June M. Saunders's Blog: Civil War Matters

When Abraham Lincoln declared the first official Thanksgiving, it appeared there wasn't much to be grateful for. The nation had been at war with itself for more than two horrific, bloody years. The graves, the piles of severed limbs, the deaths by illnesses contracted in camp and hospital, and the mourning in many homes were unprecedented. The Union would not win the war for another year and a half of fratricidal fighting.

From the moment Lincoln became president-elect, the nation began to face its worst existential crisis yet. The first slaveholding states began to unofficially secede from the Union a few days after his election. A large and influential bloc of states set up a rival government and a rival army and declared themselves a separate nation. They even elected their own rival president!

Then, a few months after Lincoln's Inauguration, South Carolina fired upon Fort Sumter and set off a civil war.

None of it was pretty, and Lincoln was at the center of the years-long maelstrom. Yet, on October 3, 1863, Lincoln declared the fourth Thursday of each November to be set aside as a day for America to give heartfelt thanks.

..."The blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies"...

In his proclamation of Thanksgiving, Lincoln thanked God for "fruitful fields and healthful skies." He went on to express gratitude that there had been no foreign intervention during America's weakened state of being at war with itself.

"Peace has been preserved with all nations," he observed.

Thankfully, the conflict had been confined to the "theatre of military conflict," he said. What was more, Lincoln was grateful that the war theatre had "been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union." The war zone, in other words, was shrinking because the Union was gaining ground.

..."More abundantly than heretofore"...

War-torn America was thriving. Lincoln noted that all the wealth and strength that had been diverted from the fields and peaceful industry had "not arrested the plow, the shuttle, or the ship." Settlements were advancing. Even the nation's mines, its supplies of iron, coal, and precious metals had "yielded even more abundantly than heretofore."

America was becoming more populous, in spite of the many deaths of the war. Lincoln said these many blessings were "the gracious gifts of the Most High God."

Allowing that God was still punishing the nation as a whole for its sins (Lincoln had always considered slavery a national, not a regional, sin), Lincoln was grateful that God had also "remembered mercy." Thus, Lincoln enjoined all citizens of America, by implication those in the rebellious lands as well, to render "thanksgiving and praise."

..."Heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it"...

As we in modern times recover from the mental and emotional strain of a painfully divisive election--similar in some ways to the dilemma our forebears faced after the election of Abraham Lincoln--maybe it is time to thank God again.

Maybe it is time to, as Lincoln put it, "solemnly, reverently and gratefully" acknowledge God "as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People." As Lincoln did and as Americans did that autumn in 1863, let us pray that God may "heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it . . . to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility, and union."

Happy Thanksgiving!

Abraham Lincoln turns up consistently on "most admired" lists of American presidents. People admire him for his integrity, stirring words, sincerity, even-handedness, and wisdom.

Sometimes modern-day people even ask themselves, "What would Lincoln do in my situation?" This is a testimony to the sagacity of the man from Sangamon County.

There is an interesting historical footnote to the sagacity of Abraham Lincoln. He very successfully dodged a bullet--or rather, starvation. He chose not to go "West" during the heyday of westward expansion when he had the opportunity. In spite of his fascination for California, when an old friend dangled the opening before him, Lincoln did not seek his fortune in the land of the setting sun.

It was a great choice. The old friend who invited him West was James Reed, the other half of the infamous Donner-Reed wagon train party. These people were destined to go down in history for resorting to cannibalism when they were trapped under twenty feet of snow in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Lincoln would have been among them.

Lincoln had known James Reed for almost fifteen years by the time the Donner-Reed Party set out on the Oregon Trail. Reed and Lincoln had served together in a company of Sangamon County, Illinois volunteers during the Black Hawk War of 1832. Although Lincoln said they never fought much more than mosquitoes, he and Reed were messmates and got to know each other well.

