A Letter From Antietam Creek

Today, the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Antietam, is a day of reflection for many. We all know the battle's significance - it was the bloodiest single day in American history and the Union victory provided Lincoln with a much needed military success prior to issuing the Emancipation Proclamation. 22,000 fell dead or wounded and the battle changed the nature of the war. Roll that over in your mind.

But rather than offer my analysis on this day - as so many others are likely to do, I thought a soldier's reflections on the battle would be better. I came across this letter on an antique store website - I do not know the author. The sentiments expressed are typical. He thanks God for sparing his life, expresses patriotism, and tries to explain to his sister, who cannot possibly understand battle, that war is a serious business.

Campaign
The Field
Antietam Creek
Md
Sept 22nd,1862

Dear Sister -

                    I have just been through two hard fought battles and God has spared my life and again permitted me once more to again seat myself enjoying the same good health that I have ever enjoyed since I enlisted to write once more to you and I take great pleasure in so doing.  We have been in camp for two or three days resting from our hard marching and fighting.  We have had hard fare, nothing to eat while marching but hard tacks and water.  I tell you I am good for it I have stood it first rate.  I tell you what good courage and love of country will keep a man up a good while after he thinks he can do no more.  And after giving the rebels such a whipping as they have got on the Sacred Soil of Maryland I dont think we ought to disprond.  Still I feel bad to think of the lives that have been lost - and the many homes made desolate by the two late battles in which our regiment as well as others have been engage in But - I have been spared through them both without a scratch and I feel thankful to God for his great goodness in thus saving my life when it did not seem as though many of us could live to get out of it - I have thought it over a great deal and I have thought I should live to come back and with your help I hope it may be so but - still we cannot tell how it will be.  There is some talk that our regiment is agoing back to Washington to drill some more but I dont believe it for our regiment got a good deal of praise with the rest from Gen Sturgis who said the carrying of Antietam Bridge saved the battle of last Wednesday and covered our troops with glory.  But I think in the first battle that we were engaged on Sunday the 14th of Sept - we have one thing to mourn for and that is in the death of so noble a man and officer as Gen Reno he was a man that feared no danger was ever ready to lead on his men to the charge and I think his loss will be greatly felt by our devision which he commanded he had only passed through our Co and gone a little way before was killed.  I write Father a good long letter telling him all about the late battles that we have been engaged in and if he receives it I dont think it would be worth a while to tell it over again although perhaps there are many things I could not tell you in writing for the want of room and time to do it.  I believe I did not tell Father that our Lt Col was wounded in the shoulder not very bad though

Not exactly a sweeping narrative invoking the "crossroads of freedom" theme, but a valuable letter nonetheless.

K

 

 

A Gruesome Relic

Greetings Cosmic Americans!

In an effort to keep up to date with all the Civil War related news, I keep an "American Civil War" Google News search bookmarked - and check it frequently. Events from reenactments to anniversaries to hot-topic debates come up. From time to time, the strange, and yes, gruesome story makes its appearance. This recent article, reporting on a severed arm found in the Sharpsburg area, dominated the other images in a rather macabre fashion.

People come across relics all the time - both by legal means and otherwise - shell fragments, bullets, buttons, buckles, even trash. From time to time, one might stumble upon a bone fragment (as I did once in Shiloh). But according to the article, it is extremely rare to find human remains with the skin intact. This limb in particular had been buried in a field...then stored in a barrel of brine. Specialists are now working to see if this limb is indeed a Civil War relic - perhaps once attached to a soldier who suffered his horrible dismemberment at the Battle of Antietam - one of the over 22,000 killed and wounded on September 17, 1862. Should any more news surface, I will keep you posted.

Peace,

Keith

What is Your Favorite Civil War Battlefield?

[caption id="attachment_1553" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="The Union line on Cemetery Ridge"][/caption]

Greetings Cosmic Americans!

I will never miss a chance to go to Gettysburg. I love it there...I really do. And here's why. For a historian who focuses on Civil War memory, Gettysburg is sort of like the remembrance epicenter. Veterans of the war certainly saw it that way - in the decades following the war, they flocked there to walk in their 1863 footsteps, hold reunions, and dedicate monuments.

Former soldiers from both sides emphasized the "turning point" theme - a problematic issue to be sure, but one that they seemed eager to employ in speeches and monument dedications. The overwhelming number of monuments on the field today were dedicated by Union veterans. Reading through the thousands of monument inscriptions leaves one with little doubt that the preservation of Union was paramount. For those who wish to peel back a few layers of Civil War memory, there are many speech transcriptions available in the Gettysburg archives (and elsewhere) that accent emancipation - a cause veterans celebrated with often equal importance.

If you are lucky, you can make the time here to walk out on the battlefield when all the tourists have gone back to their hotels for the evening. I did this very thing back in late June. I managed to find myself all alone on the Union line (at the Pennsylvania monument) shortly after the sun went down. With no other human in sight, I heard a group of visitors off in the distance shouting a few huzzahs. It was a Civil War moment like none other.

The town of Gettysburg is worth the visit as well. Pretty much everything is built around the tourist industry, and it is likely that you will run across a number of people in period dress just walking around. I like to strike up conversations with these folks just to see what they are up to - and to find out what they find most compelling about the Civil War era. You will discover that most are very happy to tell you.

