Contents

Introduction by David W. Blight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Sullivan Ballou to Sarah Ballou, July 14, 1861 . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Samuel J. English to his Mother, July 24, 1861 . . . . . . . . . . 10

Emily Dickinson to Louise and Frances Norcross,late March 1862 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Herman Melville: Shiloh, A Requiem (April 1862) . . . . . . . 16

Sallie Brock: from Richmond During the War . . . . . . . . . . . 18

Samuel W. Fiske to the Springfield Republican, September 20, 1862 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Samuel W. Fiske to the Springfield Republican, December 15 and 17, 1862 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

Ira S. Owens: from Greene County in the War . . . . . . . . . . . 26

Taylor Peirce to Catharine Peirce, February 16, 1863 . . . . . . 30

Catherine Edmondston: Diary, May 11, 1863 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Edward O. Guerrant: Diary, May 15, 1863 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

Matthew M. Miller to His Aunt, June 10, 1863 . . . . . . . . . . . 37

Henry Livermore Abbott to Josiah Gardner Abbott, July 6, 1863 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

Lewis Douglass to Amelia Loguen, July 20, 1863 . . . . . . . . . 45

Abraham Lincoln: Address at Gettysburg, November 19, 1863 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

Judith W. McGuire: Diary, January, 1, 1864 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

Walt Whitman: from Specimen Days . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52

Biographical Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

Chronology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60

Questions for Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63

CIVIL WAR 150 • READER #7

Last Full Measure of DevotionSeeking Meaning in Death and Sacrifice

Introduction by David W. Blight

CIVIL WAR 150: Exploring the War and ItsMeaning Through the Words of Those Who Lived Itis a national public programing initiative designed to encourage

public exploration of the transformative impact and contested meaningsof the Civil War through primary documents and firsthand accounts.

The project is presented by

The Library of America

in partnership with

and is supported by a grant from

3

Introduction, headnotes, and back matter copyright © 2014 by Literary Classics of the UnitedStates, Inc., New York, N.Y.

Cover photograph: Alexandria Soldiers’ Cemetery, c. 1864. Image courtesy of Library of Con-gress, Civil War photographs, 1861–1865.

Samuel J. English: Copyright © 1985 by Robert Hunt Rhodes.Emily Dickinson: Copyright © 1958, 1986, The President and Fellows of Harvard College; 1914,

1924, 1942 by Martha Dickinson Bianchi; 1952 by Alfred Leete Hampson; 1960 by Mary L.Hampson. Reprinted by permission.

Samuel W. Fiske: Copyright © 1998 by Stephen W. Sears.Taylor Peirce: Copyright © 2002 by University Press of Kansas.Catherine Edmondston: Copyright © 1979 by the North Carolina Division of Archives and

History. Used by permission.Edward O. Guerrant: Copyright © 1999 by Louisiana State University Press. Used by

permission of the publisher. Henry Livermore Abbott: Used by permission of the Houghton Library,

Harvard University, MS Am 800.26.Lewis Douglass: Copyright © 1926 by The Association for the Study of Negro Life and

History, Inc. Abraham Lincoln: Copyright © 1953 by the Abraham Lincoln Association. Used by permission.

* * *

The readings presented here are drawn from The Civil War: Told ByThose Who Lived It, a four-year, four-volume series published for thesesquicentennial of our nation’s most devastating conflict. Bringingtogether letters, diaries, speeches, newspaper accounts, poems, songs,military reports, and memoirs, The Civil War weaves hundreds ofpieces by scores of participants into a unique firsthand record ofevents—as seen from North and South, in battle and at home—fromNovember 1860 to June 1865. It is published by The Library of Amer-ica, a nonprofit institution dedicated to preserving America’s best andmost significant writing in handsome, enduring volumes, featuringauthoritative texts. You can learn more about The Civil War, andabout The Library of America, at www.loa.org.

For materials to support your use of this reader, and for an online exhibition of images and original documents from the Civil War, visit: www.gilderlehrman.org/civilwar150

Civil War 150 is made possible by the generous support of theNational Endowment for the Humanities.

The Library of America14 East 60th Street

New York, NY 10022www.loa.org

Introduction

LAST FULL MEASURE OF DEVOTIONSeeking Meaning in Death and Sacrifice

In his great prose work, Specimen Days, published in 1882,Walt Whitman reflected unforgettably on the meaning ofdeath in the Civil War. “The dead in this war,” wrote

Whitman, “there they lie, strewing the fields and woods andvalleys and battle-fields.” He worried about what he called the“strayed dead,” those thousands on both sides who were neverfound, identified, or laid to rest in one of the more than sev-enty national cemeteries. And for those buried in cemeteries,he wearied of seeing “the significant word Unknown” on somany gravestones.Whitman, who had worked for nearly three years in army

hospitals in Washington, D.C., also agonized over all thosewho had died lonely, inglorious deaths from disease. Theywere the “crop reap’d by the mighty reapers, typhoid, dysen-tery, inflammations—and blackest and loathesomest of all, thedead and living burial-pits, the prison-pens of Andersonville,Salisbury, Belle-Isle, &c., (not Dante’s pictured hell and all itswoes, its degradations, filthy torments, excell’d those pris-ons).” Whitman was forever tormented by visions of the CivilWar dead: “The dead, the dead, the dead—our dead—orSouth or North, ours all . . . or East or West—Atlantic coast orMississippi valley—somewhere they crawl’d to die, alone, inbushes, low gullies, or on the sides of hills . . . taken from us—the son from the mother, the husband from the wife, the dearfriend from the dear friend.” Whitman makes us shudder atwhat he saw as the “infinite dead” spread across the country’slandscape.Recent research has demonstrated that the previously ac-

cepted estimate of the Civil War soldier dead, approximately620,000, is strikingly low. Due especially to undercounts ofConfederate mortality, a more accurate figure is now believedto be approximately 750,000 Americans. This estimate does

4 Last Full Measure of Devotion Introduction 5

not include the elusive numbers of deaths among civilians,both slave and free. As historian Drew Gilpin Faust hasdemonstrated, mid-nineteenth century Americans, steeped inChristian worldviews, believed that a person should have a“good death,” one witnessed by family members, recorded ina narrative of peaceful departure and Christian acceptance,perhaps even photographed at the end. But the scale ofslaughter in remote places denied thousands a purposeful,meaningful death, the details of which could have been trans-mitted to loved ones in a tale of final redemption.This startling collection of documents includes an array of

emotional, spiritual, and literary encounters with death andsacrifice. More often than not, the writers of these letters, di-aries or poems did not explain as much as they simply felt themeaning of war’s sacrifice. Collectively we see a deep nine-teenth-century sentimentalism collapsing into a hardened,even shocking realism, a shift that was to betoken a sea-changein American culture. Emily Dickinson’s letter about the deathof a single soldier is bleak, stoical, almost cynical; her call thatthey might all “love better” is her only nod to redemption.Sullivan Ballou’s stunning letter to his wife on the eve of battleis written as though from the grave (or heaven) as he agonizesover choosing between the “deathless” love of his wife andchildren and that of his country.A theme throughout these writings is loss, both on a mas-

sive scale and on the heartrending, individual level. Indeed,loss was perhaps the Civil War’s greatest early legacy in a soci-ety that had never experienced anything like it. Henry Liver-more Abbott feels so “alone” in the wake of the battle ofGettysburg, as he calculates the “fearful losses” in his Massa-chusetts regiment. We also find here the expression, even em-bodiment, of romantic heroism, in the paeans to StonewallJackson at his untimely death, or in Lewis Douglass’s amazingstatement of his readiness to die in a “good cause,” with “faceto the foe.” Judith W. McGuire did manage to witness andrecord the good death of her nephew, but she could only con-clude the diary entry with a wailing prayer.These documents are also laced with one of war’s most an-

cient necessities—hatred and demonization of the enemy. Tay-lor Peirce thoroughly justifies the summary executions of

Confederate guerrillas in Missouri, even in front of their wives,as he observes in the next breath the beauty of the landscapeand asks his own wife for a picture of herself. Henry LivermoreAbbott and his men cheered “like mad” at Gettysburg aftertheir volleys “bowled” the Confederates “over like nine pins.”Catherine Edmonston hates Yankees and idolizes a fallen Con-federate hero in the same diary moment. Finally, perhaps themost dominant theme in this collection is what men andwomen saw and psychologically endured—bodies blownapart, the smells of bursting bodies, amputations, longtrenches of dead bodies at Antietam contrasted with a “doublerainbow” in the sky over the landscape of America’s singlebloodiest day. Sallie Brock’s Richmond of 1862 was a citywhere “death held a carnival,” funerals and the grim hideous-ness of dead bodies consuming her consciousness. At Freder-icksburg, Samuel W. Fiske could not explain “why” the“murderous butchery” of that battle had occurred; he onlyknew he was “sick” of it. Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address will always be read as

a statement of the meaning and survival of liberal democracy, ofthe anguished necessity of the “new birth” of a second Ameri-can republic out of the death of the first. But we should neverforget that he stood in an unfinished cemetery that day, with theelegiac, far more than the triumphal impulse, driving his mag-nificent tribute to all who had given the “last full measure.”

David W. BlightClass of 1954 Professor of American History, Yale University

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a farewell letter: july 1 8 6 1

Sullivan Ballou to Sarah Ballou

A lawyer who had served in the Rhode Island legislature and cam-paigned for Lincoln in 1860, Sullivan Ballou was commissioned as amajor in the 2nd Rhode Island Volunteers on June 11, 1861. A week before the battle of Bull Run, he wrote a farewell letter to his wife andleft it in his trunk at camp. During the battle a six-pound cannon shotshattered his leg, and Ballou died of his wounds on July 28, 1861.

Head-Quarters, Camp Clark,Washington, D. C., July 14, 1861.

My Very DearWife:The indications are very strong that we shall move in a few

days, perhaps to-morrow. Lest I should not be able to writeyou again, I feel impelled to write a few lines, that may fall under your eye when I shall be no more.Our movement may be one of a few days duration and full

of plea sure— and it may be one of severe conflict and death tome. Not my will, but thine, O God, be done. If it is necessarythat I should fall on the battle-field for my country, I am ready.I have no misgivings about, or lack of confidence in, the causein which I am engaged, and my courage does not halt or falter.I know how strongly American civilization now leans upon thetriumph of the government, and how great a debt we owe tothose who went before us through the blood and suffering ofthe Revolution, and I am willing, perfectly willing to lay downall my joys in this life to help maintain this government, and topay that debt.But, my dear wife, when I know, that, with my own joys, I

lay down nearly all of yours, and replace them in this life withcares and sorrows,— when, after having eaten for long years thebitter fruit of orphanage myself, I must offer it, as their onlysustenance, to my dear little children, is it weak or dishonor-able, while the banner of my purpose floats calmly and proudly

Sullivan Ballou 98 Last Full Measure of Devotion

flit unseen around those they loved, I shall always be nearyou— in the garish day, and the darkest night— amidst yourhappiest scenes and gloomiest hours— always, always; and, ifthe soft breeze fans your cheek, it shall be my breath; or thecool air cools your throbbing temples, it shall be my spiritpassing by.Sarah, do not mourn me dead; think I am gone, and wait for

me, for we shall meet again.As for my little boys, they will grow as I have done, and

never know a father’s love and care. Little Willie is too youngto remember me long, and my blue-eyed Edgar will keep myfrolics with him among the dimmest memories of his child-hood. Sarah, I have unlimited confidence in your maternalcare, and your development of their characters. Tell my two mothers, I call God’s blessing upon them. O Sarah, I wait foryou there! Come to me, and lead thither my children.

