Treasures of The Texas Collection
Texas and The Civil War
Script for KWBU-FM and Texas NPR Stations
By Van Darden
HOST (Mary Landon Darden)
The diaries, journals and letters kept by the men and women who lived during
the American Civil War are among the most dramatic and uncompromising
reads in Baylor University’s Texas Collection.
Austin freelance writer Van Darden sifted through the sands of those archives
to find some priceless treasures. And, he is here today to share some of the
most fascinating stories taken straight from the pens of those who survived
the infamous War Between the States.
Welcome, Van.
Van Darden
Thank you for having me.
Tell us what you found in your research on Texas and the Civil War.
WRITER (Van Darden)
There are literally thousands of pieces of paper at the Texas Collection dealing
with the Civil War. Some contain gripping accounts of battle-won bravery. Others
reflect private longings for a far-away love. Many are merely scattershot
collections of random thoughts, disjointed dates or cryptic codes – their meanings
lost to a century and a half of dying memories. Regardless, these un-edited, firsthand accounts make for compelling storytelling.
The American Civil War is known as one of the bloodiest eras in our collective
history. And while that’s certainly true, within that pain and loss there must
have been some better moments.
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Oh, absolutely. A member of General John Bell Hood’s famous Texas Brigade, a
Joseph Polley of Company F, Fourth Infantry, was stationed at a camp near
Fredericksburg, Virginia. He wrote letters to his “charming wife,” Nellie.
He tells one funny story in an April 5, 1862 letter to Nellie. A member of his
company, whom he named “Jack” in the letter, “disdainfully rejected the
munificent offer of the Confederate States Government” to furnish him with a
standard – if strictly military – five-dollar overcoat on credit. Instead, Jack spent
twenty-five dollars of his own money on a beautifully tailored coat “of a quality
and fashion to commend itself to the most fastidious aristocrat.”
The first night in camp, Jack wore his overcoat to sleep. The night was intensely
cold and the men gathered around a huge fire for the night. About midnight, Jack
was awakened by other members of their company to find his coat on fire, lit by a
stray coal. The pristine garment, he writes, was transformed into a nondescript and open in the back - apron, held together only by the collar.
The next morning, a crestfallen Jack tried to repair the damage by sewing the
burned edges together, but that heroic remedy rendered it impossible to button up
the front and kept him so busy during the day answering questions about it that
when night came he was too hoarse to talk.
That must have given the troops some much needed entertainment and was
probably a lesson in humility for “Jack.” Did any more amusing events like
that one pop up?
Yep. Robert Campbell, a member of Company A, in the Fifth Texas Infantry
Regiment, writes in his journal about a funny way soldiers kept camp.
His company was making camp near Richmond in the summer of 1862, after the
May 7 Battle at Eltham's Landing. It was hot, and camp conditions were miserable.
Campbell writes that soldiers mostly dedicated themselves to “skirmishing” – or
hunting “War bugs.” Today, we call them lice.
Yikes. I’m not sure we want to hear the details on the lice hunt, but perhaps
you could tell us about some of the other forms of entertainment?
Campbell also talked at length about what they did when they weren’t fighting
during those hot, humid months spent in the swamps outside of Richmond. Within
about two weeks after setting up camp, no less than four gambling tents had been
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established, all devoted to the soldier’s favorite card game: poker. “When we won
money,” he writes, “rest assured we spent it well.” Campbell said the men founded
a black market network for food and other essentials, and poker winnings were
often spent on fresh vegetables, butter, milk, chickens, turkeys or eggs. The going
rate for a pound of butter in a Confederate soldier’s camp in 1862? One dollar.
Chickens were a dollar-fifty apiece.
What about some of the famous Generals that led during the Civil War.
Well, given the Texas Collection’s nature, there are not a lot of documents about
Union soldiers. Most of the Civil War-related materials deal with the Confederacy
and its soldiers and generals, the most famous of whom is, naturally, Robert E.
Lee.
In another letter to Nellie, Joseph Polley tells a story on Lee, who was, of course,
enormously popular among Confederate soldiers. They loved him enough to die
for him unquestioningly. The story Polley tells takes place during the bloody Battle
of the Wilderness in May of 1864. Both sides had taken heavy losses, with Union
General Ulysses S. Grant entrenched in battle against weary Confederate forces.
