Day 88. May 27, 1862. LETTER.
88
May 27 LETTER
bones are as if I had been harvesting a long while….
There is also a May 27 entry today.
(Note: The letters I reproduced for this manuscript appear exactly as they do in the original physical copy as the words move down the page; the line breaks are the same, as in Ephraim’s actual handwriting.)
Camp near Cattell Station Rail Road
On the Orange & Alexandria
Tuesday May 27 in afternoon*1
Dearest wife and children
I seat myself again to drop
you a few lines as I have not had a chance when
I had my last letter written to you. You see that
by my letter that we have been travelling around
a grate deal and I am very much fatigued now
my bones are as if I had been harvesting a long
while. I gave you the account of our marches since
we have left New Market on to Fredericksburg
we arrived at Fredericksburg on last Thursday
the 22. at 6.oclock in the evenning we camped on
a hill oppisite Fredericksburg. where we camped until
Sunday 25 we got orders to march again at 9oclock
but we was buissy all day getting ready to march
at 4oclock our Brigade which is the 4th
took up the line of march we came on
8 miles where we did not reach until
about 9oclock at night where we bivoacked
in the fields we camped in a wheat field that
was out in head. the Locust trees**2 were in full bloom
on Monday morning we took up the line of march
at 8oclock we came 20 miles and reached the
Rail Road at 9.oclock or 10. we camped for the
night. we were all very much woren out travelling
so much. this morning we came to this camp
about 1 mile from the Rail Road Station
we have got our things fixed up midling
well. and I hope that we will get some rest
again Gen Shields Division all came back
to this place some have done on down towards Manasses
gap Rail Road. and I think have gone to
reinforce Banks and Gen Geary there are a
grate many roumers amongst the soldiers
about things I never believe the half I hear
in and about camp. you may think of the
number of miles we have traveled inside of one month
and in 16 days 230 miles which is hard
marching through mud & rain & dust we only
lay by a few days in the 11 days that we was coming
we did only lay by 2 days at Fredericksburg one at
the Rail Road and 1 at Warren. I don’t know of
much news to write to you at this present time
as the news is not very plenty now there was
a general move about Fredericksburg on Sunday
and I hope that it will be for something good
I don’t feel very well again the warm weather
sets very hard on me. I can’t stand it if it gets
much warmer. It is quite warm this afternoon
but the air is cool… The nights are very cool and
very heavy dews in the morning. I hope you
are all well and getting along very well
I don’t know of anything that I wish to
have done. I reckon they have sold the grain
that I had in the where house and also the
corn. I don’t know wether the price of corn will
get any better or not. I don’t know of anything
else. I think I think that we will be paid off soon or in about
two weeks. The Water Street boys are all well
Wm Black***3 has a boile on his cheek. I hope this
will reach you in due time and I hope that
you will get along contented and I hope the
children are all well Tell Lee his papa loves him
and to be a good boy****4
I reckon that it lookes very pleasant
about home as I know the trees are all green
and everything has changed its appearance
and the birds to sing their sweet notes
I know that Lee does enjoy himself with his
Grand pap*****5 running around. have you got him
a straw hat to run around in I reckon that
Elmer can run around over the floor. I don’t know
that there will be much news in any of my
letters this time but I hope that this may reach you
In due time Capt Huyett & Hamilton don’t get
along very well together Weaver talks of resigning
but I think he is only jesting and I hope the time
may soon come that I may return home to my
Dear little family once more there to live out
my days in peace and quietness. And there to hear
the roaring cannon and muskets no more and
not to hear the word to fall into ranks to
make a long and tedious march over hills
and mountains and mud and rain
and dust. I reckon that the prospects are good
for fruite this season. I never saw a better
prospect for fruite in Va the cherries will be very plenty
and the Peach trees are full and as large as pears
already and the cherries are large too give my
kindest regards to all inquiering friends
and much love to you all to father & mother
and many kisses to you and children can Lee
talk plain and how does he get along does the
pigs you have grow fast or not. Tell Bill to keep
the pen clean so they will grow fast I reckon Billy
makes things get around. There has quite alot
of troops left this station for some other point and
I think there will soon have to be some thing more done
It was quite cold here on last Saturday
there is not much farming done in this part
of Va. as the able body negroes have all run off*****6 and
all the old negroes that can’t do much can’t farm
I don’t know what some of them will do in this matter
And the land will scarcely produce anything
At all I must close hoping to hear from you soon
Write soon remember me in your prayers your
Loving husband
EB
Co D
110th Regt
4 Brigade Shields Division
Washington*******7 City DC
Large upper left red, white, & blue flag with “LONG MAY IT WAVE!” Under flag says “SCHEFFER, PRINT.” Next to the flag in blue print a poem:
Beneath those stars on heaven’s blue,
In emblem lines of red and white,
The precious blood and purpose pure,
Of sires are kept in mem’ry bright;
And like those sires of seventy-six,
Thy sons who stand that flag beneath,
Shall let no air of treason taint
The air that loyal millions breath.