Sullivan.

in the breeze, that my unbounded love for you, my darlingwife and children, should struggle in fierce, though useless,contest with my love of country.I cannot describe to you my feelings on this calm summer

night, when two thousand men are sleeping around me, manyof them enjoying the last, perhaps, before that of death,— andI, suspicious that Death is creeping behind me with his fataldart, am communing with God, my country and thee.I have sought most closely and diligently, and often in my

breast, for a wrong motive in thus hazarding the happiness ofthose I loved, and I could not find one. A pure love of mycountry, and of the principles I have often advocated beforethe people, and “the name of honor, that I love more than Ifear death,” have called upon me, and I have obeyed.Sarah, my love for you is deathless. It seems to bind me with

mighty cables, that nothing but Omnipotence can break; andyet, my love of country comes over me like a strong wind, andbears me irresistibly on with all those chains, to the battle-field.The memories of all the blissful moments I have spent withyou, come crowding over me, and I feel most deeply gratefulto God and you, that I have enjoyed them so long. And howhard it is for me to give them up, and burn to ashes the hopesof future years, when, God willing, we might still have livedand loved together, and seen our boys grow up to honorablemanhood around us.I know I have but few claims upon Divine Providence, but

something whispers to me, perhaps it is the wafted prayer ofmy little Edgar, that I shall return to my loved ones unharmed.If I do not, my dear Sarah, never forget how much I love you,nor that, when my last breath escapes me on the battle-field, itwill whisper your name.Forgive my many faults, and the many pains I have caused

you. How thoughtless, how foolish I have oftentimes been!How gladly would I wash out with my tears, every little spotupon your happiness, and struggle with all the misfortune ofthis world, to shield you and my children from harm. But Icannot. I must watch you from the spirit land and hover nearyou, while you buffet the storms with your precious littlefreight, and wait with sad patience till we meet to part no more.But, O Sarah, if the dead can come back to this earth, and

Samuel J. English 11

10

humble servant was skirting around in the woods as a skir-misher and arrived in the village ahead of the main column. Asour company arrived the streets pres ented the scene of thewildest confusion: old negroes running around, some laugh-ing, some crying and some swearing at a fearful rate. Thestreets were strewn with the knapsacks, haversacks, canteens,blankets, shirts and most every article pertaining to camp life.The houses were deserted and in some places the tables wereset for dinner and coffee warm on the stove. After strollingaround a short time we quartered ourselves in the park of Gen.Lee and made ourselves as comfortable as circumstanceswould permit. The cavalry in the meantime pursuing the re-treating rebels and capturing 30 of their men. What particu-larly pleased me was that the company that lost the mess wasthe Palmetto Guards and Brooks Guards of South Carolina, having lost all of their camp equipage and barely escaped withtheir lives. But to continue, the next day our colors started forManassas but halted and camped three miles this side of Cen-treville, waiting for our troops and reinforcements to come up;the second regiment being somewhat in advance of the mainarmy; we stay here for three days and Sunday the 21st about 2 o’clock the drums beat the assembly and in ten minutes wewere on our march for Bull Run having heard the enemy werewaiting to receive us, our troops then numbering 25 or 30thousand which were divided into three columns ours underCol Hunter taking the right through a thick woods. Abouteleven o’clock as our pickets were advancing through thewoods a volley was poured in upon them from behind a fencethickly covered with brush; the pickets after returning theshots returned to our regiment and we advanced double quicktime yelling like so many devils. On our arrival into the openfield I saw I should judge three or four thousand rebels re-treating for a dense woods, firing as they retreated, while from an other part of the woods a perfect hail storm of bullets,round shot and shell was poured upon us, tearing through ourranks and scattering death and confusion everywhere; but witha yell and a roar we charged upon them driving them againinto the woods with fearful loss. In the mean time our batterycame up to our support and commenced hurling destructionamong the rebels. Next orders were given for us to fall back

“death and confus ion everywhere” :v irginia , july 1 8 6 1

Samuel J. En glish to his M other

In a letter home Corporal Samuel En glish of the 2nd Rhode IslandVolunteers— the regiment Sullivan Ballou served in— described hispart in the battle that would be known in the North as Bull Run andin the South as Manassas. The Union army lost about 2,900 menkilled, wounded, or missing, the Confederates about 1,900.

Camp Clark, July 24th/61Dear M other Washington, D.C.I rec’d your letter of the 21st shortly after our return to

camp and take the earliest opportunity of writing. Yes, we havebeen & gone and done it. Last Thursday the 16th our brigadeconsisting of the two Rhode Island regiments, the New York71st and the New Hampshire 2nd took up our line of march forFairfax Court House. We crossed Long Bridge about 3 o’clockand continued on for six miles where we bivouacked for thenight. Nothing occurred of importance to disturb our slum-bers except the passing of troops bound on the same expedi-tion. We commenced our march early in the morning, the 2ndR.I. regiment taking the lead and acting as skirmishers, Co. Ataking the advance on the right; Co. D acting as flankers; Co.F acting as rear advance on the right of the column, Co. K act-ing as advance on the left. Co. C as flankers and Co. G as rearguard. I cannot state exactly the strength of our forces at thetime, but should judge there were seven or eight thousand, in-cluding 1500 cavalry and two Batteries of artillery with twohowitzers belonging to the New York 71st Regt. When withinhalf a mile of the village of Fairfax, word was sent that therebels’ battery was directly in our line of march. Our artillerywas immediately ordered to the front and fired three shots intoit, making the sand fly, and showing pretty conclusively thatthe birds had flown. All the time this was taking place your

12 Last Full Measure of Devotion Samuel J. E nglish 13

fell like rain among our exhausted troops. As we gained thecover of the woods the stampede became even more frightful,for the baggage wagons and ambulances became entangledwith the artillery and rendered the scene even more dreadfulthan the battle, while the plunging of the horses broke thelines of our infantry and prevented any successful formationout of the question. The rebels being so badly cut up supposedwe had gone beyond the woods to form on for a fresh attackand shelled the woods for full two hours, supposing we werethere, thus saving the greater part of our forces, for if they had begun an immediate attack, nothing in heaven’s name couldhave saved us. As we neared the bridge the rebels opened avery destructive fire upon us, mowing down our men likegrass, and caused even greater confusion than before. Our ar-tillery and baggage wagons became fouled with each other,completely blocking the bridge, while the bomb shells burst-ing on the bridge made it “rather unhealthy” to be around. AsI crossed on my hands and knees, Capt. Smith who was cross-ing by my side at the same time was struck by a round shot atthe same time and completely cut in two. After I crossed Istarted up the hill as fast as my legs could carry and passedthrough Centreville and continued on to Fairfax where we ar-rived about 10 o’clock halting about 15 minutes, then kept onto Washington where we arrived about 2 o’clock Mondaynoon more dead than alive, having been on our feet 36 hourswithout a mouthful to eat, and traveled a distance of 60 mileswithout twenty minutes halt. The last five miles of that marchwas perfect misery, none of us having scarcely strength to putone foot before the other, but I tell you the cheers we rec’d going through the streets of Washington seemed to put newlife into the men for they rallied and marched to our campsand every man dropped on the ground and in one momentthe greater part of them were asleep. Our loss is estimated at1,000, but I think it greater, the rebels loss from three to fivethousand.

and protect our battery as the enemy were charging upon itfrom an other quarter, and then we saw with dismay that thesecondR.I. regimentwere theonly troops in thefight; the others having lagged so far behind that we had to stand the fightalone for 30 minutes; 1100 against 7 or 8 thousand. It was afterwards ascertained from a prisoner that the rebels thoughtwe numbered 20 or 30 thousand from the noise made by uswhile making the charge. While preparing to make our final ef-fort to keep our battery out of their hands, the 1st R.I. regi-ment then came filing over the fence and poured a volley outto them that drove them under cover again; they were fol-lowed by the New York 71st and the New Hampshire 2nd reg-iments; with 2,000 regulars bringing up the rear who pitchedinto the “Sechers” most beautifully. Our regiments were then ordered off the field and formed a line for a support to rally onin case the rebels over powered our troops. When the line hadformed again I started off for the scene of action to see howthe fight was prog ressing. As I emerged from the woods I sawa bomb shell strike a man in the breast and literally tear him topieces. I passed the farm house which had been appropriatedfor a hospital and the groans of the wounded and dying werehorrible. I then descended the hill to the woods which hadbeen occupied by the rebels at the place where the Elsworthzouaves made their charge; the bodies of the dead and dyingwere actually three and four deep, while in the woods wherethe desperate struggle had taken place between the U.S.Marines and the Louisiana zouaves, the trees were spatteredwith blood and the ground strewn with dead bodies. Theshots flying pretty lively round me I thought best to join myregiment; as I gained the top of the hill I heard the shot andshell of our batteries had given out, not having but 130 shotsfor each gun during the whole engagement. As we had noth-ing but infantry to fight against their batteries, the commandwas given to retreat; our cavalry not being of much use, because the rebels would not come out of the woods. The R.I.regiments, the New York 71st and the New Hampshire 2ndwere drawn into a line to cover the retreat, but an officer gal-loped wildly into the column crying the enemy is upon us, andoff they started like a flock of sheep every man for himself andthe devil take the hindermost; while the rebels’ shot and shell

15

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“his big he art shot away”: m a s sachuset ts , m arch 1862

Emily Dickinson to Louise and Frances Norcross

Late March 1862

On March 14, 1862, the Union army enlarged its foothold on the North Carolina coast by capturing New Bern. Lieutenant Colonel William S. Clark of the 21st Massachusetts Infantry wrote in his offi-cial report that while leading an attack “the noblest of us all, my brave, efficient, faithful adjutant, First Lieut. F.A. Stearns, Company I, fell mortally wounded. . . .” Frazar Stearns was the son of the presi-dent of Amherst College, and his body was brought home for burial. Emily Dickinson wrote about his funeral to her cousins.

Dear Children,You have done more for me—’tis least that I can do, to tell

you of brave Frazer—“killed at Newbern,” darlings. His big heart shot away by a “minie ball.”

I had read of those—I didn’t think that Frazer would carry one to Eden with him. Just as he fell, in his soldier’s cap, with his sword at his side, Frazer rode through Amherst. Classmates to the right of him, and classmates to the left of him, to guard his narrow face! He fell by the side of Professor Clark, his su-perior officer—lived ten minutes in a soldier’s arms, asked twice for water—murmured just, “My God!” and passed! Sanderson, his classmate, made a box of boards in the night, put the brave boy in, covered with a blanket, rowed six miles to reach the boat,—so poor Frazer came. They tell that Colo-nel Clark cried like a little child when he missed his pet, and could hardly resume his post. They loved each other very much. Nobody here could look on Frazer—not even his father. The doctors would not allow it.

The bed on which he came was enclosed in a large casket shut entirely, and covered from head to foot with the sweetest flowers. He went to sleep from the village church. Crowds

came to tell him goodnight, choirs sang to him, pastors told how brave he was—early-soldier heart. And the family bowed their heads, as the reeds the wind shakes.

So our part in Frazer is done, but you must come next sum-mer, and we will mind ourselves of this young crusader—too brave that he could fear to die. We will play his tunes—maybe he can hear them; we will try to comfort his broken-hearted Ella, who, as the clergyman said, “gave him peculiar confi-dence.” . . . Austin is stunned completely. Let us love better, children, it’s most that’s left to do.

Love fromEmily.

Emily Dickinson

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“ t he church so lone”: a pr il 1862

Herman Melville: Shiloh

Confederate troops led by Albert Sidney Johnston and Pierre G. T. Beauregard attacked Ulysses S. Grant’s forces near Pittsburg Landing, Tennessee, on the morning of April 6, 1862, and drove them back toward the Tennessee River. After being reinforced by troops from Don Carlos Buell’s Army of the Ohio, Grant counterattacked on April 7 and foced the Confederates to retreat toward Corinth, Missis-sippi. The fighting cost the Union 13,047 men killed, wounded, or missing, while Confederate losses totaled 10,699. Herman Melville remembered the battle in a poem that first appeared in Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War, published in August 1866. In his preface to the book, Melville wrote that with “few exceptions, the Pieces in this volume originated in an impulse imparted by the fall of Richmond,” suggesting that most of the poems were written after April 1865.

Shiloh

A Requiem (April, 1862)

Skimming lightly, wheeling still, The swallows fly lowOver the field in clouded days, The forest-field of Shiloh—Over the field where April rainSolaced the parched ones stretched in painThrough the pause of nightThat followed the Sunday fight Around the church of Shiloh—The church so lone, the log-built one,That echoed to many a parting groan And natural prayer Of dying foemen mingled there—Foemen at morn, but friends at eve— Fame or country least their care:

(What like a bullet can undeceive!) But now they lie low,While over them the swallows skim, And all is hushed at Shiloh.

