river and attacked… before a tithe of our men could be crossed and while all our immense train was parked ready to deepen the awful confusion that must follow.”
The sense of panic and dread increased on the southern bank of the Potomac that night, where a thousand campfires burned in the darkness. Teams and wagons, guns and caissons were jammed together and an exhausted army had to figure out how to cross a three-hundred-foot-wide river that was four to five feet deep and moving fast. They spent all night crossing. Men and horses drowned. But by the next morning the army was on the north side of the river.
But Jackson had won a staggering victory. It was a striking on both tactical and strategic levels. He had marched his men 177 miles since his victory at McDowell 17 days before, and in less than 48 hours had driven Banks 53 miles, from Strasburg and literally into the Potomac River and across the Maryland state line.”
In the Presence of Mine Enemies: The Civil War in the Heart of America, 1859-1864 Edward Ayers P. 266
“Perhaps the sweetest experience of all for Hotchkiss was marching through Winchester, freed from “the foe that had gloried in its pride and power but two short days before, amid the huzzas, shouts, tears, thanks, looks of unutterable delight, waving of Confederate flags and handkerchiefs of its whole liberated population.” Hotchkiss took pleasure in telling how the people of the Valley aided the Confederacy, rounding up the fleeing Union soldiers. “They were brought in from all sides by men and women and even servants.” The Confederates captured three thousand Union soldiers in two days.”
Hotchkiss emphasized that “even servants” helped capture the Yankees who fled in front of the cavalry, and that was the sort of act that Confederates cherished then and for generations after, supposed testimony to the loyalty of slaves to the Southern cause. But without parentheses Hotchkiss admitted that the servants who had done so were among “what few were left, for many preceded them in their flight and we captured many of them.” The same Confederate army that had chased Yankees now chased slaves. Though the men on horseback captured “many of them,” more slaves escaped.”
*Upshot: Jackson kept 52,000 feds running circles in this Valley rather than joining McClellan to trample Richmond. Jackson and Ewell overwhelm Union troops at Front Royal. Jackson is at Bank’s flank (Banks has 9,178; Jackson 17k) just 10 miles off with twice the size of Banks’ division. 15K rebels attack 6k Yankees on hills near Winchester.
Note: Previously, on LOST: Another day on the road going nowhere from nowhere back to nowhere (sort of like this entry). Today is supposedly one of the most dramatic frontal assaults in the war, an “amazing frontal assault on the north” at Winchester. But then they’re going back the same way they came in. Which they? “Although nearing the terminus of a thirty-six mile march, many of them still marched strong and free….” I know not where this line is from, nor which side it refers to at this juncture. The Rebels? The North? Probably the Rebels. Just that daybreak had 15k Rebels on 6k Yankees. After it was all over, the North went North, toward the Potomac 35 miles away. The Confederacy gained 9,000 rifles, 2,000 prisoners, and untold commissary supplies. After this, Banks’ street name became Commissary Banks. So much for heading southeast for Fredericksburg where they were to join McDowell’s forces then further south to join McClellan. Shields’ Division had to rush back, retreacing their steps to head off Jackson. At this point in the war, no one but Jackson knows where Jackson will head for next. Lee’s clueless, Johnson hasn’t got a clue as to the why of it all. The South had a four to one advantage. Yet Jackson couldn’t kill Banks’ Army. But he tells the men, “Very good! Now let’s holler!” So they holler.
Lincoln will write that today was “another Bull Run.” So the North has to reopen recruiting offices. And so morning, this afternoon, night, dawn, the men trail in, the men are ants to D.C. trailing sugar crystals on their marches & countermarches in the worst kind of Wrong Turn Film, the Yet Another Civilization Has Been Attacked & There’s Only A Few Survivors Left motif and the whole entire movie makes zero sense. In Wrong Turn 1, the townsfolk get infected by chemical waste from a mill that closed down, & its in the water. The mutants are the slaveholders. In Wrong Turn 2, the townsfolk becomes the mutants, so there are no uninfected left. In Wrong Turn 3, everyone denies the infection except for a few who never drank the water and subsisted on Miller Lite instead. Always retreat behind a river, separate in two, get killed off, then a major storm comes in. Wrong turn franchise. One or the other side gives up or fights to the death. At some point someone says We should split up, & then they all die. Some historians say Lincoln panicked. This is true, as far as it goes, which is not far enough. Others say he didn’t “panic.” Whatever the case, however it’s described, the troops Jackson kept from McClellan could have taken Richmond & ended the war, if taking a city instead of a whole army counts as winning a Civil War. In turn, the Confederate Army could have taken him. Today, they could have. But they didn’t. And that’s the whole point. They didn’t.
Note: According to https://www.shenandoahatwar.org/history/battle-of-cross-keys/ forces engaged today: Milroy: 6500 with 2019 casualties. Jackson: 16000 with 400 casualties.
the men had to have shoes and cloathing….
One horse, who stands in for the rest.
The obscenity of Winchester, of Marye’s Heights, of everywhere the foaming, bleeding bellowing dying horses, their beautiful fur-sheened bodies shaking and crying in utter confusion, pain, desperate fear at fucking humans and their fucking childish obscene butchery of each other. Absolute madness, utter stupidity all around on each and every last man’s part.
We all know this photograph, the white horse at Antietam who sits on haunches, head down to her right side, who awaits her death. What we don’t consider is what the Federals did. They dragged the saddle & tack off her but didn’t shoot her. They let her live in agony.
Skeletons for horses, horses for skeletons. Equine cranial nerves shot. Shot out. You can’t see around the bones of your skull like a horse can. You can’t see where two horses console each other while their Knights fight it out, & they’re standing high & leaning into each other, arms wrapped around each other while their Knights thrust swords at each other.
A horse, a horse! My kingdom for a horse!
This is ignorant men throughout history, not even human. How this continues through centuries is beyond imagining.
Meantime, there is nothing about this day that knows this, but 2am, closing time tomorrow, at the Wilderness Tavern, Jackson’s left arm will get sawn off two inches below the shoulder. Sayonara payback.
Bonus pic for my mother: her father’s mother. I don’t even know her name.
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