Ultimately, after days of fighting, 12,000 men from Lt. Gen. James Longstreet’s
First Corps finished their 25-mile hike to the battlefront. Exuberant that
Confederate reinforcements had arrived, Lee attempted to lead the 800-man Texas
Brigade against the Union line. He galloped up on his famous dapple-gray horse,
Traveler. The Yanks are only 300 yards away.
He gives his orders to General Gragg to advance: "The Texas Brigade always has
driven the enemy, and I expect them to do it today!"
Gragg wheels on his horse and orders the Texas Brigade forward.
Just then, Lee -- still trying see through the smoke and trees -- rides up on the Fifth
Texas, as if intending to lead the charge into the Union ranks himself.
Because he was so loved and generals like Lee were too valuable to risk on the
front lines, a roar immediately went up from the Texans. They are shocked that
their beloved general has put himself in harms’ way. One Texan leapt up, grabbed
Traveler's reins and led him to safety, just as a barrage of gunfire splintered the
trees and shook the ground beneath them.
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All the while, the Texans are shouting, “Lee to the rear! Lee to the rear!”
So, during this time, what was happening on the home front back here in
Texas?
Well, despite the heavy losses suffered by Hood’s Brigade – and other Texas
infantry brigades – the state itself was not as affected by the events of the war as its
eastern cousins since the state was far removed from the major theaters of the War.
However, Texas did endure a Union blockade at Galveston Harbor and a persistent
threat of invasion along the coast.
But still, life must have changed pretty drastically for the families and
communities.
Oh, yes. With fathers and older brothers gone at war, the burden of keeping up
farms and households was suddenly thrust upon the shoulders of the women left
behind. Some fared better than others with the changes.
One young woman who managed to weather the storm fairly well was Sallie
McNeill of Brazoria County. A Baylor University alum, she kept a journal during
these years. She chronicled the details of daily experiences, worrying about the
threat of measles and possible sugar and paper shortages. McNeill was welleducated, read Dickens and was single by choice – a bold act of self-definition
when social mores of the era saw single women as stigmatized spinsters.
Although she describes herself as “not very remarkable for anything,” Sallie’s
diary is remarkable for the fact that it survived the Civil War, Reconstruction,
hurricanes and house fires. The private nature of her journal allowed her to write
candidly about her life, her health, her friends and neighbors and her opinions of
slavery and the War.
Please, do tell.
For instance, in an undated entry in December of 1861 she called the war “horrid”
and stuck several exclamation points after to the word. She writes:
There is a vague report to the effect that we will be abandoned to the
depredation of the vandals. Coastal residents must retreat to the interior.
Why will we waste this short life in such unholy strife?
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A year later, Union troops had taken up residence in Galveston, following the
blockade of the harbor. McNeill wrote that Yankee troops destroyed Mr. Winston’s
salt-works.
McNeill said that the sacrifice during four long years of bloodshed has all been in
vain: “All is lost save honor.” She writes. “We are mourners: for the dead and for
the living. For the miserable past and hopeless future.”
Wow. Strong words. But, of course the Civil War was by no means a war
where only men became heroes. There were many strong women who
emerged during this era, as well.
That’s right. Not all women relegated themselves to merely keeping house or
managing the plantation. A select group of brave and enterprising women -- taking
inspiration from heroes like Florence Nightingale, Clara Barton and Dorthea Dix -literally put themselves in the line of fire to give aid and care to wounded soldiers.
Many worked as nurses.
Like who?
One of the many unsung heroic women was Kate Cumming, a Scottish immigrant
in Mobile, Alabama. In her journal, she describes the war’s effect on her adopted
hometown and, later, the experience of going off to war:
Battles and wounds and defeats and deaths changed the gaiety of men going
off to war into dread and fear. Everything in their lives was arranged for
sudden flight in to the woods. The effects of the war were making themselves
felt.
What happened to Kate?