Herm an Melville

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“de at h held a c arnival” : v irginia , june–july 1862

Sallie Brock: from Richmond During the War

In the Seven Days’ Battles, June 25–July 1, 1862, Robert E. Lee suc-ceeded in driving George B. McClellan’s Army of the Potomac away from Richmond and across the Peninsula to the northern bank of the James River. The Seven Days cost Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia 20,204 men killed, wounded, or missing, while Union losses totaled 15,855. A tutor in prewar Virginia, Sallie Brock spent the war years in Richmond. She recalled the Seven Days in her memoir, published anonymously “by a Richmond Lady” in 1867.

Richmond suffered heavily in the loss of citizens in these battles. There was scarcely a family that had not some one of its numbers in the field. Mothers nervously watched for any who might bring to them news of their boys. Sisters and friends grew pale when a horseman rode up to their doors, and could scarcely nerve themselves to listen to the tidings he brought. Young wives clasped their children to their bosoms, and in agony imagined themselves widows and their little ones or-phans. Thoughtful husbands, and sons, and brothers, and lov-ers, dispatched messengers to report their condition whenever they could, but, alas! the worst fears of many were realized.

Conspicuous amongst the dead of Richmond was the young Colonel of the Fourth Texas regiment. He had won honorable distinction in Italy, under Garibaldi. News arrived of his instant death on the field, and his heart-broken family sat up to receive his body until after the hour of midnight; but when it arrived, and “he lives” was told his mother, the reaction of joy almost deprived her of being. She could not realize it. The revulsion was too great. He spent a few days of mortal agony, and then a sad, mournful procession of heart-broken friends and relatives, and the riderless horse of the young warrior, announced, ah!

Sallie Brock

how sadly, that Richmond’s gallant son, Colonel Bradfute War-wick, had fallen!

A horseman rode up to the door of one of our houses on —— street, and cried out to the anxious mother: “Your son, madam, is safe, but Captain —— is killed!” On the opposite side, on the portico of her dwelling, a fair young girl, the be-trothed of Captain ——, was said to have been sitting at the moment, and thus heard the terrible announcement!

Every family received the bodies of the wounded or dead of their friends, and every house was a house of mourning or a private hospital.

The clouds were lifted, and the skies brightened upon po-litical prospects, but death held a carnival in our city. The weather was excessively hot. It was midsummer, gangrene and erysipelas attacked the wounded, and those who might have been cured of their wounds were cut down by these diseases.

Our hospitals were loathsome with the bloated, disfigured countenances of the victims of disease, rather than from ghastly wounds. Sickening odors filled the atmosphere, and soldiers’ funerals were passing at every moment. Frequently they would be attended by only one or two of the convalescent patients of the hospitals, and sometimes the unknown dead would be borne to the grave, with only the driver of the hearse or cart to attend it.*

*One of the grave-diggers at a soldiers’ cemetery said to the writer, when speak-ing of this time, (at a subsequent period,) “We could not dig graves fast enough to bury the soldiers. They were sometimes brought and put out of the hearse or cart, beside an open grave, and we were compelled to bury them in turn. Frequently we were obliged to leave them over night, when, sometimes, the bodies would swell, and burst the coffins in which they were placed, so slightly were they made. Our work was a horrible one! The odor was stifling. On one occasion, one of our grave-diggers contracted disease from a dead body, which he buried, that came to him in this terrible condition, and he died from it in less than twenty-four hours. After that we were almost afraid to continue our business, but then the soldiers must be buried, poor fellows!”

We listened to this horrible account as we stood on the hillside, and saw the hillocks innumerable, that marked the graves of our soldiers. A little girl, who visited the cemetery, on returning to the city said:—“Why, grandma, the soldiers’ graves are as thick as potatoe-hills!” And she saw only a moiety of the many which crowded the hillsides around our city, for this was an extension of Hollywood cemetery only. There were several cemeteries especially laid out for the soldiers, and they were soon all filled with the mounds that marked the soldier dead.

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20 Last Full Measure of Devotion

The mournful strains of the “Dead March,” and the sounds of the muffled drum, betokened an officer en route for “the city of the dead,” but these honors could not be accorded the poor fellows from the ranks. There were too many of them passing away—the means for costly funerals were not within our reach—yet were not our hearts less saddened by the less imposing cortege that was borne along with the private nor by the rude coffin in the cart, slowly wending its way unattended by friends, to the soldiers’ cemetery. Mothers and sisters, and dear friends came from all parts of the South, to nurse and comfort dear ones in our hospitals, and some, alas! arrived to find a husband, brother, or son already dead or dying, and had the sad companionship of the dead back to their homes.

a f t er t he bat t le : m a ry la nd, sept ember 1862

Samuel W. Fiske to the Springfield Republican

The Army of Northern Virginia crossed into Maryland on September 4, 1862, beginning a campaign that reached its climax thirteen days later on the 17th when McClellan’s Army of the Potomac launched a series of attacks against Lee’s positions behind Antietam Creek near Sharpsburg. After standing his ground on September 18, Lee fell back across the Potomac into Virginia. Lieutenant Samuel W. Fiske of the 14th Connecticut Infantry described the aftermath of the battle of Antietam in one of his regular letters to the Springfield (Massachu-setts) Republican, writing under his nom de plume Dunn Browne. The battle cost the Union 12,401 men killed, wounded, or missing, and the Confederates 10,316, making September 17, 1862, the bloodi-est single day in American history.

after the battle

Field of Battle, near Sharpsburg, Md.Saturday, Sept. 20

The excitement of battle comes in the day of it, but the hor-rors of it two or three days after. I have just passed over a part of the field, I suppose only a small part of it, and yet I have counted nearly a thousand dead bodies of rebels lying still unburied in groves and corn-fields, on hill sides and in trenches. Three hun-dred and fifty I was told by one who helped to bury them, were taken this morning from one long rifle pit which lay just in front of where the 14th (among other regiments) made their fight, and were buried in one trench. The air grows terribly offensive from the unburied bodies, and a pestilence will speedily be bred if they are not put under ground. The most of the Union sol-diers are now buried, but some of them only slightly. Think now of the horrors of such a scene as lies all around us, for there are hundreds of horses too, all mangled and putrefying, scattered everywhere. Then there are the broken gun carriages, and wag-ons, the thousands of muskets and all sorts of equipments, the

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22 Last Full Measure of Devotion

clothing all torn and bloody, and cartridges and cannon shot and pieces of shell, the trees torn with shot and scarred with bullets, the farm houses and barns knocked to pieces and burned down, the crops trampled and wasted, the whole country for-lorn and desolate. And yet I saw over all this scene of devastation and horror, yesternight, one of the loveliest double rainbows that ever mortal eyes looked upon. It was as if heaven sat serene over human woes and horrors, and crowned all the earthly evils with the promise of ultimate most glorious good. I took it as an emblem of success to our blessed Union cause, that out of the horrors of battle shall arise the blessings of a more secure free-dom and stable system of liberal government.

The enemy has retired in disgrace from his bold invasion of the North with at least 40,000 or 50,000 less men than he entered upon it—and after all our disasters and blunders and waste, let us hope that the successful end is beginning to draw nigh. The waste of this war is tremendous beyond all concep-tion. It would take a long time to reckon that of this one battle. Thousands and thousands and tens of thousands of muskets, stacks of guns, piles of guns like big piles of rails, muskets laid up against rocks and trees and muskets scattered yet over the ground and choking up water courses, muskets rusty and bro-ken and dirty, spoiled and half-spoiled, that a few days ago were bright in the hands of living men, are only one item of the waste. Whole regiments threw away their overcoats and blankets and everything that encumbered them, and they were trampled in the rush of conflicting hosts, and so with equip-ments and stores and ammunition and everything else. Waste, waste, ruin and destruction. Why, I saw a whole immense stack of unthreshed wheat, big as a barn, scattered in a few minutes over a hundred acre field (the same I think from which it had been reaped) just as bedding for the soldiers for a single night. Much of this waste is unavoidable. Much of it might be helped. Just as it is said that out of the waste of an American kitchen a French family would live comfortably, so it might almost be said that out of the waste of an American war a European war might be carried on. But I must make no more waste of ink now. Yours truly,

Dunn BrowneSeptember 20, 1862

“mur derous butchery” : v irginia , december 1862

Samuel W. Fiske to the Springfield Republican

Lieutenant Fiske, ill with typhoid and dysentery, could only watch on December 13, 1862, as more than 100,000 Union troops launched a series of unsuccessful frontal assaults on the 72,000 Confederates deployed along the heights overlooking Fredericksburg, Virginia. The Army of the Potomac lost more than 12,600 men killed, wounded, or missing in the battle, while Confederate casualties to-taled about 5,300.

Dunn Browne on the Battle Field

FredericksburgDecember 15

Oh, Republican! My heart is sick and sad. Blood and wounds and death are before my eyes; of those who are my friends, comrades, brothers; of those who have marched into the very mouth of destruction as coolly and cheerfully as to any ordi-nary duty. Another tremendous, terrible, murderous butchery of brave men has made Saturday, the 13th of December, a memorable day in the annals of this war.

On Friday, Fredericksburg was taken with comparatively lit-tle trouble and loss. On Saturday, the grand army corps of Sumner marched up against the heights back of the city, where the enemy lay behind strong fortifications, all bristling with can-non and protected by rifle pits; while our men must cross a wide space of clear, open ground, and then a canal whose every crossing was swept by artillery so perfectly trained beforehand that every discharge mowed down whole ranks of men. Into this grand semi-circle of death our divisions marched with rapid and unflinching step. French’s division (to which we be-long) behaved splendidly, and the others no less so if we may judge by the losses. Of whole companies and regiments not a

2524 Last Full Measure of Devotion Samuel W. Fiske

man flinched. The grape and canister tore through their ranks, the fearful volleys of musketry from invisible foes decimated their numbers every few moments; the conflict was hopeless; they could inflict scarcely any damage upon the foe; our artil-lery couldn’t cover them, for they would do more damage to friend than to enemy; yet our gallant fellows pressed on, deter-mined to scale those breastworks and take the position of the rebels. But there were none left to do that work. A little hand-ful of a great division approached, and even in a few instances began to climb the works, but only to leave their mangled bodies on the bloody field; a few torn and blackened remnants of the fine regiments sternly retired to the city. The wounded were mainly brought off, though hundreds were killed in the benevolent task. The city is filled with the pieces of brave men who went whole into the conflict. Every basement and floor is covered with pools of blood. Limbs in many houses lie in heaps, and surgeons are exhausted with their trying labors.

But I will not sicken you with a recital of the horrors before us. Why our noble fellows were pushed on into such a hopeless and desperate undertaking I am not military man enough to say. Or why the grand division of Hooker were marching and countermarching all through the day on the other side of the river, and didn’t cross over till just at night to help in the bloody business, if it must be undertaken, I do not know either. Indeed I don’t know anything hardly save that I am sick at such a destruction of noble human lives, necessary or un-necessary, useful or useless.

Personally, dear Republican, I was not much in the fight except to be under the shell fire a considerable part of the day in my anxiety to reach my regiment, and failing that to get as near as possible, as a spectator of the terrible scene. Sick for two weeks of a fever and diarrhoea, I heard the heavy firing of Thursday from a hospital ten miles distant, got permission from the surgeon in charge to mount a U.S. wagon laden with medical stores and start for the regiment. But the fearful roads of corduroy under a foot or two of mud, and the feeble state of the teams living for weeks on half forage, hindered us, and prevented your correspondent from reaching his post till the day after the battle. And doubtless the sight of the poor rem-nants of his regiment—one hundred men only reported for

duty—and of his brigade, not enough to make half a regiment —and then not having been in the scene where the change was effected, have come over his feelings more powerfully than would otherwise have been the case, and given a sad tinge to what he ever wishes to write cheerfully. For God is over all, and even this thing is right, and shall come out in a result of good, sometime. God grant we may see it!

