This Republic of Suffering (39 page)

35. J. C. Curtwright to Mr. and Mrs. Lovelace, April 24, 1862, in Lane, ed.,
Dear Mother,
p. 116. T. Fitzhugh to Mrs. Diggs, June 23, 1863, Captain William W. Goss File, 19th Virginia Infantry, CSA Collection, ESBL; Sallie Winfree to Mrs. Bobo, October 9, 1862, Henry Bobo Papers, CSA Collection, ESBL.

36. T. J. Hodnett quoted in Davidson, ed.,
War Was the Place,
pp. 80, 76–77; Walter Pharr,
Funeral Sermon on the Death of Capt. A. K. Simonton
(Salisbury, N.C.: J. J. Bruner, 1862), p. 11; Elijah Richardson Craven,
In Memoriam, Sermon and Oration…on the Occasion of the Death of Col. I. M. Tucker
(Newark, N.J.: Protection Lodge, 1862), pp. 5–6.

37. James B. Rogers,
War Pictures: Experiences and Observations of a Chaplain in the U.S. Army, in the War of the Southern Rebellion
(Chicago: Church & Goodman, 1863), p. 182; Guy R. Everson and Edward W. Simpson Jr.,
Far, Far from Home: The Wartime Letters of Dick and Talley Simpson,
3
rd South Carolina Volunteers
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 287; J. Monroe Anderson to the Sisters of Gen. Gregg, January 9, 1863, Maxcy Gregg Papers, SCL; John Weissert to Dearest Wife and Children, October 17, 1862, John Weissert Papers, Box 1, Correspondence Sept.–Oct. 1862, BHL. For a Catholic example of reading the body for signs of the state of the soul, see Sister Catherine to Father Patrick Reilly, December 5, 1862, Patrick Reilly Papers, PAHRC, which describes the death of Sister Bonaventure “with sweet peace and joy” and reports “the peace and calm of her soul was evident on her countenance.”

38. L. S. Bobo to Dear Uncle, July 7, 1862, August 14, 1862, Bobo Papers, CSA Collection, ESBL; Cadenhead, “Some Confederate Letters of I. B. Cadenhead,” p. 568; E. and E. Nash to Respected Nephews in Camp, November 11, 1862, Alpheus S. Bloomfield Papers, LC.

39. Frank Perry to J. Buchannon, September 21, 1862, in Lane, ed.,
Dear Mother,
p. 189.

40. Frank Batchelor to Dear Wife, in
Batchelor-Turner Letters:
1861–1864:
Written by Two of Terry's Texas Rangers,
annotated by H. J. H. Rugeley (Austin, Tex.: Steck Co., 1961), p. 80.

41. Sanford Branch to his mother, July 26, 1861, in Lane,
Dear Mother,
p. 36; Coco,
Killed in Action,
p. 91; Alonzo Hill,
In Memoriam. A Discourse…on Lieut. Thomas Jefferson Spurr
(Boston: J. Wilson, 1862); Davidson, ed.,
War Was the Place.
Chaplain Corby observed that nearly all men called to their mothers as they lay dying. This was enshrined in Civil War popular song: see, for example, Thomas MacKellar, “The Dying Soldier to His Mother” (New York: Charles Magnus, n.d.) Wolf 551, and C. A. Vosburgh, “Tell Mother, I Die Happy” (New York: Charles Magnus, n.d.), Wolf 2290. For a southern example, see Charles C. Sawyer, “Mother Would Comfort Me!” (Augusta, Ga.: Blackmar & Bro., 186–). There were so many songs written as messages to Mother from the battlefield that they began to generate parodies and satirical responses. See John C. Cross, “Mother on the Brain” (New York: H. De Marsan, n.d.), Wolf 1470, and Cross, “Mother Would Wallop Me” (New York: H. De Marsan, n.d.), Wolf 1437. All of these songs, except the southern example, are in the American Song Sheet Collection, LCP. See Chapter 6.

42. William W. Bennett,
A Narrative of the Great Revival Which Prevailed in the Southern Armies
(Philadelphia: Claxton, Remsen & Haffelfinger, 1877), pp. 243–44. T. Fitzhugh to Mrs. Diggs, June 23, 1863, Captain William W. Goss File, 19th Virginia Infantry, CSA Collection, ESBL. For a letter in almost identical language, see E. W. Rowe to J. W. Goss, December 16, 1863, CSA Collection, ESBL.

43. Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.,
Touched with Fire: Civil War Letters and Diary of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.,
1861–1864, ed. Mark DeWolfe Howe (New York: Da Capo Press, 1969), p. 27; Holmes, Civil War Diary, Harvard Law School Library, Harvard University.

44. A. D. Kirwan, ed.,
Johnny Green of the Orphan Brigade: The Journal of a Confederate Soldier
(Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1956), p. 37; David Cornwell, quoted in Earl J. Hess,
The Union Soldier in Battle: Enduring the Ordeal of Combat
(Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1997), p. 143.

