Day 70. May 9, 1862.
70
could carry on this war for twenty years longer….
Friday 9
Quite pleasant this morning. The men are buissy packing up their traps and their tents. The companys are to do without tents and there is only one markee to one Company and but little baggage and as there is to be a long march to some point of 10 to 15 days march and I hope that we will have good weather
Note: The 110th is slated to become the extreme right wing of McClellan’s Army, so they are marching right now straight toward Richmond.
wesclark.com/jw/enoch_t_baker
In Camp 7 miles below New Market, Va. May 9th, 1862
“My Dear Wife,
I write to let you know that i am well and hearty and hope this will find you and the children the same. The weather here is very hot in the day and cold at night.
Our Brigade has been all over the Valley for miles round trying to find the rebels under Jackson, but he has burnt the bridges and run. We are now under orders for a long march, and as Richmond is only one hundred and seventy miles from here, i think that is where we are going. The distance would be nothing if it was not for the dust and the heavy knapsacks these hot days, but that is a soldier’s fate and no grumbling unless it is when we get near enough to see the rebels and they run. For sometimes our men have to run ten or twelve miles after them, and if they do not get many of them, then you will hear some swearing.
If Gen. Shields had his way, we would have been miles away before now, but he has to wait for the other generals.
Write to me soon and direct your letter to New Market, Va.
or Elsewhere
The first of the month there was two months pay due me, but we do not hear nothing from any paymaster yet. And if i had it i do not know how i would send it home from here, as there is no Express and you could not trust the Post Office with it, as i know i do not get the letters you send me and perhaps you do not get them i send to you, for i have written one to you every week since i have been from home.
Perhaps, by the time they get ready to pay us i will be somewhere that i can send some home. i hope so anyhow. Send me two or three post stamps. No more at present. Excuse this writing.
My love to you, my Dear Wife
To – Sarah A. Baker
from – Enoch T. Baker”
How the South Could Have Won the Civil War: The Fatal Errors That Led to Confederate Defeat Bevin Alexander P. 271
“Lee told Davis that if Richmond was conquered, he could fall back into the mountains of Virginia. “And if my soldiers will stand by me I will fight those people for years to come.”
Note: Lee in another version of this quote: same book, P. 314: “With my army in the mountains of Virginia, I could carry on this war for twenty years longer.’”
Note: Highly debatable, as Trowbridge relays Virginians vitriol toward Davis just fours months after the close of the war:
A Confederate Girl’s Diary Sarah Morgan Dawson P. 22-25
(Note: Writing from Baton Rouge May 9, 1862)
“Our lawful (?) owners have at last arrived. About sunset, day before yesterday, the Iroquois anchored here, and a graceful young Federal stepped ashore, carrying a Yankee flag over his shoulder, and asked the way to the Mayor’s office. I like the style! If we girls at Baton Rouge had been at the landing, instead of the men, that Yankee would never have insulted us by flying his flag in our faces! We would have opposed his landing except under a flag of truce; but the men let him alone, and he even found a poor Dutchman willing to show him the road!
He did not accomplish much; said a formal demand would be made next day, and asked if it was safe for the men to come ashore and buy a few necessaries, when he was assured the air of Baton Rouge was very unhealthy for Yankee soldiers at night. He promised very magnanimously not to shell us out if we did not molest him; but I notice none of them dare set their feet on terra firma, except the officer who has now called three times on the Mayor, and who is said to tremble visibly as he walks the streets.
Last evening came the demand: the town must be surrendered immediately; the Federal flag Must be raised; they would grant us the same terms they granted New Orleans. Jolly terms those were! The answer was worthy of a Southerner. It was, “The town was defenseless; if we had cannon, there were not men enough to resist; but if forty vessels lay at the landing, — it was intimated we were in their power, and more ships coming up, — we would not surrender; if they wanted, they might come and Take up; if they wished the Federal flag hoisted over the Arsenal, they might put it up for themselves, the town had no control over Government property.” Glorious! What a pity they did not shell the town! But they are taking us at our word, and this morning they are landing at the Garrison.
“All devices, signs, and flags of the Confederacy shall be suppressed.” So says Picayune Butler. Good. I devote all my red, white, and blue silk to the manufacture of Confederate flags. As soon as one is confiscated, I make another, until my ribbon is exhausted, when I will sport a duster emblazoned in high colors, “Hurra! for the Bonnie blue flag?” Henceforth, I wear one pinned to my bosom — not a duster, but a little flag; the man who says take it off will have to pull it off for himself; the man who dares attempt it — well! a pistol in my pocket fills up the gap. I am capable, too.
This is a dreadful war, to make even the hearts of women so bitter! I hardly know myself these last few weeks. I, who have such a horror of bloodshed, consider even killing in self-defense murder, who cannot wish them the slightest evil, whose only prayer is to have them sent back in peace to their own country, — I talk of killing them! For what else do I wear a pistol and carving-knife? I am afraid I will try them on the first one who says an insolent word to me. Yes, and repent for it ever after in sackcloth and ashes. O! if I was only a man! Then I could don the breeches, and slay them with a will! I some few Southern women were in the ranks, they could set the men an example they would not blush to follow. Pshaw! there are no women here! We are all men!”
The South: A Tour of its Battlefields and Ruined Cities, A Journey Through the Desolated States, and Talks with the People, 1867 J.T. Trowbridge, J.H. Segards, Editor P. 157-158
Note: Trowbridge visits Belle Isle– former vacation paradise for wealthy Richmonders turned prison camp in 1862 (30k passed through its doors)– men held there on just 54 acres boiled to death or froze into solid ice-corpses, but now it’s deemed “a great place for people with a love for the outdoors.” Trowbridge speaks with locals in August, 1865, & specifically with a nail factory worker just off work who offered Trowbridge a ride in his “leaky little skiff”:
“‘Where were the dead buried?” I asked.