December 17: Night before last, quietly and without distur-bance from the enemy, we evacuated Fredericksburg, and marched back to our respective old camps on this side the Rappahannock. In the darkness and through the deep mud the tired soldiers plodded wearily on their way, and then on their arrival were obliged to lie down on the ground and make the best of a rainy winter’s night, before they could proceed to arrange themselves any comfortable quarters. Let us hope that the shattered divisions that bore the brunt of the fatal fight behind Fredericksburg may be left to a little rest before meet-ing any more of the horrors of a winter’s campaign in this ter-rible country. Oh for a month of that beautiful weather that we wasted in the autumn. We hear rumors of the capture of Fort Darling and of Richmond, but do not credit it. If it only could be so, and that our desperate attack at Fredericksburg could have the excuse of being a part of the preconcerted plan to occupy the attention of the enemy and keep his forces here, it would much relieve many sore and discouraged hearts.

We brought off all our wounded from the city, and have left little that is valuable on the other side, save our unburied he-roes on the field of battle. The pontoon bridges too are saved and ready to throw across again, and our heavy artillery com-mand the passage of the river at any time, I suppose.

Dunn BrowneDecember 15 and 17, 1862

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26

Ira S. Owens

bat t le of stone s r iver : t enne s see , december 1862–january 1863

Ira S. Owens: from Greene County in the War

On December 26, 1862, the Union Army of the Cumberland under William S. Rosecrans began advancing from Nashville toward Braxton Bragg’s Army of Tennessee at Murfreesboro, thirty miles to the southeast. By December 30 Rosecrans and his army of 42,000 men faced Bragg and 35,000 Confederates along Stones River outside of Murfreesboro. Bragg struck first on December 31 and nearly suc-ceeded in breaking the Union line west of the river. After a lull on New Year’s Day, the battle resumed on January 2 when the Confeder-ates attacked the Union positions east of the river without success. Bragg ordered a retreat on January 3, allowing the North to claim victory. The battle of Stones River (or Murfreesboro) cost the Union 12,906 men killed, wounded, or missing, and the Confederacy 11,739. Corporal Ira S. Owens of the 74th Ohio Infantry recalled the fighting in an 1874 regimental history.

On the 26th of December 1862 we received orders to march to Murfreesboro, Tennessee, where the rebels were in strong force. Accordingly we packed up and started, the Army of the Cumberland moving at the same time. We were then going to our first battle. We had not marched far before it began to rain and rained very hard. We marched on through the mud and rain until nearly night, when we halted within two miles of Nashville. We had prepared our suppers and eaten them, and were preparing to spend the night by spreading our blankets on the ground for beds, when the bugle sounded and we were ordered to fall in. Then we marched some two or three miles farther, passing through the town of Nolensville, and halted in the woods. It will be remembered that we had neither shelter tents nor gum blankets, consequently we were exposed to all the rain, which continued nearly all night, so that we had to sit up nearly the whole time. The next day we advanced on toward

Murfreesboro, skirmishing in front, as they had been all the day before. Colonel Moody urging us on, telling us if we did not hurry up the battle would be over before we should get there. We marched on until we came to the Nashville pike, some eight or nine miles from Murfreesboro. We halted just at night wet, cold and hungry. It was not long, however, before we had a fire built of rails, and after getting warm and dry we became tolerably comfortable. After getting and eating our suppers we prepared to spend the night. After spreading our blankets down on the ground around the fire we addressed ourselves to sleep. During the night the fire popped out on blankets and burned several large holes in them. Rained some during the night. The next day the being Sunday, we rested and spread out our blankets to dry.

Monday, the 29th, the regiment advanced toward Murfrees-boro, except Company C, which was ordered back to Nolens-ville, to guard some teams which were sent back for part of the baggage, which was left behind, owing to the bad condition of the roads. We arrived at Nolensville, and loaded the teams, and started back. We had left the town but a short time when it was entered by some rebel scouts and plundered of everything. Had we remained an hour longer, in all probability, we should all have been captured. We arrived at the place where we left the regiment, but they had gone on; so we halted and remained all night, and the next morning we advanced toward Mur-freesboro, where we found the regiment in line of battle, and skirmishing going on in front. We remained in line through the day and until about 11 o’clock at night, our position being on the center, amid a thick growth of cedars. About 11 o’clock at night we were ordered out to support a battery in front. We remained in line until morning. It was quite cool, and the ground considerably frozen. I had lost my knapsack, putting it in a wagon the day we arrived on the battle ground, and never saw it any more. Consequently I had neither coat nor blanket. I suffered very much during the night with cold. Could not lie down but a few minutes at a time, and dare not go back to the fire, rebels being but a few yards in. I was chilled through and exposed to the enemy, there being no breastworks. It was considered a mark of cowardice to get behind anything to fight. Had the same policy been adopted then as was toward the close

2928 Last Full Measure of Devotion

of the war, that is, of building works, a great many lives might have been saved. About 6 o’clock on the morning of the 31st of December, we were relieved by the 37th Indiana Volunteer Infantry. We returned where the regiment lay the day previ-ous, and commenced breakfast, but did not have time to eat it before we were ordered into line. Not having time to drink my coffee, I poured it into my canteen, and swung it around my neck. We marched out to fight, forming double column at half distance. We advanced a short distance, when we formed line and were ordered to lie down. Then it was that the balls and the shrieking shells came whistling over us, and there were to be seen batteries wheeling into position, orderlies riding back and forth, horses without riders, while the yelling of the rebels like so many fiends, and the roar of artillery and mus-ketry, filled the air with horrid din. The battle was raging fiercely. In a short time we were ordered to arise and move forward. We accordingly moved forward in line a few yards, and were then ordered to halt, make ready, aim—fire. Then the Seventy-Fourth opened its first fire on the enemy. For a description of the battle of Stone River, and an account of the same, I refer the reader to “Rosecrans’ Campaign with the 14th Army Corps.” I was kneeling in a fence corner, loading and firing when we received orders to move to the left to make room for a battery. When I was just in the act of rising, I felt something hit me on the leg, which did not produce much pain at the time, only a smarting sensation. I thought I would say nothing about it. However it began to grow stiff, and I had not proceeded but a short distance before I had to call for help. I was then helped off the field.

We went back the same way we came. But it was getting to be a hot place in the rear. Balls and shells were flying thick and fast around us, striking trees, and cutting off leaves and branches. The rebels were getting around, and we scarcely knew which way to go, for fear of running right into their midst. At last we got out to the pike. On our way we stopped in an old building where several of our wounded boys were. The rebels soon commenced shelling us; so we had to get away as fast as we could. We proceeded about half a mile, when we were overtaken by some ambulances, where I was taken in and taken to the field hospital, five miles distant. Some of the boys

who read this will remember the field hospital at the brick house, near Stewart’s creek. It was impossible to supply all the wounded with tents. Rails were hauled and thrown in piles similar to farmers when they wish to build fence, and large fires built apart. The wounded were brought and lain by these fires. Men were wounded in every conceivable way, some with their arms shot off, some wounded in the body, some in the head. It was heart-rending to hear their cries and groans. One poor fellow who was near me was wounded in the head. He grew delirious during the night, and would very frequently call his mother. He would say: “Mother, O, Mother, come and help me!” The poor fellow died before morning with no mother near, to soothe him in his dying moments, or wipe the cold sweat from off his brow. I saw the surgeons amputate limbs, then throw the quivering flesh into a pile. Every once in a while a man would stretch himself out and die. Next morning rows of men were laid out side by side ready for the soldier’s burial. No weeping friends stood around, no coffin and hearse to bear them away to the grave, no funeral orations delivered; but there, away from home and kindred, they were wrapped in the soldiers’ blanket, a trench dug, and their bodies placed side by side, like they fought, a few shovelfulls of earth thrown upon them, when they were left alone.

Ira S. Owens

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30

Taylor Peirce

“his wif e cry ing over him”: mis sour i , f ebruary 1863

Taylor Peirce to Catharine Peirce

Union forces were able to prevent Missouri from seceding in 1861, but the state remained bitterly divided between unionists and seces-sionists and became the scene of the fiercest guerrilla conflict of the war. Although the Union victory at Pea Ridge, Arkansas, in March 1862 halted Confederate attempts to invade the state, Confederate irregulars in Missouri continued to harass Union troops with am-bushes and raids. Taylor Peirce mustered into the 22nd Iowa Infantry as a sergeant in August 1862 and was soon sent to southern Missouri, where his regiment guarded railroad lines, supply depots, and wagon trains. He wrote to his wife from the Ozarks describing the summary treatment often meted out to suspected guerrillas.

Eminince, Mo Feby 16 1863Dear CatharineI again set down to write you all again. I wrote you last week but the mails are so irregular in this region that I do not know how long it will take this to reach you but Col Stone and the Chaplain leaves this for Rolla to-morrow and I think you will get it in about 6 or 7 days. I am well and in good heart. We have been on the move for 3 weeks except 3 or 4 days that we lay at West Plains. We are now about 60 miles from Rolla and will Either go to Rolla or to Pilot Knob. One Division of the army started this morning to the Knob and we will either start for that place or Rolla to morrow. The rebles are all gone from this country except some few Gurrillas and them we gather up as we go along and shoot them. They are a set of murderers and are not fit to live to encumber society. Some of the cavalry took one yesterday morning who has shot at Gen Bentons Courier the night before not knowing that the cavalry was about. So yesterday morning they caught him in his house and took him out about a mile and shot him. When we came along he was lying by the side of the road and his wife crying over

him but she was no better than he for she kept on swearing vengence against the Federals and said she would make them kiss his blood and so we left her. It looks hard to me to see a man shot and his wife and children left alone but these men are the ones that keep up the cruelties that are continually being practiced in this part of Missouri.

We have been traveling through the Ozark mountain ever since the 1st of this month and a rough country it is. There is some pretty vallies in through them and now and then a very good settlement along some stream but the land is generally stony and poor covered with oak and yellow Pine. Some of the timber is very good and some day will be valuable. We are now on the Currant River some 25 miles from the Arkansas line and 3 miles from Eminence a town with one house and a court house and jail in it and an old mill which constitutes the whole town. I have been running a mile for two or three days grind-ing corn for the brigade as our rations have run short and the roads are so bad that our supplies can not reach us and we have been on 1/2 rations for some time. But I have enough to eat all the time and more than I need but some of the large eaters grow terribly about it. I expect that we will have short allowances until we get to the Rail Road for the trains can not reach us through this god forsaken country.

Lieutenant Murray starts home in the morning and has promised to call and see you and tell you how I get along and what I am doing. And if it is possible for you to get your pic-tures taken I mean Cyrus & Mary & thine and the babys I would like you to send it by him. The paymaster has come and has paid me my money and as soon as I get to the Express of-fice I will express it home.

I would send it by Murray but the Col thinks that it will be safer to keep it until we get to the office as they might be at-tacked by a forrageing party and robed as they will only have a small escort with them. So I concluded to keep it with me untill we get to the Rail Road. Cap Ault and I have fell out and I do not hold any communication with him any more than just what is nessessary for me to have to do my duty. He has shown himself just as damned a dog as lives and if he was not afraid of me he would be overbearing as the devil himself but I have the upper hand and he has to keep mum. The Lt can

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tell you about it and so you need not fear for me but I will get along all right. I must now close for we will have to march in the morning and of course the time is precious with me. Give my love to all. Tell the children to be good and Pap will try and get home to see them this spring. Give Cyrus my best re-spects and tell him he could make some money following the army and buying up the worn out horses and mules and if I get my commission to raise the negroes I will come home and put him on the track.

I remain affect your husband father and brother.Taylor Peirce

“ t he nat ion’s idol”: nort h c a rolina, m ay 1863

Catherine Edmondston: Diary, May 11, 1863

In the battle of Chancellorsville, May 1–4, 1863, Lee defeated Joseph Hooker in a series of engagements that cost the Union about 17,000 men killed, wounded, or missing and the Confederates about 13,000. Among the Confederate dead was Lee’s most famous subordinate, Lieutenant General Thomas J. (Stonewall) Jackson, who was acci-dentally shot by his own men on the night of May 2 after leading his corps in a successful attack on the exposed right flank of the Army of the Potomac. Catherine Edmondston learned of Jackson’s death at her plantation home in Halifax, North Carolina.