45.
Army and Navy Messenger,
April 1, 1864, quoted in Berends, “Wholesome Reading,” p. 154. See also Fales Henry Newhall,
National Exaltation: The Duties of Christian Patriotism
(Boston: John M. Hewes, 1861); William Adams,
Christian Patriotism
(New York: A. D. F. Randolph, 1863); Joseph Fransioli,
Patriotism: A Christian Virtue
(New York: Loyal Publication Society, 1863). The last of these works is Catholic. Note the disapproval of Sister Matilda Coskey of the father who refuses to permit his wounded son to be baptized, arguing “he has served his country, fought her battles & that is enough—he has nothing to fear for his soul.” Sister Matilda Coskey to Father Patrick Reilly, October 18, 1864, Patrick Reilly Papers, PAHRC.

46. William Preston Johnston to Wade Hampton, November 3, 1864; James Connor to Wade Hampton, November 6, 1864, Wade Hampton Papers, ESBL; N. A. Foster to William K. Rash, 52nd North Carolina, CSA Collection, ESBL. For another discussion of gallantry, see Eleanor Damon Pace, ed., “The Diary and Letters of William P. Rogers, 1846–1862,”
Southwestern Historical Quarterly
32 (April 1929): 299.

47. George Barton,
Angels of the Battlefield
(Philadelphia: Catholic Art Publishing Co., 1897), p. 181.

48. Linderman makes this point about compulsion in
Embattled Courage,
p. 30; Smith, ed., “Notes on Satterlee,” pp. 433–34; Berends, “Wholesome Reading,” p. 137.

49. Hugh McLees to John, December 20, 1863, John McLees Papers, SCL; Berends, “Wholesome Reading,” p. 139, n21; Gache,
Frenchman,
164. On bad deaths, see also Ralph Houlbrooke,
Death, Religion and the Family,
p. 207.

50. Laderman,
Sacred Remains,
p. 99; Robert I. Alotta,
Civil War Justice: Union Army Executions Under Lincoln
(Shippensburg, Pa.: White Mane Press, 1989);
Charleston Mercury,
September 18, 1863; John Ripley Adams,
Memorial and Letters of John R. Adams, D.D.
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1890), p. 123; letters from Guilburton, September 4, 1863, and from Henry Robinson to his wife, both in Lane, ed.,
Dear Mother,
pp. 263–64, 107.

51. Corby,
Memoirs,
p. 248; Frances Milton Kennedy Diary, M-3008, entry for September 26, 1863, SHC. For examples of descriptions of executions, see Cooney, “War Letters of Father Peter Paul Cooney,” p. 57. On dying badly, see Edward Acton, “‘Dear Mollie': Letters of Captain Edward Acton to His Wife, 1862,” ed. Mary Acton Hammond,
Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography
89 ( January 1965): 28.

52. Robert Kenzer, “The Uncertainty of Life: A Profile of Virginia's Civil War Widows,” in Joan E. Cashin,
The War Was You and Me: Civilians in the American Civil War
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), p. 120; Clarke County Will Book E, 1860–67, pp. 129–30, Clarke County Courthouse, Berryville, Va.; Lane, ed.,
Dear Mother,
108. See N. Crosby, Financial Plans in Case of Death, GLC03046. N. Crosby to son, April 23, 1862, Gilder Lehrman Collection, The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, NYHS.

53. John Edwards, Noncuptative Will, April 3, 1862, dictated to Hill at the hospital of the 53rd Virginia Infantry regiment at Suffolk, VHS. Thanks to Frances Pollard for drawing my attention to this document.

54. Burns Newman to Mr. Shortell, May 24, 1864, Michael Shortell Papers, WHS. See also Disposition of Personal Effects of Dead Wisconsin Soldiers, 1863, Wisconsin Governor's Papers, WHS.

55.
Daily South Carolinian,
May 29, 1864. For other examples, see obituaries of W. W. Watts, August 23, 1864; H. L. Garlington, August 13, 1864; Milton Cox, August 9, 1862; Joseph Friedenberg, September 15, 1862, all in
Daily South Carolinian;
George Nichols in
Richmond Daily Whig,
December 24, 1862; Walter Matthews in
Richmond Daily Dispatch,
December 25, 1862; Isaac Valentine in
Charleston Daily Courier,
June 18, 1862; Thomas B. Hampton [March 1865] in Thomas B. Hampton Papers, CAH.

56. Roland C. Bowen to Friend Ainsworth, September 28, 1862, in Gregory A. Coco, ed.,
From Ball's Bluff to Gettysburg…and Beyond: The Civil War Letters of Private Roland E. Bowen,
15
th Massachusetts Infantry,
1861–1864 (Gettysburg, Pa.: Thomas Publications, 1994), p. 124.