One Sunday morning, the Reverend Benjamin Miller of Saint John’s Church in
Mobile, called on the ladies of the church to accompany him to the war’s front
lines to serve as nurses to the sick and wounded. Cumming’s family initially
disapproved of her involvement, which she limited at first to collecting blankets,
quilts and delicacies for the troops. Later, she writes that Reverend Miller returned
to Mobile to implore her and about forty other women to rush to the Battle of
Shiloh in southwestern Tennessee to help the over-taxed field doctors.
Did she go?
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Yes. And in her diary she wrote:
I had never been inside a hospital and was wholly ignorant of what I should
be called upon to do, but I knew that what one woman had done another
could do.
That “one” woman, Maine’s Dorthea L. Dix, was appointed by Union brass as
Superintendent of Female Nurses of the Army of the United States on June 10,
1861. Dix was responsible for assembling and training a corps of army nurses.
Despite blatant public and medical prejudice aimed at the women, there were many
eager volunteers and soon the Union had organized and trained the rudiments of a
nursing corps of more than 2,000. The South was slower in recognizing the worth
of women as regular members of the army’s medical department, as nearly a full
year passed before the Confederate Congress granted them official status.
What did Kate write about her time serving in battle?
Kate Cumming’s first experience on the front was at Corinth, about 120 miles east
of Memphis. On April 11, 1862, and still as a volunteer, Cumming vividly
describes the scene of the hospital ward: “Nothing I had ever heard or read had
given me the faintest idea of the horror witnessed there.”
She describes “gray-haired men, in the pride of manhood, and hairless boys,
mutilated in every imaginable way,” many of whom were lying on the floor, “just
as they were taken from the battlefield, so close together that it was impossible to
walk without stepping on them.”
“I will never forget the poor sufferer’s gratitude, for every little thing done to
them,” she writes. “A little water to drink, or the bathing of their wounds, seemed
to afford them the greatest relief.”
In the days following the April 6 Battle of Shiloh, Cumming makes notes in her
journal about her time in a blood-stained medical field-tent. I’d like to read some
entries from it, verbatim, because they are particularly compelling:
Please do.
April 12: I sat up all night, bathing the men’s wounds and giving them water.
Every one attending to them seemed completely worn out. Some of the doctors told
me that they had scarcely slept since the battle.
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April 13: Finally enjoyed a night’s rest upon some boxes. I slept so soundly that I
did not dream.
April 17: I was going round as usual this morning, washing the faces of the men,
and had got half way through with one before I found out he was dead. He was
lying on the gallery by himself, and had died with no one near him. These are
terrible things and, what’s more heart-rending, no one seems to mind them.
Civil War doctors must have been under considerable amounts of pressure.
Indeed. In another collection of letters, this time from Dr. Nathaniel Morgan of the
Second Battalion, First Confederate Regiment, Georgia Volunteers, a field camp is
described in vivid detail.
Morgan, who incidentally is the great-grandfather of long-time Waco icon Judge
Bill Logue, writes to his wife Frances about the gritty details of the hospital. In the
December 7, 1863 letter, he tells of wounded and dying men lying stretched out on
bits of straw or blankets, calling for water. The operating table was a sawhorse and
wood planks, covered in blankets. Blood lay everywhere, he writes. It was
certainly not for the faint of heart.
Another doctor, Senior Surgeon John M. Bronough, of the Fifth Regiment, Texas
Mounted Volunteers, was attached first to Green’s Brigade in Louisiana and later
to Hardeman’s Brigade. His day-books of orders, communications and reports, and
the hospital register he kept for his regiment, represent one of the more complete
depictions of medical realties faced by Civil War soldiers.
What does he write about?
In a July 29, 1864, letter to a Captain W.S. Moore of Hardeman’s Brigade,
Bronough mentions that fevers have run rampant throughout the camp. Poor diet
and constant exposure to the elements have left the soldiers weakened and
susceptible to diseases like Anemia. Recent rains in the area of their camp
dramatically increased the number of mosquitoes, and many men contracted
malaria, to which Bronough attributed much of their sickness.
Just as the battlefields were chaotic and brutal during the Civil War, the
enemy lines were not often easily distinguishable in a land where friends were
enemies, brother turned against brother and spies were everywhere. This
must have made for some intriguing tales of espionage.