May 11, 1863Went out Hascosea after dinner with Mr E on horseback.

Everything is terribly backward there. The garden wants work & the flowers resent the neglect by refusing to bloom. A little girl ran out from the house of one of our neighbours & stopped us to ask for some flowers for their May party next Friday. Promised to send them, much to her gratification. Ah! me what happiness have May Queen’s conferred on me in times gone by & what a contrast to the times does a Queen of May now present.

The mail came in after tea & heavy news it brought us. A chill went through my heart as Mr Edmondston unfolded the paper & I saw that it was in mourning. I felt that Jackson was dead! & so it proved! He died of pneumonia on Sunday the 10th, eight days after the amputation of his arm, died in the fulness of his reputation, the brightness of his glory, a Christian patriot, un-selfish, untiring, with no thought but for his country, no aim but for her advancement. I have no heart to write more, tho the paper is full of news. I care for nothing but him. It is as tho a Divine voice has said again “Little children keep yourselves from idols.” He was the nation’s idol, not a breath even from a foe has ever been breathed against his fame. His very enemies reverenced him. God has taken him from us that we may lean more upon Him, feel that He can raise up to Himself instru-ments to work His Divine Will.

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34

Edward O. Guerrant

mourning stonewall jackson: k entuck y, m ay 1863

Edward O. Guerrant: Diary, May 15, 1863

Captain Edward O. Guerrant was a native Kentuckian who served as an adjutant to Brigadier General Humphrey Marshall, the com-mander of Confederate forces in the mountains of southwestern Virginia and eastern Kentucky. Guerrant had just returned to south-eastern Kentucky from a visit to Richmond, Virginia, when he learned of Jackson’s death. The text printed here is taken from a typescript transcription of Guerrant’s diary that contains three short gaps in the May 15, 1863, entry. The missing words are “May 10,” “May 11,” and “Groveton.”)

Friday 15h. May 1863.Today returned to Col. Hawkins’ camps on Rock House.

Williams of the battery just returned from Abingdon—Says

General Jackson is Dead!General Jackson is Dead!

Was a nation’s woe ever condensed in so few words—or a people’s calamity so far beyond language to express!? O Fate “That is the unkindest stroke of all”! All other losses we have ever sustained are light in comparison with this great calamity. So mighty a warrior,—so dauntless a spirit, so pure a patriot & so devoted a Christian!—A nations homage lay at his feet—its honors crown his brow. We have not another Jackson to die! Centuries are slow in the birth of such men. The Christian Napoleon! A greater than Alexander is dead. If a nation’s prayers & tears could have availed anything at a Throne of Mercy then “Stonewall” Jackson had not died! But God called him up higher—& in the ranks of a mightier army, & almost peerless in that innumerable host—stands our great Warrior.

The fire of his genius will no longer lead his invincible legions to certain victory,—& the scream of his exultant Eagles will no more echo along the bloody banks of the Rappahannock, or by

the bosom of the Potomac or in the beautiful Valley of the Shenandoah—his own sweet “Valley of Virginia”. But the memory of his deeds—his immortal deeds still lives—& will live while genius has an admirer—liberty a devotee—Christ a follower—or Nobility a friend & patron. If human sacrifices could have shielded his life from death’s fatal stroke—a thousand —yea ten thousand lives would have been offered up on War’s bloody altar that “Stonewall” Jackson might live.

But God’s Eternal & wise decree has gone forth & called from the head of his veteran warriors the great commander—& He will provide another whose arm he will strengthen to drive the invaders from our soil. In Jackson’s beautiful, christian resignation let us bow to the Divine decree & say “Thy will be done”. From the ashes of the immortal Jackson the Genius of Liberty will rise triumphant over death and place a nation & its Great Benefactor beyond the malice or power of enemies—on the tablet of an enduring fame.

We weep over our loss—& rejoice we had such a man to die. Jackson dead is worth 10000 Hookers living. We cannot esti-mate our loss—It is great beyond degree. The Richmond En-quirer says we had better lost a Corps of our Army. Northern journals pay him the highest honors—acknowledging the ter-ror of his very name—his great genius—his invincibility— & the meekness & purity of his christian character. He is styled the Modern Bonaparte. McClellan grieved over his loss— & acknowledged him to have been our greatest Executive Gen-eral. He possessed more than any of our Generals, the love & confidence of our people. They idolized “Stonewall” Jackson. God’s purposes are wise to have removed him. “He gave & hath taken away”.

While reconnoitering—with Gen. A. P. Hill & both their staffs &c. in the night of Saturday 2 May Genl. Jackson was wounded by one of his own Regiments (a N.C. Regt) on Picket—& not 50 yards from the Enemy. He received two wounds in his left arm & one in his right hand. He came near bleeding to death on the field. While being borne off by four men one of them was killed & he fell from the other’s shoul-ders & was severely hurt. His arm was amputated—but Pneu-monia setting in terminated his life at Guinnea’s Station on the Rappahannock R.R. on at 3 1/4 p.m.

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Before his death he was cheerful—. Expressed the opinion that if he had been permitted another hour of light or life on that great battle day he would have cut off Hooker’s retreat by U.S. Ford. He died delirious—his last words referring to his army. “Tell Gen Hill”, said he “to prepare his division for ac-tion, & tell Major Hawkes to send forward provisions for the men.”—

His remains were brought to Richmond on where they received every honor an admiring & sorrowful people could bestow on all that was mortal of the illustrious dead. It is esti-mated that at least twenty thousand people crowded the ave-nues of the National Capitol—where he was laid in state—to behold the pallid, serene, & thoughtful countenance of the mighty, dead chieftain. He expressed a desire to be buried at “Lexington—in the Valley of Virginia”; his place of residence.

Gen Ewell, who commanded a Division under him & lost his leg at the battle of was Genl. Jacksons choice as his successor.

It is proposed to have a bronze statue of Jackson placed in the Capitol at Richmond—that all may see the likeness of the man whose “fame is more enduring than brass”—upon whose living form they never looked. It will be a Mecca for genera-tions to come.

As usual after some terrible defeat Mr. Lincoln has taken to his usual resort—more men. This time he caps the climax by calling all the armbearing population of the North into the field to “suppress the rebellion”.

A grand rise from 75,000 to 4,000,000 of men!If Thirteen Hundred & Eighty Five Thousand armed war-

riors are incompetent for our subjugation—what virtue is there in numbers such as his! Xerxes stands in awe at Lincoln’s Abolition host 4,000,000 He never boasted half of that.

Poor Mr. Lincoln.—When will the scales of his judicial blindness fall from his eye as he beats his obstinate, Balaams numerical horse, & reveal the angel warrior with his retributive sword standing to stay him!? Poor man!

bat t le of mill ik en’s bend: louis i a na, june 1863

Matthew M. Miller to His Aunt

One of the first battles of the war to involve significant numbers of black troops was fought on June 7 when 1,500 Confederates attacked the Union supply depot at Milliken’s Bend, Louisiana, in an attempt to disrupt the siege of Vicksburg. The position was defended by about 1,000 men from the 23rd Iowa Infantry and four recently re-cruited black regiments, the 1st Mississippi Infantry and the 9th, 11th, and 13th Louisiana Infantry (African Descent), that had not com-pleted their musket training. Although the Confederates succeeded in driving the defenders back to the riverbank, they broke off their attack after several hours and retreated under fire from two Union gunboats. The Confederates lost 175 men killed or wounded, the Union forces 386. Captain Matthew M. Miller of Galena, Illinois, described the fighting in a letter that was published in the Galena Advertiser, reprinted in other newspapers, and included in a prelimi-nary report issued by the American Freedmen’s Inquiry Commission on June 30, 1863.

Milliken’s Bend, June 10, 1863.Dear Aunt: We were attacked here on June 7, about 3

o’clock in the morning, by a brigade of Texas troops, about 2,500 in number. We had about 600 men to withstand them, 500 of them negroes. I commanded Company I, Ninth Loui-siana. We went into the fight with 33 men. I had 16 killed and 11 badly wounded, 4 slightly. I was wounded slightly on the head, near the right eye, with a bayonet, and had a bayonet run through my right hand near the forefinger; that will ac-count for this miserable style of penmanship.

Our regiment had about 300 men in the fight. We had 1 colonel wounded, 4 captains wounded, 2 first and 2 second lieutenants killed, 5 lieutenants wounded, and 3 white order-lies killed and 1 wounded in the hand and two fingers taken off. The list of killed and wounded officers comprises nearly

3938 Last Full Measure of Devotion Matthew M. Miller

all the officers present with the regiment, a majority of the rest being absent recruiting.

We had about 50 men killed in the regiment and 80 wounded, so you can judge of what part of the fight my com-pany sustained. I never felt more grieved and sick at heart than when I saw how my brave soldiers had been slaughtered, one with six wounds, all the rest with two or three, none less than two wounds. Two of my colored sergeants were killed, both brave, noble men; always prompt, vigilant, and ready for the fray. I never more wish to hear the expression, “The nig-gers wont fight.” Come with me 100 yards from where I sit and I can show you the wounds that cover the bodies of 16 as brave, loyal, and patriotic soldiers as ever drew bead on a rebel.

The enemy charged us so close that we fought with our bayonets hand to hand. I have six broken bayonets to show how bravely my men fought. The Twenty-third Iowa joined my company on the right, and I declare truthfully that they had all fled before our regiment fell back, as we were all com-pelled to do.

Under command of Colonel Page I led the Ninth and Eleventh Louisiana when the rifle-pits were retaken and held by our troops, our two regiments doing the work.

I narrowly escaped death once. A rebel took deliberate aim at me with both barrels of his gun, and the bullets passed so close to me that the powder that remained on them burned my cheek. Three of my men who saw him aim and fire thought that he wounded me each fire. One of them was killed by my side, and he fell on me, covering my clothes with his blood, and before the rebel could fire again I blew his brains out with my gun.

It was a horrible fight, the worst I was ever engaged in, not even excepting Shiloh. The enemy cried, “No quarters,” but some of them were very glad to take it when made prisoners.

Colonel Allen, of the Seventeenth Texas, was killed in front of our regiment, and Brigadier-General Walker was wounded. We killed about 180 of the enemy. The gun-boat Choctaw did good service shelling them. I stood on the breast-works after we took them, and gave the elevations and direction for the gun-boat by pointing my sword, and they sent a shell right

into their midst, which sent them in all directions. Three shells fell there, and 62 rebels lay there when the fight was over.

My wound is not serious, but troublesome. What few men I have left seem to think much of me because I stood up with them in the fight. I can say for them that I never saw a braver company of men in my life.

Not one of them offered to leave his place until ordered to fall back; in fact, very few ever did fall back. I went down to the hospital three miles to-day to see the wounded. Nine of them were there, two having died of their wounds. A boy I had cooking for me came and begged a gun when the rebels were advancing, and took his place with the company, and when we retook the breast-works I found him badly wounded with one gunshot and two bayonet wounds. A new recruit I had issued a gun to the day before the fight was found dead, with a firm grasp on his gun, the bayonet of which was broken in three pieces. So they fought and died defending the cause that we revere. They met death coolly, bravely; not rashly did they expose themselves, but all were steady and obedient to orders.

So God has spared me again through many dangers. I can-not tell how it was I escaped.