As a lawyer, Lincoln helped Reed straighten out the legal side of his entrepreneurial enterprises. Lincoln also assisted Reed when Reed declared bankruptcy. Lincoln helped his old friend to salvage enough money out of his business to start over again somewhere else.

Reed, like so many others in the 1840s, decided to start over in the West.

Lincoln, too, had heard the call of the West. California intrigued him, and he weighed the benefits of joining the Donner-Reed Party.

However, according to a Reed descendant, Mary Todd Lincoln did not want to go. She was pregnant with the couple's second child, and their first child was still just a toddler. Thus, Lincoln avoided the horrendous fate that awaited the Donner-Reed Party.

However, the families were close enough that when the Donner-Reed Party departed from Springfield, Illinois, in the spring of 1846, Mary Todd Lincoln was there to wave them goodbye.

The tragedy began from there. The Reeds and Donners were getting a late start for a pioneer wagon train. On the journey West, the timing was crucial. Most wagons left late in the spring so that there would be plenty of grass available for their oxen, horses, and cattle. Yet leaving too late in the spring meant there could be snow in the California mountains, blocking the passageways.

Most wagon trains picked up the Oregon Trail in Independence, Missouri, in mid-April. Late April was chancy but do-able. The Donner-Reed Party didn't rumble out of Independence until May 12th.

Starting late was not their only blunder. Choosing to believe a huckster who said he knew a shortcut, they left the well-trodden Oregon Trail at a crucial juncture. The bypass delayed them, compounding their risks.

Fortune did not favor them. Although they reached the base of the Sierra Mountains in November, when the mountains were usually still passable, an early snowstorm inundated them. The heavy snows that year ultimately accumulated twenty feet of snow. The parties hastily erected or found rudimentary shelter until spring.

The pioneers faced winter's privations bravely. They killed and ate their oxen, horses, cattle, and even their pets. They caught mice in the cabins and tents and ate them. They chewed the leather of their shoes and boiled hides to make a gummy stew to fill their stomachs. They peeled the bark off wood and munched on it as well as pine needles.

Finally, in desperation, some of them turned to the bodies of those who had already died. The bodies were well-preserved in the snow. Even at this desperate juncture, the pioneers tried to maintain some standards. They made a rule that no one should have to eat the flesh of a member of their own family. Some, like the Reeds, managed to survive without resorting to cannibalism.

What would Lincoln have done? We will never know.

Arguably, the fires Lincoln walked through during the Civil War were every bit as trying as the Sierra Nevada snows. Though he agonized a great deal during those trials, Lincoln never lost his way. In fact, amid figurative storms, Lincoln found his moral way. He realized that the great, shining noble path that lay before him was to free the slaves.

Let's be thankful that Lincoln had the sagacity to see us through the Civil War--and that he had the wisdom to turn down his friend James Reed's invitation to go West. By making that right decision, Lincoln did not have to determine how to preserve his own body. His destiny became deciding how to preserve the body of the nation.

Abraham Lincoln made no secret of the fact that he suffered from dark moods, which he called "the hypo." At the same time, Lincoln frequently told raucous stories and created comic one-liners that brought merry smiles to people's faces. He was a man of contrasts.

Lincoln's humor echoes down to us today. When faced with General McClellan's almost total reluctance to fight, Lincoln said, "If General McClellan does not want to use the army, I would like to borrow it for a while." When aides told him that McClellan's insulting treatment of Lincoln was insubordinate, Lincoln joked that he'd be happy to hold McClellan's horse if it would help him win the war.

Yet the humorous yarn-spinner and jester knew what suffering was. Lincoln said at one point during the war: "If there is a place lower than hell, I am in it."

He was known for dark moods long before the responsibility to keep the nation together fell on his shoulders. An old lawyer friend of his said, "No element of Mr. Lincoln's character was so marked, obvious and ingrained as his mysterious and profound melancholy." Mired in melancholy, Lincoln sometimes made sure, as did his friends, that he wasn't carrying any knives on his person so he would not be tempted to use one on himself.