57. Washington Davis, cited in Linderman,
Embattled Courage,
p. 241. On numbness see Drew Gilpin Faust,
“A Riddle of Death”: Mortality and Meaning in the American Civil War,
34th Annual Robert Fortenbaugh Memorial Lecture (Gettysburg, Pa.: Gettysburg College, 1995), p. 21.

58. Herman Melville, “The Armies of the Wilderness,” in Melville,
Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War
(New York: Harper & Brothers, 1866), p. 103.

CHAPTER 2. KILLING

1. Tolstoy quoted in Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman,
On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1995), p. ix; Orestes Brownson,
The Works of Orestes Brownson,
ed. Henry F. Brownson (Detroit: T. Nourse, 1882–87), vol. 17, p. 214.

2. Grossman,
On Killing,
p. xiv. See also Joanna Bourke,
An Intimate History of Killing: Face-to-Face Killing in Twentieth-Century Warfare
(New York: Basic Books, 1999).

3. Theophilus Perry, quoted in Randolph B. Campbell,
A Southern Community in Crisis: Harrison County, Texas,
1850–1880 (Austin: Texas State Historical Press, 1983), p. 239; [Mrs. Frances Blake Brockenbrough,]
A Mother's Parting Words to Her Soldier Boy
(Petersburg, Va.: Evangelical Tract Society, 186–), p. 3;
Confederate Baptist,
December 3, 1862; Knox Mellon Jr., ed., “Letters of James Greenalch,”
Michigan History
44 ( June 1960): 198–99;
Christian Recorder,
October 18, 1864.

4. Scott quoted in
Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper,
August 3, 1861, p. 178;T. Harry Williams, “The Military Leadership of the North and the South,” U.S. Air Force Academy, Harmon Memorial Lecture no. 2, 1960, p. 6, online at www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/usafa/harmon02.pdf.

5.
Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper,
May 18, 1861, p. 3. On baptism of fire, see also Joseph Allan Frank and George A. Reaves,
“Seeing the Elephant”: Raw Recruits at the Battle of Shiloh
(New York: Greenwood Press, 1989). The language of virginity was also often used to describe initiation into battle. See, for example, Creed Davis Diary, entry for May 11, 1864, VHS. On soldiers, killing, and religion, see also Reid Mitchell,
Civil War Soldiers
(New York: Viking, 1988), pp. 138–39.

6. Hugh McLees to John McLees, March 18, 1864, McLees Family Papers, SCL; Oliver Norton quoted in James I. Robertson Jr.,
Soldiers Blue and Gray
(Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1988), pp. 220–21.

7. “Sensations Before and During Battle,” clipping in George Bagby Scrapbook, 3:149, VHS; Charles Royster,
The Destructive War: William Tecumseh Sherman, Stonewall Jackson, and the Americans
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991), p. 279.

8. Byrd Charles Willis Journal, August 25, 1864, Diary Collection, ESBL. See T. I. McKenny to Earl Van Dorn, March 9, 1862, for description of federal dead being tomahawked and scalped in
The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies
(Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1883–1901), ser. I, vol. 8, p. 194; see report of Thomas Livermore of the Fifth New Hampshire at Antietam ordering his men to put on paint and leading them with a war whoop, James M. McPherson,
Crossroads of Freedom: Antietam
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 123.

9. Osmun Latrobe Diary, October 16, 1862, May 10, 1863, transcript at VHS, original in Latrobe Papers, MS 526, Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore. Redman quoted in Kent Masterson Brown,
Retreat from Gettysburg: Lee, Logistics, and the Pennsylvania Campaign
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005), p. 234. On love of killing, see Theodore Nadelson,
Trained to Kill: Soldiers at War
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), p. 72; Drew Gilpin Faust, “‘We Should Grow Too Fond of It': Why We Love the Civil War,”
Civil War History
50 (December 2004): 368; William Broyles, “Why Men Love War,”
Esquire,
November 1984, pp. 54–65; Bourke,
Intimate History of Killing,
p. 31; Earl J. Hess,
The Union Soldier in Battle: Enduring the Ordeal of Combat
(Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1997), pp. 92–93.

10. John W. De Forest,
A Volunteer's Adventures: A Union Captain's Record of the Civil War
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1946), pp. 111–12; Mills Lane, ed.,
“Dear Mother: Don't Grieve About Me. If I Get Killed, I'll Only Be Dead”: Letters from Georgia Soldiers in the Civil War
(Savannah, Ga.: Beehive Press, 1990), p. 156; Robertson,
Soldiers Blue and Gray,
220; William White, July, 13, 1862, William White Collection, PAHRC.

11. Henry Matrau, February 27, 1862, in Marcia Reid-Green, ed.,
Letters Home: Henry Matrau of the Iron Brigade
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1993), p. 20.

12. Bagby Scrapbook, vol. 2, p. 55, VHS. On comradeship as motivation to fight, see James M. McPherson,
For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).