Your affectionate nephew,M. M. MILLER

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Henry Livermore A bbott

def e at ing pick et t’s charge: pennsy lvania , july 1863

Henry Livermore Abbott to Josiah Gardner Abbott

A veteran of Ball’s Bluff, Fair Oaks, the Seven Days, Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville, Captain Henry Livermore Abbott commanded a company in the 20th Massachusetts Infantry. His regiment reached the Gettysburg battlefield early on July 2 and was posted along with the rest of the Second Corps at the center of the Union line on Cem-etery Ridge. On the afternoon of July 3, as Lee sent about 13,000 men against the Union center, the section of Cemetery Ridge de-fended by the 20th Massachusetts came under attack by two brigades from the division commanded by Major General George E. Pickett. The defeat of the Confederate assault on July 3 ended the battle, which cost the Confederates about 28,000 men killed, wounded, or missing, and the Union about 23,000. Among the dead were Colonel Paul Joseph Revere, the commander of the 20th Massachusetts and a grandson of the Revolutionary War hero, and Abbott’s friend Lieu-tenant Henry Ropes, who was killed by the premature explosion of a Union shell on the morning of July 3.

July 6 / 1863Near Gettysburg Pa

My dear Papa,When our great victory was just over, the exultation of vic-

tory was so great that one didn’t think of our fearful losses, but now I cant help feeling a great weight at my heart. Poor Henry Ropes was one of the dearest friends I ever had or expect to have. He was one of the purest-minded, noblest, most gener-ous men I ever knew. His loss is terrible. His men actually wept when they showed me his body, even under the tremendous cannonade, a time when most soldiers see their comrades dying around them with indifference. Col. Hall, I believe, means to mention him in his report. He says that of every body in the army, Henry was the only one he knew that was

fighting simply from patriotism, & that he would himself al-most have given his life to have had Ropes lived to see the splendid victory he always so earnestly hoped for. I cant cease to think of him, whenever I am alone, which is pretty frequent now that we have only 3 left. All our pique against Revere too had long ceased, since we saw him on the march struggling so nobly with his physical weakness, & he is regretted as such a man should be. Then there is poor Macy with a hand gone. Herbert Mason hit too, with Ropes my most intimate friend here, two of the finest & bravest officers that ever fought in this war. Just as he was going off from the hospital, with a consideration that wounded men going home very rarely feel for those left, he send me his brandy, tobacco, &c a perfect God-Send at the time. Patten too, who is going to be men-tioned by Col. Hall for the gallantry, with which he held his outpost, when the skirmishers on both flanks had run, & our whole fire in the direst confusion had gone over him. In deed with only two officers besides myself remaining, I cant help feeling a little spooney when I am thinking, & you know I am not at all a lachrymose individual in general. However I think we can run the machine. Our losses are—of 13 officers, 3 killed, 7 wounded. Of 231 enlisted men, 30 killed, 84 wounded, 3 missing, total 117, with officers, aggregate 127. I haven’t time to give you an account as I have to write to Mr. Ropes, & John Revere, also to Paines father. (Paine was one of the finest officers I have ever seen though only 17 years of age). The enemy, after a morning of quiet on our part of the line, (a little to the right of the left center) began the most terrific cannon-ade with a converging fire of 150 pieces that I ever heard in my life & kept it up for 2 hours, almost entirely disabling our batteries, killing & wounding over half the officers & men & silencing most of the guns. The thin line of our division against which it was directed was very well sheilded by a little rut they lay in & in front of our brigade by a little pit, just one foot deep & one foot high, thrown up hastily by one shovel, but principally by the fact that it is very difficult to hit a single line of troops, so that the enemy chiefly threw over us with the intention of disabling the batteries & the reserves which they supposed to be massed in rear of the batteries in the depres-sion of the hill. In the former object they were successful, in

4342 Last Full Measure of Devotion

the latter they were better than successful. The one brigade brought up in support had to be retired 2 miles, & no other reserves could be brought up, for any massing of troops would under that fire would have proved their own destruction, without their being of any service to us. No infantry in the world could have been massed under that fire for half an hour. The rebels thus left us entirely unsupported & advanced with perfect confidence, after ceasing their artillery, our artillery being so well knocked up that only one or two shots were fired into them which however were very well aimed & we could see tumble over squads in the rebel lines. Had our batteries been intact, the rebels would never have got up to our mus-ketry, for they were obliged to come out of the woods & ad-vance from a half to 3/4 of a mile over an open field & in plain sight. A magnificent sight it was too. Two brigades in two lines, their skirmishers driving in ours. The moment I saw them, I knew we should give them Fredericksburg. So did every body. We let the regiment in front of us get within 100 feet of us, & then bowled them over like nine pins, picking out the colors first. In two minutes there were only groups of two or three men running round wildly, like chickens with their heads off. We were cheering like mad, when Macy directed my attention to a spot 3 or 4 rods on our right where there were no pits, only, a rail fence. Baxter’s Pennsylvania men had most disgracefully broken, & the rebels were within our line. The order was immediately given to fall back far enough to form another line & prevent us being flanked. Without however waiting for that, the danger was so imminent that I had rushed my company immediately up to the gap, & the regiment & the rest of the brigade, being there some before & the rest as quick as they could. The rail fence checked the main advance of the enemy & they stood, both sides, pegging away into each other. The rows of dead after the battle, I found to be within 15 and 20 feet apart, as near hand to hand fighting as I ever care to see. The rebels behaved with as much pluck as any men in the world could, they stood there against the fence, until they were nearly all shot down. The rebels batteries, seeing how the thing was going, pitched shell into us, all the time, with great disregard of their own friends who were so disagreeably near us. Gen Webb who commands the Philadelphia brigade in his

official report has given Hall’s brigade the credit of saving the day, after his own men had run away. A miserable rowdy named Hays comdg. the 3rd div. of our corps, who was not engaged at all in the musketry fire, claims I believe all the credit of the thing. So look out for false stories in papers. Dont confound this fellow with Hays comdg the corps, who is said to be a good officer, & who got up just after the fight, Hancock com-manding the corps & Gibbon comdg the div, a splendid officer, being both wounded. Our lines were something of this form.

The field was mostly open where we all were with scarcely a perceptible rise, comanded by the rebel side, on the centre a little wooded still better commanded by the rebel side, on the right, I am told, wooded & rocky, both parties contending for the slopes towards us. The mountains facing our left were out of cannon range. On the right they were not, but I am told, of such a nature that the rebels could have only got so little artil-lery into position, that our superior number of batteries would soon have knocked them into pie, notwithstanding their com-manding hight, which accounts for what at first was very strange to me, why the rebs didn’t shell us out, since the hights near the right center commanded the entire field around the centre, where it is very narrow. Moreover our line of retreat was so narrow that it was easy, if our left was turned to cut us off from it. Had the rebels driven in our left (they twice tried it & I have told you how near they came to it,) it would have been all up with us. The advantages of our position were that the comdg. general could over look almost the whole line, a rare thing in this country, & that moving on the chord of the circle while the enemy moved on the arc, we could reinforce any part of the line from any other part much quicker than

Henry Livermore A bbott

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44 Last Full Measure of Devotion

they could, an advantage which Meade availed himself of ad-mirably in the first day’s rebel attack, but which their shell fire prevented him from doing in the second day’s. In person, Meade is a tall, thin lantern-jawed respectable covey, wearing spectacles, looking a good sort of a family doctor. Uncle John Sedgewick, as have most other of our good officers, long ago told us that McClellan was the first choice, Franklin the 2nd, & Meade the 3rd. An extremely good officer you see, with no vanity or nonsense of any kind, knowing just exactly what he could do & what he couldn’t. Our troops were so elated by the removal of Hooker, both Generals, line officers & men, & by the feeling that they were on their own soil, that perhaps they deserve fully as much credit as the generalship of Meade. I dont know however. I am afraid Meade would hardly have conducted an invasion into Va. as well.

I find I am getting a good deal longer than I meant to be, so I will conclude with asking you to thank mama for the things she sent. Wm Kelly was delighted & the tobacco for me came just when I was starting on the march without any. You can imagine what a godsend it was.

I suppose you have all been suffering a great deal of anxiety, but how thankful you must be now that certainty doesn’t bring you the same grief that the Ropes family have. God grant we may have no bad news from Fletcher. My love of course to all the family including George & Mary Welch. Tell them to be sure & write how John is. We miss him terribly.

Your aff. son,H. L. Abbott

I have had no mail since leaving Falmouth.

“not a m an f l inched”: sout h c a rolina, july 1863

Lewis Douglass to Amelia Loguen

Union troops landed on Morris Island in Charleston Harbor on July 10 and made an unsuccessful attack the next day on Fort Wagner at the island’s northern end. A week later the 54th Massachusetts Infan-try, the first black regiment raised by a northern state, led a column of 5,000 men in another assault on the fort. The July 18 attack cost the 54th Massachusetts 272 men killed, wounded, or captured, more than two-fifths of the regiment. Among the survivors was Sergeant Major Lewis Douglass, Frederick Douglass’s eldest son, who wrote about the battle to Amelia Loguen, his future wife.

Morris Island. S. C. July 20My Dear Amelia: I have been in two fights, and am unhurt. I am about to go in another I believe to-night. Our men fought well on both occasions. The last was desperate we charged that terrible battery on Morris Island known as Fort Wagoner, and were repulsed with a loss of 300 killed and wounded. I escaped unhurt from amidst that perfect hail of shot and shell. It was terrible. I need not particularize the pa-pers will give a better than I have time to give. My thoughts are with you often, you are as dear as ever, be good enough to remember it as I no doubt you will. As I said before we are on the eve of another fight and I am very busy and have just snatched a moment to write you. I must necessarily be brief. Should I fall in the next fight killed or wounded I hope to fall with my face to the foe.

If I survive I shall write you a long letter. DeForrest of your city is wounded George Washington is missing, Jacob Carter is missing, Chas Reason wounded Chas Whiting, Chas Creamer all wounded. The above are in hospital.

This regiment has established its reputation as a fighting regiment not a man flinched, though it was a trying time. Men fell all around me. A shell would explode and clear a space of twenty feet, our men would close up again, but it was no use

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46 Last Full Measure of Devotion

we had to retreat, which was a very hazardous undertaking. How I got out of that fight alive I cannot tell, but I am here. My Dear girl I hope again to see you. I must bid you farewell should I be killed. Remember if I die I die in a good cause. I wish we had a hundred thousand colored troops we would put an end to this war. Good Bye to all Your own loving

Write soonLEWIS

pennsy lva ni a , november 1863

Abraham Lincoln: Address at Gettysburg

November 19, 1863

In the immediate aftermath of the battle of Gettysburg, Union sol-diers and local civilians hastily buried the bodies of about 7,000 men and burned the carcasses of more than 3,000 horses and mules. David Wills, a prominent Gettysburg lawyer, was appointed by Governor Andrew G. Curtin to arrange for the proper reburial of Pennsylvania’s soldiers. In late July Wills proposed to Curtin that the Union dead be reburied in a new national cemetery at Gettysburg, a plan eventually supported by the seventeen northern states that had lost men in the battle. On November 2 Wills officially invited President Lincoln to the dedication ceremony and asked him to “formally set apart these grounds to their Sacred use by a few appropriate remarks.” Lincoln agreed, and delivered his dedicatory address to an audience of 15,000 to 20,000 people on November 19 following a two-hour oration by Edward Everett. The text printed here is his final version, prepared in the spring of 1864 for facsimile reproduction in Autograph Leaves of Our Country’s Authors, a book published in Baltimore to raise funds for the U.S. Sanitary Commission.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedi-cated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that na-tion might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world

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will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remain-ing before us—that from these honored dead we take in-creased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

“a nd y et we must go on”: v irginia , january 1864

Judith W. McGuire: Diary, January 1, 1864

Judith W. McGuire and her husband, John P. McGuire, the principal of the Episcopal High School of Virginia, had fled their home in Al-exandria in May 1861 when the town was occupied by Union troops. In February 1862 the McGuires settled in Richmond, where she later found work as a clerk in the Confederate commissary department. On New Year’s Day she wrote in her diary about Lieutenant Colonel Raleigh T. Colston, the son of her sister, Sarah Jane Brockenbrough Colston. The commander of the 2nd Virginia Infantry, Colston had his left leg amputated below the knee after being shot at Payne’s Farm on November 27, 1863, during the Mine Run campaign.