When he was a mere 29 years old, Lincoln penned the lines: "Here, where the lonely hooting owl, sends forth his midnight moans, fierce wolves shall o'er my carcass growl, or buzzards pick my bones" as he contemplated a man committing suicide in a forest.

Yet the budding politician was sociable. He was well-known and popular in various places he lived in Illinois. He happily engaged in feats of strength to impress onlookers, attended dances and engaged in courtships, stood around and told stories and jokes in groups of men, and gloried in physical competitions like footraces or holding out an ax at arm's length for considerable amounts of time.

The prospect of the presidency enticed him. He wanted it. Lincoln confided to a friend in April of 1860, "The taste is in my mouth." What was more, Republicans were exuberant about him. When Lincoln came on stage in Decatur, Illinois to accept the nomination, the ovation was so thunderous, parts of the stage beams actually fell down. One would think Lincoln would be exhilarated.

Yet a witness said that Lincoln's facial expression was such after he accepted the nomination that he looked like one of the "worst-plagued men I ever saw." Then, when the crowds had left, the lieutenant governor of Illinois found Lincoln sitting all alone in the empty convention hall. His face was buried in his hands.

Fortunately, Lincoln's bouts with "the hypo" never distressed him so that he could not take effective action. His dire imaginings never paralyzed him, and he never gave in to despair. He kept fighting his wars, both inner and outer, until victory came. A more optimistic person might not have had Lincoln's staying power. He accepted suffering as the lot of humankind. He had fought off suicidal thoughts most of his adult life; he knew how to keep going even in the face of overwhelming despair.

Lincoln's personable good humor served him well in making friends and allies. Yet it was his capacity for persevering through despair that saw the nation through. His bouts with depression made him the very man for the nation's most desperate hour.

The image of a serpent around our necks is an apt one. Indeed, aware people in the time of the Civil War referred to slavery as a “serpent.”

Has this serpent still got a grip on the throat and life of the nation? We can say that the serpent of white dominance, in the form of the knee of a police officer, wrapped itself around the neck of George Floyd and killed him.

Here is an excerpt of a sermon by an abolitionist preacher in Spill the Scarlet Rain: A Civil War Novel. It is based upon sentiments expressed by abolitionists of the time.

“This nation, this beloved nation, this sacred soil—was conceived in a mixture of nobility and sin. Like every man, this nation was born with the coil of the serpent around its neck—caused by its original sin of slavery.

"This nation wrestled with it in the womb and somehow lived in spite of having this cobra, this life-squeezing monster, around our necks for the next hundred years. But the time has come to throw it off and truly live.

"When a human being is born, it is a bloody event; it is full of pain and fear, and many do not survive it. When a nation is born or reborn, it is also a messy, bloody moment, but what comes out of it are new life and a new chance.

“We are called in our generation to throw off the snake of slavery and to bring rebirth to a nation conceived in sin so as to shed that sin. There will be a price to pay for this sin. We must shed our blood to redeem our nation.

“Thomas Jefferson said the thought of slavery was like an alarum bell in the night, sounding the death knell of the Union. George Washington said that if the nation ever sundered on the issue of slavery, he would defy his home state of Virginia and fight on freedom’s side. John Adams saw such a dissimilitude between Northerners and Southerners at the First Continental Congress, he feared a split even then.

"Yet in spite of these prophetic feelings, the Fathers could not throw off the shackle of the nation’s original sin. It was enough for them to give the nation birth. Ending the sin of its conception was left to our generation.”


While slavery is gone, the serpent of racism is not dead. It still has our nation by the throat in the form of the prejudice that assumes that a black man must, by the color of his skin, be deemed dangerous enough for authorities to use lethal force on in the streets of our cities. The serpent of racism still winds around throats when a black man or woman is deemed “not important enough” to be afforded the basic right to live--and breathe.

We don’t have to fight a civil war today. We do have to keep fighting the serpent of racial prejudice before it strangles the life out of our nation.

