Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. was a Second Lieutenant in the 20th Massachusetts Regiment during the Civil War.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. gave a famous speech at Soldiers Field on Memorial Day 1895, in honor of Harvard University’s Civil War dead. It’s a particularly appropriate read at this time of year.
Behind every scheme to make the world over, lies the question: What kind of world do you want? The ideals of the past for men have been drawn from war, as those for women have been drawn from motherhood. For all our prophecies, I doubt if we are ready to give up our inheritance. Who is there who would not like to be thought a gentleman? Yet what has that name been built on but the soldier’s choice of honor rather than life? To be a soldier or descended from soldiers, in time of peace to be ready to give one’s life rather than suffer disgrace, that is what the word has meant; and if we try to claim it at less cost than a splendid carelessness for life, we are trying to steal the good will without the responsibilities of the place. We will not dispute about tastes. The man of the future may want something different. But who of us could endure a world, although cut up into five acre lots, and having no man upon it who was not well fed and well housed, without the divine folly of honor, without the senseless passion for knowledge outreaching the flaming bounds of the possible, without ideals the essence of which is that they can never be achieved? I do not know what is true. I do not know the meaning of the universe. But in the midst of doubt, in the collapse of creeds, there is one thing I do not doubt, that no man who lives in the same world with most of us can doubt, and that is that the faith is true and adorable which leads a soldier to throw away his life in obedience to a blindly accepted duty, in a cause which he little understands, in a plan of campaign of which he has little notion, under tactics of which he does not see the use.
Most men who know battle know the cynic force with which the thoughts of common sense will assail them in times of stress; but they know that in their greatest moments faith has trampled those thoughts underfoot. If you wait in line, suppose on Tremont Street Mall, ordered simply to wait and do nothing, and have watched the enemy bring their guns to bear upon you down a gentle slope like that of Beacon Street, have seen the puff of the firing, have felt the burst of the spherical case-shot as it came toward you, have heard and seen the shrieking fragments go tearing through your company, and have known that the next or the next shot carries your fate; if you have advanced in line and have seen ahead of you the spot you must pass where the rifle bullets are striking; if you have ridden at night at a walk toward the blue line of fire at the dead angle of Spotsylvania, where for twenty-four hours the soldiers were fighting on the two sides of an earthwork, and in the morning the dead and dying lay piled in a row six deep, and as you rode you heard the bullets splashing in the mud and earth about you; if you have been in the picket line at night in a black and unknown wood, have heard the splat of the bullets upon the trees, and as you moved have felt your foot slip upon a dead man’s body; if you have had a blind fierce gallop against the enemy, with your blood up and a pace that left no time for fear—if, in short, as some, I hope many, who hear me, have known, you have known the vicissitudes of terror and triumph in war; you know that there is such a thing as the faith I spoke of. You know your own weakness and are modest; but you know that man has in him that unspeakable somewhat which makes him capable of miracle, able to lift himself by the might of his own soul, unaided, able to face annihilation for a blind belief.
For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it’s still not yet two o’clock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with his long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand probably and his sword in the other looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to give the word and it’s all in the balance, it hasn’t happened yet, it hasn’t even begun yet, it not only hasn’t begun yet but there is still time for it not to begin against that position and those circumstance which made more men than Garnett and Kemper and Armistead and Wilcox look grave yet it’s going to begin, we all know that, we have come too far with too much at stake and that moment doesn’t need even a fourteen-year-old boy to think This time. Maybe this time with all this much to lose than all this much to gain: Pennsylvania, Maryland, the world, the golden dome of Washington itself to crown with desperate and unbelievable victory the desperate gamble, the cast made two years ago.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. was a Second Lieutenant in the 20th Massachusetts Regiment during the Civil War.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. gave a famous speech at Soldiers Field on Memorial Day 1895, in honor of Harvard University’s Civil War dead. It’s a particularly appropriate read at this time of year.