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You bet. The Collection has a copy of a journal kept by a Private Ephraim Shelby
Dodd of Company D, Eighth Texas Cavalry, better known to us today as “Terry’s
Texas Rangers.”
Dodd kept a diary that was little more than a register of names and places and its
value comes in the form of an accurate account of the life and hardships of an
enlisted Confederate cavalryman: continually on the move, foraging for food,
avoiding conflict as well as seeking it. Unfortunately for Dodd, his diary also
served as evidence against him at his trial as a spy.
Do we know what happened to Dodd?
He was captured in December of 1863 by Confederate forces after becoming
separated from his company and losing his horse in the Middle Tennessee Raid.
Un-mounted and unwilling to remain in the wagon camp, he followed his company
through East Tennessee. After procuring a horse, he was making his way through
the lines of the enemy, towards his company, when he was picked up by another
Confederate squad.
In a prison in Sevier County, Tennessee, Confederate authorities confiscated that
journal, the one detailing the day-to-day locations of the Rangers. Freezing, hungry
and exhausted, he was captured in threadbare Union blue pants and overcoat, but
Dodd plead with his captors that he had worn them out of necessity. The clothes
and journal were enough to condemn Dodd to death by hanging.
Wow.
“I am as innocent of the charge of being a spy as an angel of light,” he wrote in
letters to his father and grandfather.
The last entry in his journal that he was allowed to keep in jail, dated one week
before his death, described some gifts of charity given to him and other prisoners
by Knoxville women. It ends with a cryptic reference to his supposed execution
site:
Friday, Jan. 1, 1864 -- Received one pair of drawers from Miss Nannie Scott, two
shirts from Mrs. House. One hundred and fifty of the prisoners start today for
Strawberry Plains. We go tomorrow.
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I guess in the heat of battle, and especially back then, civil law and due
process weren’t always operating at the highest levels.
That’s right. Soldiers and their commanders dealt with spies and deserters on the
battlefield swiftly and decidedly. In almost all cases, the end result was death.
Charles A. Leuschner, a Prussian immigrant living in Victoria, Texas, tells of
another instance where this kind of merciless field justice was practiced.
Leuschner enlisted into Company B, of the Sixth Texas Infantry Regiment at the
age of 15. Too young to drive in the state of Texas today, Leuschner participated in
every major engagement that the regiment fought. His diary was probably written
afterwards from notes he kept during the time the events occurred, as the condition
of the journal does not lend itself to having been carried through the hardships
troops encountered in 1864-65.
Do you have a favorite story from that journal?
It was March 22, 1864. A heavy snowfall greeted the men as they were aroused
from their sleep before daybreak and ordered to fall in line. They were marched to
an open field east of camp where the division was formed into three sides of a
square to witness the execution of a deserter. A wagon carrying a Confederate
soldier sitting on a coffin entered the square and stopped. The man descended from
his perch, and the coffin was placed on the ground. The man’s arms were bound,
his eyes covered in cloth, and he resumed his place on the coffin. An armed group
of soldiers stood at 20 paces and, upon command of the officer in charge, the detail
fired a volley into the deserter, who lurched forward into the snow. A second
volley was fired into the wounded man, killing him.
Leuschner says it was the only execution for desertion in his division during the
entire war.
Even for soldiers accustomed to death and killing, I imagine that episode must
have been difficult to witness.
You’re exactly right. Leuschner writes that a “gloom swept over the ranks.” The
long trek back to camp was miserably cold and morale was low.
But then suddenly, something whizzed through the air and splashed against a tree
trunk in a cloud of white powder. Then another. Then another. Snowballs! An
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impish member of the Texas brigade singled out several soldiers in Mississippi
brigade and pelted them unmercifully with snowballs packed with rocks and ice.
The good-natured fights lasted until late afternoon until the men heard, “Come up
boys and draw you whiskey.” Their commander had thoughtfully ordered drinks
for the regiment and the soldiers ended their day around a campfire, singing, with
the grisly ordeal at dawn a distant memory.
What an amazing image. Proof that life at war is all about extremes. Finally,
were there any letters or diaries that more broadly captured the experience of
life at war?