My Top Ten Favorite Civil War Books (In Alphabetical Order) Non-Fiction

There are so many wonderful books about the Civil War. These are ten of my favorites, with one thing that stood out to me as a takeaway.

1. A Woman of Valor: Clara Barton and the Civil War
Stephen B. Oates

My Takeaway:

Before the war, Clara Barton was suffering from a sense of uselessness and lack of purpose. The war called her, and she went on to found the American Red Cross. Sometimes people just need a cause!

2. Abraham Lincoln: The Man Behind the Myths
Stephen B. Oates

My Takeaway:

The politically savvy Lincoln united with the morally scrupulous Lincoln when he signed the Emancipation Proclamation. At last, Lincoln’s public acts could reflect his personal opposition to slavery, and he became more integrated as a person.

3. Bleeding Blue and Gray
Ira M. Rutkow

My Takeaway:

Lacking a theory of germs, Civil War doctors were almost more dangerous than the battlefield when it came to wounds. Amputation was the treatment of choice, performed with non-sterile instruments with unsanitary hands, and then finished off with non-sterile bandages. These practices, done in well-meaning ignorance, often led to horrific deaths due to infection.

4. Firestorm at Gettysburg
Jim Slade and John Alexander

My Takeaway:

Moments of humor stood out. Upon taking over Gettysburg, Confederate soldiers joked with the town’s citizens: “How do you like this way of our coming back into the Union?” While enduring the lengthy cannonade that preceded Pickett’s charge, Federal soldiers joshed that they were getting quite used to the assault on their ears and were even coming to like it.

5. Team of Rivals
Doris Kearns Goodwin

My Takeaway:

I found the book so utterly absorbing that as I read it in my home, I was startled when a car horn sounded outside. I was back in the days of the horse and carriage, and a car horn seemed like an unidentifiable, strange sound.

6. The Battle of Gettysburg
Colonel Frank A. Haskell

My Takeaway:

This participant and observer at Gettysburg did not think much of Daniel Sickles’s strange move forward, exposing the Union’s left flank. However, he did not blame Sickles for poor judgment. Instead, he noted that Sickles’s move “developed the battle.”

7. The Better Angel: Walt Whitman in the Civil War
Roy Morris, Jr.

My Takeaway:

Walt Whitman, a controversial figure for his sexual frankness in Leaves of Grass, was a loyal helper in Washington City’s hospitals. He spread comfort and care in special ways. From the experience, he produced fabulous, profound, authentic Civil War poetry. At the same time, Whitman’s distasteful racism gives one pause when considering this genius of American letters.


8. The Civil War Letters of Joseph Hopkins Twichell, A Chaplain’s Story
Edited by Peter Messent and Steve Courtney

My Takeaway:

Twichell describes a slave hunt in which he watches his rough, Irish, New York regiment repel slave traders who were allowed to come into the federal camp to recapture runaway slaves. It was revelatory for Twichell as he watched these prejudiced men, who were indifferent about slavery, get their backs up over the manifest wrong of hauling people into bondage. Hurling bread and every projectile they could get their hands on to repel the intruders, the men appeared to Twichell to reflect the veritable image of God and the divine light of conscience and right.

9. The Civil War: An Illustrated History
Geoffrey C. Ward with Ric and Ken Burns.

My Takeaway:

There is an unforgettable photograph of John Brown’s astonishing face, with deep thought and madness etched into it. The book does a great job of describing the incredible psychological effect John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry had on minds both North and South.

10. This Republic of Suffering
Drew Gilpin Faust

My Takeaway:

People of the Civil War era were particularly concerned with and united in their assessment of what constituted “a good death.” They looked for the well-known elements of a good death in their soldier husbands, brothers, and sons. The concept of a good death was so important that people who wrote to grieving relatives about the deaths of their menfolk did all they could to recount the elements of a good death. They did this even if they had to stretch things a bit at times.

The Rebel Yell
Spine-Tingling Civil War Psy Ops!