Behind every scheme to make the world over, lies the question: What kind of world do you want? The ideals of the past for men have been drawn from war, as those for women have been drawn from motherhood. For all our prophecies, I doubt if we are ready to give up our inheritance. Who is there who would not like to be thought a gentleman? Yet what has that name been built on but the soldier’s choice of honor rather than life? To be a soldier or descended from soldiers, in time of peace to be ready to give one’s life rather than suffer disgrace, that is what the word has meant; and if we try to claim it at less cost than a splendid carelessness for life, we are trying to steal the good will without the responsibilities of the place. We will not dispute about tastes. The man of the future may want something different. But who of us could endure a world, although cut up into five acre lots, and having no man upon it who was not well fed and well housed, without the divine folly of honor, without the senseless passion for knowledge outreaching the flaming bounds of the possible, without ideals the essence of which is that they can never be achieved? I do not know what is true. I do not know the meaning of the universe. But in the midst of doubt, in the collapse of creeds, there is one thing I do not doubt, that no man who lives in the same world with most of us can doubt, and that is that the faith is true and adorable which leads a soldier to throw away his life in obedience to a blindly accepted duty, in a cause which he little understands, in a plan of campaign of which he has little notion, under tactics of which he does not see the use.
Most men who know battle know the cynic force with which the thoughts of common sense will assail them in times of stress; but they know that in their greatest moments faith has trampled those thoughts underfoot. If you wait in line, suppose on Tremont Street Mall, ordered simply to wait and do nothing, and have watched the enemy bring their guns to bear upon you down a gentle slope like that of Beacon Street, have seen the puff of the firing, have felt the burst of the spherical case-shot as it came toward you, have heard and seen the shrieking fragments go tearing through your company, and have known that the next or the next shot carries your fate; if you have advanced in line and have seen ahead of you the spot you must pass where the rifle bullets are striking; if you have ridden at night at a walk toward the blue line of fire at the dead angle of Spotsylvania, where for twenty-four hours the soldiers were fighting on the two sides of an earthwork, and in the morning the dead and dying lay piled in a row six deep, and as you rode you heard the bullets splashing in the mud and earth about you; if you have been in the picket line at night in a black and unknown wood, have heard the splat of the bullets upon the trees, and as you moved have felt your foot slip upon a dead man’s body; if you have had a blind fierce gallop against the enemy, with your blood up and a pace that left no time for fear—if, in short, as some, I hope many, who hear me, have known, you have known the vicissitudes of terror and triumph in war; you know that there is such a thing as the faith I spoke of. You know your own weakness and are modest; but you know that man has in him that unspeakable somewhat which makes him capable of miracle, able to lift himself by the might of his own soul, unaided, able to face annihilation for a blind belief.
William Howard Russell 1827-1907 was perhaps the first modern war correspondent. He reported for the London Times on the Crimean War and later on the American Civil War.
Most European visitors were enthusiastic admirers of the Confederacy, and in particular of its romantic leadership. Russell was different. He viewed both sides skeptically and with cynicism. Mary Boykin Chestnut, in her famous diaries, occasionally expressed indignation over Russell’s published comments.
In Russell’s Diary for August 1, 1861 in The Civil War in America, he summarized South Carolinians’ uncomplimentary perspective on New England, which goes a good way to explain the motivations for secession.
“If that confounded ship had sunk with those —— Pilgrim Fathers on board,” says one, “we never should have been driven to these extremities!” “We could have got on with fanatics if they had been either Christians or gentlemen,” says another; “for in the first case they would have acted with common charity, and in the second they would have fought when they insulted us; but there are neither Christians nor gentlemen among them!” “Anything on the earth!” exclaims a third, “any form of government, any tyranny or despotism you will; but”—and here is an appeal more terrible than the adjuration of all the Gods—“nothing on earth shall ever induce us to submit to any union with the brutal, bigoted blackguards of the New England States, who neither comprehend nor regard the feelings of gentlemen! Man, woman, and child, we’ll die first.” Imagine these and an infinite variety of similar sentiments uttered by courtly, well-educated men, who set great store on a nice observance of the usages of society, and who are only moved to extreme bitterness and anger when they speak of the North, and you will fail to conceive the intensity of the dislike of the South Carolinians for the Free States. There are national antipathies on our side of the Atlantic which are tolerably strong, and have been unfortunately pertinacious and long-lived. The hatred of the Italian for the Tedesco, of the Greek for the Turk, of the Turk for the Russ, is warm and fierce enough to satisfy the Prince of Darkness, not to speak of a few little pet aversions among the allied Powers and the atoms of composite empires; but they are all mere indifference and neutrality of feeling compared to the animosity evinced by the “gentry” of South Carolina for the “rabble of the North.” Read the rest of this entry »
At the First Battle of Bull Run, General Jackson turned the tide of battle by having his brigade deliver a downhill charge with fixed bayonets that shattered the Union advance. “And, When you charge,” Jackson ordered his men: “yell like Furies!”