“The dead Yankees? They buried a good many thar in the sand-bar. But they might about as well have flung ’em into the river. A freshet washed out a hundred and twenty bodies at one time.”
“Did you see the prisoners when they were here?”
“I wasn’t on the Island. But from Richmond anybody could see their tents hyer, and see them walking around. I was away most of the time.”
“In the army?”
“Yes, sir; I was in the army. I enlisted fo’ three months, and they kept me in fou’ years,” he said, as men speak of deep and unforgiven wrongs. “The wa’ was the cruelest thing, and the wust thing fo’ the South that could have been. What do you think they’ll do with Jeff Davis?”
“I don’t know,” I replied; “what do you think?”
“I know what I’d like to do with him: I’d hang him as quick as I would a mad dog! Him and about fo’ty others: old Buchanan along with ’em.”
“Why, what has Buchanan done?”
He was in cahoot with ’em, and as bad as the baddest. If we had had an honest President in his place, thar never’d have been wa’.”
From the day I entered Virginia it was a matter of continual astonishment to me to hear the common people express views similar to those, and denounce the Davis despotism. They were all the more bitter against it because it had deceived them with lies and false promises so long. Throughout the loyal North, the feeling against the secession leaders was naturally strong; but it was mild as candle-light compared with the fierce furnace-heat of hatred which I found kindled in many a Southern breast.”
Black Reconstruction in America W.E.B. DuBois P. 27
“Southern women of the planter class had little formal education; they were trained for dependence, with a smattering of French and music; they affected the latest European styles; were always described as “beautiful” and of course must do no work for a living except in the organization of their households. In this latter work, they were assisted and even impeded by more servants than they needed. The temptations of this sheltered exotic position called the finer possibilities of womanhood into exercise only in exceptional cases. It was the woman on the edge of the inner circles and those of the struggling poor whites who sought to enter the ranks of the privileged who showed superior character.”
Note: The 110th is slated to become the extreme right wing of McClellan’s Army of the Potomac, so they are marching straight toward Richmond right now.
Terrible Swift Sword Bruce Catton P. 281
(McClellan to his wife)
“‘Your two letters of Sunday and Monday reached me last night. I do not think you over much rejoiced at the results I gained. I really thought that you would appreciate a great result gained by fine skill & at little cost more than you seem to. It would have been easy for me to have sacrificed 10,000 lives in taking Yorktown, & I presume the world would have thought it was brilliant…. I am very sorry that you do not exactly sympathize with me in the matter.”
Note: All hat, no cattle. Gotta commit to the bit.
P. 286
“…what General McClellan could not see—could not, in his most thoughtful moments, get so much as a glimmering of—was that it also took moral courage for a President beset by the strongest men in his own party to sustain a general who clearly, and to every politician’s knowledge, was the active favorite of the strongest men in the opposition party. McClellan could see only that the administration was reducing his status, taking away parts of his army and listening too attentively to politicians whose ideas were unlike the ideas of the politicians to whom he himself was listening. He could understand neither Mr. Lincoln’s deep desire to win the war before it became the kind of war in which victory itself might be indigestible, nor the fact that Mr. Lincoln was under an irresistible compulsion, which no general could lighten, to insist upon the absolute safety of the city of Washington. And it was everybody’s hard luck that these two points were of dominant importance during the campaign on the Virginia peninsula.”
Lincoln Day by Day: A Chronology 1809-1865 Volume III: 1861-1865 C. Percy Powell P. 110-111
“May 9, 1862: Reads from Shakespeare to Col. Cannon during day. President assists Stanton in framing dispatch to Gen. McClellan relating to army corps, and writes directly: “Do the Commanders of Corps disobey your orders in anything?… are you strong enough, even with my help– to set your foot upon the necks of Sumner, Heintzelman, and Keyes all at once?’”
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men are buissy packing up their traps….
Imagine you backed the wrong horse, then tied it up wrong.
A story told not long ago yet this is a very old story, like most stories. Pick a tragicomedy, a formulaic espionage caper, American Goth mixed with a definite hard-key noirish lighting style aaaaaaand Scene: Imagine staying a loyal American in the malarious South, true to the Union, against all odds like your neighbors, the snitches, the town leaders, hiding that loyalty how a magpie hoards shiny items for its nest until the search dies down. Then goes & drops them somewhere else. Then not being able to prove it to your same government later.
Well fuck a duck. Yee Haw.
Then imagine being Indigenous, fighting for either side, & at the back side of all that, this is what you get, all the livelong day:
Indian Civil Rights Act · Civilization Act · Pueblo Lands Act · Native American Technical Corrections Act · American Indian Religious Freedom Act · Burke Act · Dawes Act · Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act · Indian Child Welfare Act · Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 · Indian Gaming Regulatory Act · Indian Intercourse Act · Indian Removal Act · Indian Reorganization Act · Oklahoma Indian Welfare Act · Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990 · Public Law 280 · National Indian Gaming Commission · Native American gambling enterprises · Dawes Rolls · Bureau of Indian Affairs · Eagle feather law · Declaration of Indian Purpose.
Oh, & here’s your Confederate Flag Dreamcatcher necklace, $8.99.
9/20: Cowan’s Auctions sold a “beaded hide tobacco bag from the Sioux Elk Dreamer Society” for $131,250 against a presale estimate of $50-60k. As well, a portrait of Kentucky’s first governor sold for $112,500. (See June 16 entry re Cowan’s Auction for Dr. Hays’ diary & other items….)
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