If you want to be transported into the past, listen to actual Confederate veterans giving the Rebel yell at a 1930s reunion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6jSq....

I have heard the war cry described in a history book as “spine-tingling.” What a psy ops device!!! I could almost imagine myself standing near a woods in Federal boots and hearing those strange whoops arising from among the trees--chilling!

As recently as 2019, yet another movie version of Louisa May Alcott’s Civil War era novel Little Women came out. This is the seventh cinematic rendering! Just prior to that, in 2018, Little Women was a BBC/PBS miniseries.

In the story, the March girls’ father is away fighting for the Union. At one point, their mother must go to nurse him in a Washington hospital.

In fact, Louisa May herself served in Washington’s hospitals for several months. Her service was cut short when she contracted typhoid fever and had to go home.

Indeed, after she was administered the “miracle drug” of the day--mercurous chloride--to “cure” her typhoid fever, Alcott suffered hair loss and joint pain long after the war ended.

From her experiences as a volunteer nurse, Alcott produced a “little” (in length, anyway) masterpiece entitled Hospital Sketches (published in 1863). Although Alcott starts the manuscript in a jocular tone, soon she settles down into giving a wrenching first-hand account of serving the brave and broken men in blue.

Some eloquent excerpts:

“If any needed a reward for that day's work, they surely received it, in the silent eloquence of those long lines of faces, showing pale and peaceful in the shaded rooms, as we quitted them, followed by grateful glances that lighted us to bed, where rest, the sweetest, made our pillows soft, while Night and Nature took our places, filling that great house of pain with the healing miracles of Sleep, and his diviner brother, Death.”

Alcott also tells the heartbreaking story of “John,” a soldier suffering unto death whose silent tears caught her attention.

When she enveloped him in her arms, he said, “Thank you, ma'am, this is right good! This is what I wanted!”

“Then why not ask for it before?” Alcott asked.

“I didn't like to be a trouble; you seemed so busy, and I could manage to get on alone.”

“You shall not want it any more, John,” Alcott told him, and she devoted herself to making his last days as comfortable as possible.

Alcott reflected on John further: “Although the manliest man among my forty, he said, ‘Yes, ma'am,’ like a little boy; received suggestions for his comfort with the quick smile that brightened his whole face; and now and then, as I stood tidying the table by his bed, I felt him softly touch my gown, as if to assure himself that I was there. Anything more natural and frank I never saw, and found John as bashful as brave, yet full of excellencies and fine aspirations, which, having no power to express themselves in words, seemed to have bloomed into his character and made him what he was.”

A strong and physically fit man, John died by inches, and Alcott was with him every step of the way:

“For hours he suffered dumbly, without a moment's respire, or a moment's murmuring; his limbs grew cold, his face damp, his lips white, and, again and again, he tore the covering off his breast, as if the lightest weight added to his agony; yet through it all, his eyes never lost their perfect serenity, and the man's soul seemed to sit therein, undaunted by the ills that vexed his flesh.”

Then came the end, with a burst of glory: “The first red streak of dawn was warming the grey east, a herald of the coming sun; John saw it, and with the love of light which lingers in us to the end, seemed to read in it a sign of hope of help, for, over his whole face there broke that mysterious expression, brighter than any smile, which often comes to eyes that look their last. He laid himself gently down; and, stretching out his strong right arm, as if to grasp and bring the blessed air to his lips in a fuller flow, lapsed into a merciful unconsciousness, which assured us that for him suffering was forever past.”

Alcott’s beloved John had a brother named Laurie. Laurie, of course, is the male star of Little Women, which was written after Alcott’s war service. Perhaps she named the charming Laurie in honor of John’s beloved sibling.

Hospital Sketches is well worth a read as a firsthand account of Civil War hospital service. It also gives us deep glimpses into the minds and hearts of the women and men who labored and sacrificed, in their own ways, to save the Union.