Smithsonian has an interesting video of a Confederate Reunion at which a number of very old men perform the famous Rebel Yell.
————————–
You might well think that the famous Rebel Yell is long extinct, but you’d be wrong.
Fox hunters traditionally signal viewing the fox with a cry of “Tally-ho!.” But in Old Virginia, the aboriginal element responds to the appearance of the fox (or the rabbit in the case of beagle or basset footpacks), not with a “Tally ho!. but with the old-time Rebel Yell.
Getting involved with the Old Dominion Hounds and fox hunting in Fauquier County, I inevitably became acquainted with the renowned 80-odd-year-old retired huntsman Melvin Poe.
Fox hunting is just another of the Field Sports and it is really a natural extension of the better known kinds of hunting and fishing. Melvin and I immediately recognized each other as the sorts of hunting and fishing keen rural rednecks that my disapproving female relatives would refer to as “woodrats.”
If I ran into Melvin at an Old Dominion meet, he and I would often car follow the hunt in my SUV. Melvin knew the Old Dominion country like the back of his hand. He’d hunted it for many decades. And Melvin had about as many inhibitions about entering and crossing posted private ground as I did when I was 17.
Following a hunt with Melvin as guide was sure to have us finding foxes before the pack ever showed up. One day, Melvin posted us along a small stream, and sure enough! a small parade of foxes began vacating the area along the far bank with no sign or sound of hounds or horn nearby. Melvin drew himself up and commenced saluting those foxes with loud Rebel Yells. I stood there admiring all this, but soon found myself fixed with Melvin’s imperative eye. I had no choice. I found myself there, in the Virginia woods, doing my best to deliver the traditional Rebel Yell like a good Confederate. Needless to say, the huntsman Gerald and the mounted field heard our commotion and after an interval arrived to pick up the scent.
For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it’s still not yet two o’clock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with his long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand probably and his sword in the other looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to give the word and it’s all in the balance, it hasn’t happened yet, it hasn’t even begun yet, it not only hasn’t begun yet but there is still time for it not to begin against that position and those circumstance which made more men than Garnett and Kemper and Armistead and Wilcox look grave yet it’s going to begin, we all know that, we have come too far with too much at stake and that moment doesn’t need even a fourteen-year-old boy to think This time. Maybe this time with all this much to lose than all this much to gain: Pennsylvania, Maryland, the world, the golden dome of Washington itself to crown with desperate and unbelievable victory the desperate gamble, the cast made two years ago.
“Give them cold steel.” — Brigadier General Lewis Armistead (February 18, 1817–July 3, 1863)
——————————————————–
Dr. Joseph Hold of the 11th Mississippi, Davis’s brigade, anticipated that the afternoon would be busy and set up his dressing station early in a shelter behind Seminary Ridge. . .When the cannonade opened and the Federals’ guns replied, stretcher bearers, crouching low, began bringing in the wounded. Among the first was an athletic young man with reddish golden hair, “a princely fellow,” the doctor called him, with a calm manner and a delightful smile, one of that gay, turbulent company that had left with the University Greys of Oxford to form Company A of the 11th Mississippi.
The physician examined the left arm, cut off at the elbow, and offered encouragement.
“Why, doctor, that isn’t where I am hurt.” The boy pulled back a blanket and showed where a shell had ripped deep across his abdomen, carrying away much that was vital. “I am in great agony,” he said, still smiling. “Let me die easy, dear doctor.”
But before the lad had drunk the cup containing the concentrated solution of opium, the doctor held up his right arm so he could write: “My dear mother. . .Remember that I am true to my country and my regret at dying is that she is not free. . .you must not regret that my body cannot be obtained. It is a mere matter of form anyhow. . .Send my dying release to Miss Mary. . .” He signed, JERE S. GAGE, Co. A, 11 Miss. By that time, the letter was covered with blood.
Then he raised his cup to a group of soldiers. “I do not invite you to drink with me,” he remarked wryly, then with fervor, “but I drink a toast to you, the Southern Confederacy, and to victory.”
* * *
Then Pickett stood in front of his division and gave the final word: “Charge the enemy and remember old Virginia!” His voice was clear and strong as he spoke the order: “Forward! Guide center! March!” . . .
“I don’t want to make this charge,” Longstreet declared emphatically. “I don’t believe it can succeed. I would stop Pickett now, but that General Lee has ordered it and expects it.”