January 1, 1864.—A melancholy pause in my diary. After returning from church on the night of the 18th, a telegram was handed me from Professor Minor, of the University of Vir-ginia, saying, “Come at once, Colonel Colston is extremely ill.” After the first shock was over, I wrote an explanatory note to Major Brewer, why I could not be at the office next day, packed my trunk, and was in the cars by seven in the morning. That evening I reached the University, and found dear R. des-perately ill with pneumonia, which so often follows, as in the case of General Jackson, the amputation of limbs. Surgeons Davis and Cabell were in attendance, and R’s uncle, Dr. Brock-enbrough, arrived the next day. After ten days of watching and nursing, amid alternate hopes and fears, we saw our friend Dr. Maupin close our darling’s eyes, on the morning of the 23d; and on Christmas-day, a military escort laid him among many brother soldiers in the Cemetery of the University of Virginia. He died in the faith of Christ, and with the glorious hope of immortality. His poor mother is heart-stricken, but she, to-gether with his sisters, and one dearer still, had the blessed, and what is now the rare privilege, of soothing and nursing him in his last hours. To them, and to us all, his life seemed as

5150 Last Full Measure of Devotion Judith W. McGuire

a part of our own. His superior judgment and affectionate temper made him the guide of his whole family. To them his loss can never be supplied. His country has lost one of its earli-est and best soldiers. Having been educated at the Virginia Military Institute, he raised and drilled a company in his native County of Berkeley, at the time of the John Brown raid. In 1861 he again led that company to Harper’s Ferry. From that time he was never absent more than a week or ten days from his command, and even when wounded at Gaines’s Mills, he absented himself but three days, and was again at his post dur-ing the several last days of those desperate fights. His fatal wound was received in his nineteeth general engagement, in none of which had he his superior in bravery and devotion to the cause. He was proud of belonging to the glorious Stone-wall Brigade, and I have been told by those who knew the cir-cumstances, that he was confided in and trusted by General Jackson to a remarkable degree.

Thus we bury, one by one, the dearest, the brightest, the best of our domestic circles. Now, in our excitement, while we are scattered, and many of us homeless, these separations are poignant, nay, overwhelming; but how can we estimate the sadness of heart which will pervade the South when the war is over, and we are again gathered together around our family hearths and altars, and find the circles broken? One and an-other gone. Sometimes the father and husband, the beloved head of the household, in whom was centred all that made life dear. Again the eldest son and brother of the widowed home, to whom all looked for guidance and direction; or, perhaps, that bright youth, on whom we had not ceased to look as still a child, whose fair, beardless cheek we had but now been in the habit of smoothing with our hands in fondness—one to whom mother and sisters would always give the good-night kiss, as his peculiar due, and repress the sigh that would arise at the thought that college or business days had almost come to take him from us. And then we will remember the mixed feeling of hope and pride when we first saw this household pet don his jacket of gray and shoulder his musket for the field; how we would be bright and cheerful before him, and turn to our chambers to weep oceans of tears when he is fairly gone. And does he, too, sleep his last sleep? Does our precious one fill a

hero’s grave? O God! help us, for the wail is in the whole land! “Rachel weeping for her children, and will not be comforted, because they are not.” In all the broad South there will be scarcely a fold without its missing lamb, a fireside without its vacant chair. And yet we must go on. It is our duty to rid our land of invaders; we must destroy the snake which is endeav-ouring to entwine us in its coils, though it drain our heart’s blood. We know that we are right in the sight of God, and that we must

“With patient mind our course of duty run.God nothing does, or suffers to be done,But we would do ourselves, if we could seeThe end of all events as well as He.”

The Lord reigneth, be the earth never so unquiet.

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Walt Whitm an

“he behaved so br ave”: wa shington, d .c . , m ay 1865

Walt Whitman: from Specimen Days

Walt Whitman left Brooklyn and traveled to northern Virginia in De-cember 1862 when he learned that his brother George had been wounded at Fredericksburg. After discovering that his brother’s wound was slight, Whitman accompanied a group of wounded soldiers to Washington. He stayed in the capital for most of the remainder of the war, visiting military hospitals while working as a government clerk. In Specimen Days (1882) Whitman printed a letter he wrote to the mother of a soldier who had been wounded near Petersburg.

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Biographical Notes

Henry Livermore Abbott (January 21, 1842–May 6, 1864) Born in Lowell, Massachusetts, the son of a lawyer active in Democratic poli-tics. Graduated from Harvard College in 1860 and began studying law in his father’s office. Commissioned second lieutenant, 20th Mas-sachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment, July 10, 1861. Formed close friendship with his fellow officer Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. Fought at Ball’s Bluff. Promoted to first lieutenant, November 1861. Fought at Fair Oaks and in the Seven Days’ Battles, where he was wounded in the arm at Glendale. Older brother Edward killed at Cedar Moun-tain. Fought at Fredericksburg (December 1862 and May 1863) and Gettysburg; promoted to captain, December 1862, and major, Octo-ber 1863. Became acting commander of the 20th Massachusetts after all of the regimental officers senior to him were killed or wounded at Gettysburg. Led the regiment at Briscoe Station and fought at Mine Run and at the battle of the Wilderness, where he was fatally wounded on May 6, 1864.

Sullivan Ballou (March 28, 1827–July 28, 1861) Born in Smithfield, Rhode Island, the son of a merchant tailor. Educated at Brown Uni-versity and the National Law School in Ballston Spa, New York. Ad-mitted to Rhode Island bar in 1853 and began practice in Woon socket. Served as clerk of the Rhode Island house of representatives, 1854–56. Married Sarah Hart Shumway in 1855. Served in the Rhode Island house of representatives, 1857–59. Unsuccessful Republican candidate for state attorney general, April 1861. Commissioned as major of 2nd Rhode Island Infantry, June 11, 1861. Hit by cannon shot at First Battle of Bull Run, July 21, 1861, and had leg amputated. Died of wounds at Sudley, Virginia, a week after the battle.

Sallie Brock (March 18, 1831–March 22, 1911) Born Sarah Ann Brock in Madison County, Virginia, the daughter of a hotel owner. Moved with her family to Richmond in 1858. Began working as a tutor in King and Queen County, Virginia, in 1860, but returned to Richmond in 1861 and remained there for the duration of the war. Moved to New York City in 1865. Published Richmond During the War: Four Years of Personal Obser-vations (1867). Edited The Southern Amaranth (1869), collection of po-etry about the Confederacy and the war, and published a novel, Kenneth, My King (1873). Married Richard F. Putnam in 1882. Died in Brooklyn.

Biographical Notes

Emily Dickinson (December 10, 1830–May 15, 1886) Born in Am-herst, Massachusetts, the daughter of a lawyer. Attended Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in South Hadley, Massachusetts, 1847–48. Returned to family home and lived there for the remainder of her life, rarely leaving except for trips to Washington, D.C., where her father served in Congress as a Whig, 1853–55, to Philadelphia in 1855, and to Boston and Cambridge in 1864–65. Composed over 1,700 brief lyric poems, most intensively in the years 1859–65; only a few were pub-lished during her lifetime, primarily in the Springfield Daily Republi-can, most without her consent and in heavily edited form. Initiated correspondence in April 1862 with writer, reformer, and abolitionist Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who later commanded the 1st South Carolina Volunteers, the first black regiment in the Union army. They exchanged letters for more than twenty years. In later years she rarely left her house. Fell ill in June 1884, and never fully recovered. Died in Amherst.

Lewis Douglass (October 9, 1840–September 19, 1908) Born in New Bedford, Massachusetts, oldest son of abolitionist Frederick Douglass and Anna Murray Douglass. Moved with family in 1848 to Rochester, New York, where he attended public schools and later worked as a printer for Frederick Douglass’ Paper and Douglass’ Monthly. Along with his brother Charles, enlisted in the 54th Mas-sachusetts Infantry in March 1863. Promoted to sergeant major in April. Fought at Fort Wagner. Given medical discharge on May 10, 1864, after months of illness. Moved to Denver, Colorado, with brother Frederick in 1866 and worked as secretary for a mining company. Returned east in 1869 to work in the Government Print-ing Office in Washington, D.C. Married Amelia Loguen in 1869. Assisted father in editing and publishing weekly Washington newspa-per The New National Era, 1870–74. Served on legislative council for the District of Columbia, 1872–73, and as assistant U.S. marshal for the District, 1877–81. Began successful real estate business. Died in Washington.

Catherine Edmondston (October 10, 1823–January 3, 1875) Born Catherine Ann Devereux in Halifax County, North Carolina, the daughter of a plantation owner. Married Patrick Edmondston in 1846. Lived on Looking Glass, plantation in Halifax County. Pub-lished pamphlet The Morte d’Arthur: Its Influence on the Spirit and Manners of the Nineteenth Century (1872), in which she accused the Union army of barbarism. Died in Raleigh.

Samuel J. English Enlisted for three years in the 2nd Rhode Island Infantry at Providence in June 1861. Fought at First Bull Run in July

5756 Last Full Measure of Devotion

1861. Promoted to second lieutenant, November 1861, first lieuten-ant, July 1862, and captain, February 1863. Served as company com-mander before mustering out in June 1864.

Samuel W. Fiske (July 23, 1828–May 22, 1864) Born in Shelburne, Massachusetts. Graduated from Amherst College in 1848. Taught school, studied for three years at the Andover Theological Seminary, then returned to Amherst in 1853 as a tutor. Traveled in Europe and the Middle East. Published Dunn Browne’s Experiences in Foreign Parts (1857), travel letters written to the Springfield Republican under a nom de plume. Became pastor of the Congregational church in Madison, Connecticut, in 1857. Married Elizabeth Foster in 1858. Be-came second lieutenant in the 14th Connecticut Infantry in August 1862. Signing himself Dunn Browne, wrote weekly letters to the Springfield Republican describing campaigns and camp life (collected in 1866 under the title Mr. Dunn Browne’s Experiences in the Army). Served at Antietam and Fredericksburg. Promoted to captain in early 1863. Captured at Chancellorsville on May 3, 1863, he was paroled in late May and exchanged in June. Served at Gettysburg. Wounded in the battle of the Wilderness on May 6, 1864, and died in Fredericks-burg, Virginia.

Edward O. Guerrant (February 28, 1838–April 26, 1916). Born in Sharpsburg, Kentucky, the son of a physician. Graduated from Centre College in Danville, Kentucky, in 1860. Briefly attended Danville Seminary and taught school in Flat Creek. Enlisted as private in the Confederate 1st Battalion Kentucky Mounted Rifles at Gladesville, Virginia, in February 1862. Became clerk on staff of Brigadier General Humphrey Marshall, the Confederate commander in southwestern Virginia, and was commissioned as his assistant adjutant general in December 1862. Continued his staff duties under Marshall’s successors William Preston, John S. Williams, and John Hunt Morgan, serving in southwestern Virginia, eastern Kentucky, and northeastern Tennessee and seeing action in several engagements. Surrendered in eastern Ken-tucky in late April 1865. Studied medicine at Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia, and Bellevue Hospital, New York. Established medical practice in Mount Sterling, Kentucky, in 1867. Married Mary Jane DeVault in 1868. Entered Union Theological Seminary at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia in 1873 and was licensed as a Presbyterian preacher in 1875. Served as minister of the First Presbyterian Church in Louisville, 1879–82. Appointed by the Kentucky Synod in 1882 as evangelist to eastern Kentucky. Became minister of churches in Troy and Wilmore in 1885. Contributed two articles to the Century Maga-zine “Battles and Leaders of the Civil War” series. Helped establish

several schools in eastern Kentucky. Published Bloody Breathitt (1890), The Soul Winner (1896), Forty Years Among the Highlanders (1905), The Galax Gatherers: The Gospel among the Highlanders (1910), and The Gospel of the Lilies (1912). Founded the Inland Mission, also known as the Society of Soul Winners, in 1897 to continue evangelical work in Appalachia. Died in Douglas, Georgia.

Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809–April 15, 1865) Born near Hodgenville, Kentucky, the son of a farmer and carpenter. Family moved to Indiana in 1816 and to Illinois in 1830. Settled in New Salem, Illinois, and worked as a storekeeper, surveyor, and postmas-ter. Served as a Whig in the state legislature, 1834–41. Began law practice in 1836 and moved to Springfield in 1837. Married Mary Todd in 1842. Elected to Congress as a Whig and served from 1847 to 1849. Became a public opponent of the extension of slavery after the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854. Helped found the Re-publican Party of Illinois in 1856. Campaigned in 1858 for Senate seat held by Stephen A. Douglas and debated him seven times on the slavery issue; although the Illinois legislature reelected Douglas, the campaign brought Lincoln national prominence. Received Republi-can presidential nomination in 1860 and won election in a four-way contest; his victory led to the secession of seven southern states. Re-sponded to the Confederate bombardment of Fort Sumter by calling up militia, proclaiming the blockade of southern ports, and suspend-ing habeas corpus. Issued preliminary and final emancipation procla-mations on September 22, 1862, and January 1, 1863. Appointed Ulysses S. Grant commander of all Union forces in March 1864. Won reelection in 1864 by defeating Democrat George B. McClellan. Died in Washington, D.C., after being shot by John Wilkes Booth.

Judith W. McGuire (March 19, 1813–March 21, 1897) Born Judith White Brockenbrough near Richmond, Virginia, the daughter of a judge. Married John P. McGuire, an Episcopalian rector, in 1846. Moved to Alexandria in 1852 when husband became principal of the Episcopal High School of Virginia. Fled Alexandria in May 1861 and settled in Richmond in February 1862. Worked as a clerk in the Confederate commissary department, November 1863–April 1864. Published Diary of a Southern Refugee, During the War (1867). Kept a school with her husband in Essex County in the 1870s. Pub-lished General Robert E. Lee: The Christian Soldier (1873). Died in Richmond.

Herman Melville (August 1, 1819–September 28, 1891) Born in New York City, the son of a merchant. Educated at schools in New York City and in upstate New York. Worked as bank clerk, bookkeeper, and

Biographical Notes

5958 Last Full Measure of Devotion Biographical Notes

schoolteacher. Sailed for Pacific on whaling ship in 1841 and returned in 1844 on frigate United States. Published Typee (1846) and Omoo (1847), fictionalized accounts of his experiences in the South Seas. Married Elizabeth Shaw in 1847. Published Mardi (1849), Redburn (1849), White-Jacket (1850), Moby-Dick (1851), Pierre; or, The Ambi-guities (1852), Israel Potter (1855), The Piazza Tales (1856), and The Confidence-Man (1857). Visited Union lines in Virginia in spring 1864. Published poetry collection Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War (1866). Worked as customs inspector in New York City, 1866–85. Published long poem Clarel (1876) and two small books of poetry, John Marr and Other Sailors (1888) and Timoleon (1891). Died in New York City, leaving Billy Budd, Sailor, in manuscript.

Matthew M. Miller (November 28, 1840–1918) Born in Galena, Illinois. Attended Yale College but left school to enlist as a private in the 45th Illinois Volunteers. Fought at Shiloh. Promoted to first lieutenant, June 1862, and became captain of Company I, 9th Loui-siana (African Descent) Infantry, November 1862. Fought at Mil-liken’s Bend. Mustered out in May 1865. Returned to Illinois and practiced law. Married Anna Florence Woodbury in Boston in 1873. Moved to Kansas, where he died.

Ira S. Owens (March 1, 1830–February 19, 1913) Born in Greene County, Ohio. Enlisted in October 1861 from Xenia, Ohio, in the 74th Ohio Infantry as a private. Wounded in the left leg on De-cember 31, 1862, at battle of Stones River (Murfreesboro), his only engagement. Reenlisted in January 1864, promoted to corporal, January 1865, and discharged in July 1865. Resumed farming in Montgomery County, Ohio. Later became a merchant and pub-lic notary. Published Greene County in the War (1872) and Greene County Soldiers in the Late War (1884). Died in Dayton, Ohio.

Taylor Peirce (July 20, 1822–November 21, 1901) Born in Chester County, Pennsylvania. Married Catharine Milner in York County, Pennsylvania, in 1846. Traveled to Iowa to trade with Fox and Sac Indians. Became farm laborer in Iowa in 1850. Enlisted in 22nd Iowa Infantry at Newton in August 1862 and became sergeant in Com-pany C. Served in southern Missouri, in the Vicksburg campaign, and in southern Louisiana and coastal Texas. Sent with regiment to the Shenandoah Valley in August 1864 and fought at Winchester and Cedar Creek. Served with regiment on garrison duty at Savan-nah, Georgia, and Morehead City, North Carolina, in winter and spring of 1865. Returned after the war to Des Moines, Iowa, where his wife died in 1867. Served as city clerk of Des Moines, 1871–79, and city auditor, 1874–77. Married Eliza Ann Van Horn in 1873.

After 1879 worked in grain business and in a plow factory. Died in Des Moines.

Walt Whitman (May 31, 1819–March 26, 1892) Born in Huntington Township, New York, the son of a farmer and carpenter. Moved with family to Brooklyn in 1823. Learned printing trade at Brooklyn news-papers. Taught school on Long Island, 1836–38. Became freelance journalist and printer in New York and Brooklyn. Published first edi-tion of Leaves of Grass in 1855 (revised editions appeared in 1856, 1860, 1867, 1870, 1881, and 1891). Traveled to northern Virginia in Decem-ber 1862 after learning that his brother George had been wounded at Fredericksburg. Became volunteer nurse in Washington, D.C., army hospitals. Published Drum-Taps and Sequel to Drum-Taps in 1865. Worked as clerk at the Interior Department, 1865, and the office of the attorney general, 1865–73. Published prose recollections of his war experiences in Memoranda During the War (1875) and Specimen Days and Collect (1882). Died in Camden, New Jersey.

Chronology 61

60

Chronology, 1860–1865

1860 Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln wins presidentialelection, November 6, defeating Stephen Douglas (North-ern Democratic), John C. Breckinridge (Southern Demo-cratic), and John Bell (Constitutional Union). Lincolnreceives 180 out of 303 electoral votes, all of them from freestates. South Carolina convention votes to secede from theUnion, December 20.

1861 Conventions in Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia,Louisiana, and Texas vote to secede, January 9–February 1.Delegates meet in Montgomery, Alabama, and elect Jeffer-son Davis provisional president of the Confederate States ofAmerica, February 8. Lincoln is inaugurated, March 4.Confederates open fire on Fort Sumter in Charleston,South Carolina, April 12. Lincoln calls forth 75,000 militia,April 15. Virginia votes to secede, April 17. Lincoln pro-claims blockade of southern ports, April 19. Arkansas, Ten-nessee, and North Carolina join the Confederacy, May6–20. Confederates win battle of Manassas (Bull Run) inVirginia, July 21. Davis is elected without opposition to six-year term, November 6.

1862 Ulysses S. Grant captures Fort Donelson, Tennessee, Feb-ruary 16. Confederate defeat at Pea Ridge in northwesternArkansas, March 7–8, secures Union control of Missouri.Grant wins battle of Shiloh in southeastern Tennessee,April 6–7. Union navy captures New Orleans, April 25.Robert E. Lee defeats Union army outside of Richmond,Virginia, June 25–July 1, and wins second battle of Manas-sas, August 28–30. Battle of Antietam, September 17, endsLee’s invasion of Maryland. Lincoln issues preliminaryEmancipation Proclamation, September 22, to take effect inall territory still in rebellion on January 1, 1863. Battle ofPerryville, October 8, ends Confederate invasion of Ken-tucky. Lee defeats Union army at Fredericksburg, Virginia,December 13. Battle of Stones River (Murfreesboro) beginsin central Tennessee, December 31.

1863 Lincoln issues Emancipation Proclamation, January 1, free-ing all slaves in Confederate-held territory and authorizingenlistment of blacks in the Union army. Battle of StonesRiver ends, January 2, with Confederate retreat. Grantcrosses Mississippi River, April 30, beginning campaign totake Vicksburg. Lee defeats Union army in Virginia in bat-tle of Chancellorsville, May 1–4. Grant begins siege ofVicksburg, May 22. Lee is defeated at Gettysburg, Pennsyl-vania, July 1–3. Confederate army at Vicksburg surrendersto Grant, July 4. Victory at Port Hudson, Louisiana, July9, gives Union control of entire Mississippi River. Confed-erates win battle of Chickamauga in northern Georgia,September 19–20, and besiege Union army in Chattanooga,Tennessee. Lincoln gives address at Gettysburg, November19. Grant defeats Confederates at Chattanooga, November23–25.

1864 Grant is named commander of the Union armies, March10, and begins spring campaign in Virginia, May 4. Lee andGrant fight battle of the Wilderness, May 5–6. William T.Sherman begins Union campaign in northern Georgia,May 7. Grant and Lee fight at Spotsylvania, May 8–20, andCold Harbor, May 31–June 12, as Union army moves closerto Richmond. After crossing James River, Grant attacks Pe-tersburg, Virginia, June 15–18, then begins prolonged siege.Sherman captures Atlanta, September 2. Lincoln defeatsDemocratic candidate General George B. McClellan, No-vember 8, winning 212 of 233 electoral votes. Shermanleaves Atlanta, November 16, and begins march throughGeorgia. Union victory at Nashville, December 15–16, endsConfederate invasion of Tennessee. Sherman occupies Sa-vannah, December 21.

1865 Congress proposes Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitu-tion abolishing slavery, January 31. Sherman begins marchthrough the Carolinas, February 1. Lincoln delivers his Sec-ond Inaugural Address, March 4. Sherman reaches Golds-boro, North Carolina, March 23. Grant assaults Confederatelines at Petersburg, April 2, forcing evacuation of Richmond.Lee surrenders to Grant at Appomattox Court House, Vir-ginia, April 9. Lincoln is shot, April 14, and dies, April 15; VicePresident Andrew Johnson becomes president. RemainingConfederate armies surrender, April 26–May 26. Ratification

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62 Last Full Measure of Devotion

Questions for Discussion

1. During the Civil War Americans encountered violent death onan unprecedented scale. How did they attempt to make senseof this experience? ?

2. Do the descriptions of burial in the Sallie Brock, Samuel W.Fiske, and Ira S. Owens selections make the suffering and deathof the war more immediate? Do you think Americans duringthe Civil War were more open and candid about wartimedeath, mutilation, and suffering than we are now?

3. What meanings did Catherine Edmondston and Edward O.Guerrant find in the death of Stonewall Jackson?

4. In This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American CivilWar (2008) historian Drew Gilpin Faust writes about the influ-ential role of the “Good Death” in mid-nineteenth-centuryAmerican culture, in which it was hoped that a loved onewould die surrounded by family and sustained by Christianfaith, with an awareness and acceptance of the imminence ofdeath and an opportunity to say meaningful last words. Do anyof the deaths described in this reader conform to the “GoodDeath” described by Faust?

5. Henry Livermore Abbott wrote that at Gettysburg the 20thMassachusetts was “cheering like mad” as it “bowled”approaching Confederate troops “over like nine pins.” Do theselections in this reader suggest that the death they witnessedmade Civil War soldiers reluctant to kill?

6. President Lincoln gave the Gettysburg Address to honor theUnion soldiers who died there, and proposed that “a new birthof freedom” would ensure that those “who gave their lives” sothat the “nation might live” would not “have died in vain.”Did the Confederate soldiers who died at Gettysburg (andeverywhere else during the war) die in vain?

of the Thirteenth Amendment is declared, December 18. Atleast 360,000 Union soldiers, 260,000 Confederate soldiers,and 50,000 civilians were killed or died from disease, hunger,and exposure during the war.

7. How does reading these firsthand accounts affect your sense ofthe purpose and meaning of the war? Does it change how youunderstand the role of individuals—their words and actions—in historical events? What are the differences between explor-ing the war through participant accounts and reading ahistorical narrative of the same events?

8. What did you find most surprising or unexpected about thesewritings?

9. Choosing one of the pieces, what do you think was theauthor’s purpose for writing it? Do you think it achieves itspurpose? How might the act of writing it have helped theauthor to make sense of his or her experience of the Civil War?

10. How are the experiences of the Civil War reflected in the lan-guage, tone, attitude, and style of the writing?

64 Last Full Measure of Devotion