In these days of COVID-19, we are fighting an "invisible enemy." I often think of the Civil War soldiers who fought an invisible enemy too--one at least as deadly as the armed men they confronted on the other side. Estimates say that infection caused roughly half the deaths of the Civil War.

There was no germ theory at the time. There were no microscopes, no clear understanding that particles invisible to the human eye invaded wounds and bodies as surely as an advancing army.

Nor did anyone, even medical personnel, understand how camp conditions contributed to illness. Drinking and cooking water were often taken from streams near overflowing latrines in army camps. No one thought that these practices were causing the diseases that ravaged the soldiers: malaria, dysentery, typhoid fever, pneumonia, and others.

Regular handwashing with hot water and soap? Not likely.

What was more, the wounded soldier often lay in a field or forest for hours before being taken away for treatment. Dirt and bacteria invaded his wounds unchecked. No wonder so many wounds festered and took the lives of the soldiers through ensuing sickness. What was more, wound treatment itself was unsanitary.

While treating wounds, doctors used instruments rinsed off in water but not disinfected, taken out of uncleaned cases where bacteria lurked in the plush linings.

When doctors sewed up wounds, they licked the silk threads they used to get them through the needles, polluting the injuries the instant they were closed with stitches.

Wearing the same clothing for hours (perhaps days) on end, they leaned in to treat patients with the blood and pus of previous patients on their clothing. Wound dressings were clean but not disinfected.

No wonder so many wounds were affected by wet gangrene and other horrific infections. Infection caused untold amounts of painful, ugly deaths as bacteria ate away the body's flesh and organs, inch by inch.

Let's remember these brave men when we wash our hands. We have weapons against the invisible enemy of infection, a malevolent force powerful enough to cripple armies.

A lot of us are curtailing our activities due to the coronavirus and the need to contain its spread.

What a great time to read!

If you can’t escape into your happy activities in the world, escape into another world by reading!

Reading will not only help us keep our minds off things and let us live vicarious adventures while we are social distancing. It will improve social relationships because reading builds empathy.

Steven Pinker wrote a book entitled The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. His optimistic take on things was that human life is getting better and better as we learn more and more how to live with people who are “other” to us. There is more tolerance, less war, and wars have fewer casualties when they do occur. Poverty is decreasing worldwide, in part because people care.

Pinker attributes many such improvements to reading books! He says that reading books--especially novels--develops our empathy. Our social circles expand to embrace more and more “others” as we understand, often through reading, that they are people like us.

After all, Abraham Lincoln called Harriet Beecher Stowe “The little lady who started the big war.” Her novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin spread empathy for slaves like wildfire across the North as they read of the characters’ trials under the system.

So let’s build a little empathy for our neighbors during this time of social distancing by reading. We will be more prepared to embrace our neighbors when the time for social distancing ends.

This is particularly apropos of the era of the coronavirus:
Excerpts from “Poem of Wonder at the Resurrection of the Wheat" by Walt Whitman, one of the great Civil War poets

"How can the ground not sicken of men?
How can you be alive, you growths of spring?
How can you furnish health, you blood of herbs,
roots, orchards, grain?
Are they not continually putting distempered
corpses in the earth?
Is not every continent worked over and over with
sour dead?
Where have you disposed of those carcasses of
the drunkards and gluttons of so many gen-
erations?


That all is clean, forever and forever!
That the cool drink from the well tastes so good!
That blackberries are so flavorous and juicy!
That the fruits of the apple-orchard, and of the
orange-orchard—that melons, grapes, peaches,
plums, will none of them poison me!
That when I recline on the grass I do not catch
any disease!
Though probably every spear of grass rises out
of what was once a catching disease.

Now I am terrified at the earth! it is that calm
and patient,
It grows such sweet things out of such corruptions,
It turns harmless and stainless on its axis, with such endless successions of diseased corpses,
It distils such exquisite winds out of such infused fetor,
It renews with such unwitting looks, its prodigal, annual, sumptuous crops,
It gives such divine materials to men . . . "

We’ll get through this.