A close second on my list of must-see battlefields is Shiloh. Now this is a completely different experience. The field is much more isolated from civilization, as it were, and there will generally be fewer visitors stomping around...especially if you choose to visit on

[caption id="attachment_1566" align="alignright" width="144" caption="The Alabama monument at Shiloh"][/caption]

a weekday in mid August or something. My advice is to brave the oppressive heat and humidity and have the battlefield pretty much to yourself. At Shiloh I can walk in the footsteps of my own Civil War ancestors who fought with the 16th Alabama infantry (Hardee's Corps). I know of one who was wounded there - Andrew Jackson Holbert. As the family legend goes, having enough of fighting, he walked home to Lawrence Country, Alabama after the battle to nurse his wound. Later he reenlisted (read: conscription caught up to the intrepid private Holbert) and wound up fighting with the 27th Alabama until the end of the war.

[caption id="attachment_1570" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="The Stonewall Jackson monument at Manassas"][/caption]

Of course, I enjoy myself whenever I visit any Civil War battlefield. Antietam and ColdHarbor rank high in my book. Manassas makes the short list too (two battles for the price of one!). Maybe it's because I like getting hopelessly lost for several hours in the Virginia heat with a limited water supply. Or maybe it's because I like the Stonewall equestrian monument - where both Jackson and his horse look like comic book super heroes (this is my wife, Coni's favorite).

I imagine you will have your own reasons for visiting a Civil War battlefield. I just say go whenever you get the chance.

Keith

Turning Points

Greetings Cosmic Americans!

One of the most useful tools for bloggers is something called Statcounter. Just in case you are not familiar with this free service, Statcounter is an invisible tracking service that you can configure to track just about anything that happens on your blog (or website). Where the hits came from, where they went, how long they were there, and what they searched for on Google (or whatever) to find you. It might seem a little obsessive to meticulously go over these stats every day. But really, the information gleaned from this site has really helped me tune Cosmic America to my liking.

Anyway....the reason I mention all of this is because the other day I noticed a few hits from someone who had done a Google search with this intriguing question: "Why was Gettysburg the turning point of the Civil War?" The phrasing is what caught my eye -  because the person asking presumed that Gettysburg was the turning point...as opposed to a turning point.  Suffice to say, Gettysburg was a significant battle in the overall scheme of things. It was the last time a major Confederate army advanced into United States territory and the Union victory greatly improved the morale of the loyal population in the North. But to suggest that Gettysburg was the turning point obscures the ebb and flow of prospects for victory for either side. The war was hardly a downhill ride for the Rebels from July 1863 on.

The notion of turning points is always a tricky matter. While is it tempting to view them, especially in the case of Gettysburg, as clear cut lines of delineation, in doing so we run the risk of falling into an ahistorical trap...that is, reading history backwards.

(sidebar: I once heard of a history class taught precisely this way. It began in the present...and worked backward to discover the origin of events. Honestly, I shuddered at the thought.)

Suggesting that Gettysburg (or Vicksburg or any other battle) was the turning point in the Civil War is is a sure-fired way to get it wrong. In fact, from our twenty-first century perspective, there were many turning points in the war. The ascendancy of Robert E. Lee in the early summer of 1862, the Battle of Antietam in the autumn of the same year. The fall of Atlanta in 1864. The reelection of Abraham Lincoln. The list goes on and on. We can point to any of these events and say with confidence: AHA! There it is! From this point the outcome of the war was set in stone. But we can only say that because we know how things turned out.

The point is, those in the ranks and on the homefront did not. Soldiers and citizens on both side sides had their doubts, their certainties, their hopes...and all of these could (and did) change with changing events.

James McPherson, in his Pulitzer Prize winning Battle Cry of Freedom warns against viewing the war as destined to end the way is did from any given point. His ideas regarding contingency illustrate that any number of things could have happened potentially changing the outcome of events. Meaning: the United States proving victorious at Gettysburg did not mean the war was over - not by a longshot. While McPherson in this regard provides a valuable lesson for Civil War students, I would caution nonetheless. Even esteemed historians can accent the battles and other events - providing a trajectory (contingency intact) of a steady movement toward Union victory and all that came with it. Contingency or not, a certain teleology bleeds through in Battle Cry. Nation, freedom...it almost seems foreordained from the onset.  There is an overall triumphal tone to his book, implying a progression toward the ultimate goal of victory and freedom. McPherson writes  always knowing what is at the end of the tunnel. He generally stresses the significance of contingency when it works in favor of the Union cause and Union victory, but does not give the same treatment to the Confederacy at Chancellorsville or Jubal Early’s shelling of Washington City in 1864, McPherson's work is strikingly similar in terms of the relationship between civilian morale and battlefield events…he concentrates on the tendency of northerners to steadily grow in support of things such as the Emancipation Proclamation.

And so we need to think carefully about turning points - or any events for that matter. What they mean to us...what they meant to those who lived through them - did they suspect that such turning of the tides were actually taking place? I have indeed looked at a number of soldiers' and civilians' letters and diaries written shortly after Gettysburg - from both sides. With a few exceptions (such as sensationalist newspaper headlines), I have seen scant trace of certain victory or certain defeat. Unionists were thrilled - Confederates were not...but the war dragged on.

Peace,

Keith