*1 One of only two times in the diary and letters where Ephraim says he was writing in the afternoon. The other instance is June 15: “the afternoon is quite cool and I think I will suffer to night if it keeps cool.”
**2 Locust Tree: Black locust, or false acacia, common in VA., can reach a height of 171 feet, and sprouts flowers smelling of orange blossoms.
***3 Wm Black: Ephraim will go to D.C. with him June 14.
****4 to be a good boy: Hotchkiss tells his wife to tell their son the same thing on April 10.
*****5 Grand pap: Ephraim’s father Peter Burket (1793) died in 1867 at 74 & is buried in the same cemetery as Ephraim, as is Peter’s father Peter (born in 1766 at York, PA.; died 1823, at 57, had 10 kids). Ephraim’s father will live 4 years on Earth longer than Ephraim. Ephraim will die on his father’s birthday. His father– married 3 times– was “intermarried to Barbara Neff, per her father Jacob Neff’s will.” This is not a shocker, as the Burkets & Neffs often intermarried, & were basically all named Burket-Neff or Neff-Burket. There were Kauffmans & Harnishes thrown in there too. Were Ephraim’s parents first cousins? Yep. Anyhoo, one of Ephraim’s great grandson’s favorite, constantly repeated expressions was Blood is thicker than water. That would be my father. So so & so wouldn’t have married so & so? She was chattel? Dowry for the future? Am I hallucinating? Gross. Also, what it a “per-neptual” agreement? How does someone get it that wrong? Maybe it was termed that back then? I googled it, never found it. Has to be prenuptial.
Sidenote
s: Ephraim’s brother Jacob Neff Burket (1823-1883), a Reverend buried at Gettysburg, was in 1863 appointed to the Commissary Dept. & in 1865, the Treasury Dept. See the May 5 letter Jacob wrote Ephraim for more about him. He named one of his sons “Lincoln.” Ephraim’s father Peter’s picture:
Both Ephraim & Peter look like they were very tall men, around 6’4, like my father (these men were on the same line of ancestors). For more on Burket burials, see July 5, or FindAGrave. There’s plenty. See April 18 for a picture of the Burket-Patton 1895 reunion & the Burket homestead.
******6 able body negroes have all run off: Until fairly recently, (mainly) White historians had maintained Lincoln freed the slaves. It’s clear the slaves had been freeing themselves whenever practicable since they landed on these shores in 1619 (some put the date at 1444, or 1526, or– ). See: https://freedomonthemove.org, “Rediscovering the Stories of Self-Liberating People.” Note: Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life Barbara J. Fields, Karen Elise Fields P. 79 “President-itis (the disease that leads otherwise sane people to argue that Eisenhower launched the Civil Rights Movement, Lincoln freed the slaves, Roosevelt cured the depression, and Nixon ended the war in Vietnam) is a common example, but not the only one, of a big picture that proves false because its individual components have gotten lost.” Note: Below, colorized long after the fact, except for the last one. You know who these are, right, Gen. A?