Yes, actually. Few documents in the Texas Collection resonate with as much
wisdom, humor, warmth and perspective as the memoirs of Sgt. D.H. Hamilton, of
Company M, First Texas Volunteer Infantry. Though written many years later, in
September of 1925, the stories he tells form one of the most coherent – and
narrative-driven – accounts of the Civil War in the entire collection.
Hamilton begins his memoirs with a bit of background: Company M was
organized at Sumpter, then the county seat of Trinity County, but no sign of that
flourishing town remains. The company consisted of 125 men, half of whom were
between 17 and19. All were drilled on the public square during the day and
attended balls and entertainments given in their benefit every night.
Entire passages of the journal are quotable. The following are direct quotes from
the journal and Hamilton’s voice, though tempered with age, needs no editing:
We marched out of town May 5, 1862 and on the previous night a grand ball
was given for us at which we danced all night. That night I promised the
girls I would never dance again until the independence of the Confederate
government was declared, and I have kept my word until this day.
We marched out of town in double file, to the tune of Dixie, with the “kids”
in the line yelling lustily, believing that they constituted the main part of the
Confederate army. At nightfall, we struck camp on the banks of Bull Creek.
The kid bunch fiddled, boxed and yelled and whipped at the Yankees all
night, preventing the older men from getting any sleep. After an early
breakfast, we took up the march again and traveled all day, striking camp at
night. By this time the kids had cooled down somewhat; their feet were too
sore to dance very much and everyone rested better than the previous night.
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The next day it was found that one of the youngsters, a Harvey Pinston, was
missing. Like the rest of us, he had very little knowledge of military
requirements and responsibilities and thought that because he volunteered
to go, he could volunteer to go back. Two men, Jenkins and Tullos, were sent
after him. In due time they overtook Pinston and started back. Somewhere
on the trip, they managed to get a bottle of whiskey and all three got drunk.
While drunk, Willoughby Tullos shot off a portion of the end of his right
trigger finger. It was so badly wrecked – as were they – that they decided it
was necessary to operate on it, a perfectly natural conclusion for men in
their condition to reach. The only surgical instrument they had was a dull
knife, and they dressed the wound in salt. Willoughby’s finger got well and
he made a gallant soldier. During the war he had to pull the trigger with his
second finger but he pulled it many thousands of times.
I know that it was far too common for the soldiers of the Civil War to suffer
not only from rudimentary medical care – when there was medical care – but
also from frequent lack of supplies such as basic clothing.
Yes. Hamilton wrote:
My shoes were worn out, and when I say worn out, that is exactly what I
mean. The pieces had to be tied together on my feet. It was necessary to do
that because no rawhide was to be had to make moccasins, which were
made by cutting wet rawhide into the semblance of a foot shape and sewing
it around the foot with rawhide lacings.
I had been gone three years and twenty days. My folks had not heard from
me during this time and supposed I was dead. My mother did not know me.
When I left home, I was a large, fleshy boy, seventeen years old. When I
returned, I was a tall, lean man with a heavy black mustache.
So long as the people of Texas are true to themselves and to their traditions,
they will devotedly cherish the memory of those who lie in unmarked graves
of the old brigade, scattered from Manassas to Appomattox.
Hamilton closes this portion of his journal with the eloquent sentiment of
American poet Theodore O’Hara, who said:
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The muffled drum’s sad roll has beat
the soldier’s last tattoo
No more on life’s parade shall meet
That Brave and fallen few.
On fame’s eternal camping ground
their silent tents are spread,
and Glory guards, with solemn round
the bivouac of the dead.
Thank you for being with us today, Van.
My pleasure.
If you would like to learn more about what life was like during the Civil War
– directly from the people who lived through it – the Texas Collection on
Baylor campus has enormous archives of primary-source documents,
including letters and correspondence, diaries, journals and memoirs.
Property of The Texas Collection at Baylor University
Final Edit: January 9, 2010
_________________________________________________
Van Darden, Writer
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Dr. Mary Landon Darden, Executive Producer
_________________________________________________
Pattie Orr, Vice President of Information Technology and Dean of
University Libraries
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John Wilson, Associate Director of The Texas Collection
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Dr. Thomas L. Charlton, Director of The Texas Collection