Note: The War Before the War: Fugitive Slaves and the Struggle for America’s Soul from the Revolution to the Civil War Andrew Delbanco P. 377 “In northeast Virginia, almost half the male slaves of prime working age fled in the first two years of the war. By the late summer of 1862, one Confederate officer estimated that a million dollars’ worth of slaves was fleeing every week. A Presbyterian missionary serving in 1863 with Union troops in Louisiana reported that if you “go out in any direction,”
you meet negroes on horses, negroes on mules, negroes with oxen, negroes by the wagon, cart and buggy load, negroes on foot, men, women and children; negroes in uniform, negroes in rags, negroes in frame houses, negroes living in tents, negroes living in rail pens covered with brush, and negroes living under brush piles without any rails, negroes living on the bare ground with the sky for their covering; all hopeful, almost all cheerful, every one pleading to be taught, willing to do anything for learning.”
Note: “I don’t know what some of them will do in this matter” Ephraim writes today, which was a common question of the times: “Grant informed his family that his only desire was “to put down the rebellion. I have no hobby of my own with regard to the Negro, either to effect his freedom or to continue his bondage…. I am using them as teamsters, hospital attendants, company cooks and so forth, thus saving soldiers to carry the musket. I don’t know what is to become of these poor people in the end, but it weakens the enemy to take them from them.” Note that most White Americans counted on the trouble being contained, counted on slavery continuing.
*******7 In 1791 the city was named Washington City. Before that, the area was called the Territory of Columbia; in 1871 it was renamed District of Columbia, hence D.C., the name that finally stuck.
Note: Hunger. Ephraim is growing more vocal about misery. Adds a punctuation mark, the second ever to close a diary entry tomorrow, May 28th. Like he wanted to write more but didn’t dare. The dash here says more than words ever could. I think he knew that. Obviously he knew more than his words could convey at the end of every day. The average human walking speed is 3.1 miles per hour so in 6 hours they could have gone 18 miles. But this is heavy packs & masses of men in front of you & wagons. Imagine eating a cracker after marching 6 hours. Their conditions will only get more desperate from here on out. On that note:
A House Divided: America in the Age of Lincoln Eric Foner P. 95
“Union soldiers never wanted for arms or other equipment.”
Note: Oh holy fuck Eric Foner. Define “equipment.” Do White male historians not consider food equipment? Blankets? Tents? Shoes? What the hell are you even trying to say here?
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I don’t know what some of them will do in this matter….
Ephraim writes in the letter that there is a lot he doesn’t know. That no one knows. He may have at some point later seen David Gilmour Blythe’s paintings, such as “Lincoln Crushing the Dragon of Rebellion,” “Libby Prison,” or “Old Virginia Home,” as Blythe was from Pittsburgh and known nationally. Blythe will die at 50, about a month after Appomattox, of alcoholism.
“Old Virginia Home,” 1864, portrays a newly freed black man still lugging chains around his ankle, the ball there on the ground just now off (with chains of its own still attached to it). A figure walks with stooped back. The man walks off from a ruined shack with flames rising off the roof. He looks at who would be the photographer were this a photograph. He looks at the painter. He knows he is seen, & he wants the painter to know that he knows he is in the frame now. A Union flag far off, barely decipherable at the outmost edge, & something you’d have to look for if you didn’t know was there. It’s an element to the painting you would miss. Something in the reflection that wasn’t supposed to be there but is, far on the horizon, that & all that burns toward center from the peripheries. Liberty is a long way off despite an amendment, liberty is still a word that has extended to include its opposite. Currently at the Art Institute of Chicago: https://www.artic.edu/artworks/55380/old-virginia-home
Dragon: https://useum.org/artwork/Lincoln-Crushing-the-Dragon-of-Rebellion-David-Gilmour-Blythe-1862
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