Further remarks showed he wanted some excuse for calling off the whole attack.
But Longstreet and Alexander had lost control. As they talked, the turf trembled about them and the long line of grey infantry broke from the woods. First came Garnett’s Virginians, the general in front, his old blue overcoat buttoned tightly around his neck. Abreast was Kemper’s trim line marching majestically into the open fields, the fifes piping “Dixie,” the ranks in nearly perfect alignment. Far to the left could be heard the drum rolls of the Carolina regiments — Pettigrew and Trimble were in motion. The hour of the generals had passed. The infantrymen from the Richmond offices and Pearisburg farmlands, the “Greys” from the halls of “Old Miss” and the “flower of the Cape Fear section,” had taken the Confederate cause into their hands.
* * *
The assaulting column consisted of 41 regiments and one battalion. . .Nineteen of the regiments were from Virginia, 15 from North Carolina, 3 each from Tennessee and Mississippi, and one regiment and one battalion from Alabama.
* * *
Garnett, with a big voice issuing from his frail body, rode ahead of his line regulating the pace, admonishing his men not to move too rapidly. From the skirmish line, Captain Shotwell obtained one of the rare views of the Confederate advance: the “glittering forest of bright bayonets,” the column coming down the slope “in superb alignment,” the “murmur and jingle” and “rustle of thousands of feet amid the stubble” which stirred up a cloud of dust “like the dash of spray at the prow of a vessel.”
In front of Pickett flew the blue banner of the Old Dominion with the motto, “Sic Semper Tyrannis,” and the Stars and Bars of the Confederacy (the red battle flag with its blue cross not yet being in general use). The regimental flags flapped. A soft warm wind was blowing from the land they loved.
Conrad Wise Chapman, “Submarine Torpedo Boat H.L.Hunley, Dec. 6,1863, American Civil War Museum, Richmond.
The Civil War Picket reports that scientists at a Clemson University Conservation Center have learned a great deal about the clothing and personal effects of Captain George E. Dixon and the rest of the 8-man crew of the C.S.S. Hunley. Dixon was evidently well-to-do and a sharp dresser, wearing a cashmere coat on that fatal evening.
On Feb. 17, 1864, H.L. Hunley made history by becoming the first submarine to sink an enemy warship. The 40-foot iron vessel — bullets pinging off its iron exterior — planted a torpedo in the hull of the Union ship USS Housatonic, setting off a charge that sent the Federal vessel and five crew members to the sandy bottom within minutes.
The Hunley disappeared beneath the waves and entered the realm of legend. To this day, historians, scientists and others debate what caused it to end up on the ocean floor. Discovered a few miles off Charleston in 1995, and raised in 2000, the Hunley is being conserved at Clemson University’s Warren Lasch Conservation Center in North Charleston.
Experts have been analyzing the incredible array of artifacts found inside the submarine and are now working on a volume about the crew, including personal effects such as clothing, buttons and shoes. They hope to have the volume, which they are preparing for the U.S. Navy, finished later this year.
“The Hunley as a crew did not have a set uniform at all. They wore what they were comfortable or what they were used to,” said Nick DeLong, maritime archaeologist at the center. Six of the eight wore something that was part of a military uniform.
Today is the 158th Anniversary of the Third Day of the decisive Battle of Gettysburg.
——————————————————–
Crossing the Emmitsburg Road
——————————————————–
“Give them cold steel.” — Brigadier General Lewis Armistead (February 18, 1817–July 3, 1863)
——————————————————–
Dr. Joseph Hold of the 11th Mississippi, Davis’s brigade, anticipated that the afternoon would be busy and set up his dressing station early in a shelter behind Seminary Ridge. . .When the cannonade opened and the Federals’ guns replied, stretcher bearers, crouching low, began bringing in the wounded. Among the first was an athletic young man with reddish golden hair, “a princely fellow,” the doctor called him, with a calm manner and a delightful smile, one of that gay, turbulent company that had left with the University Greys of Oxford to form Company A of the 11th Mississippi.
The physician examined the left arm, cut off at the elbow, and offered encouragement.
“Why, doctor, that isn’t where I am hurt.” The boy pulled back a blanket and showed where a shell had ripped deep across his abdomen, carrying away much that was vital. “I am in great agony,” he said, still smiling. “Let me die easy, dear doctor.”
But before the lad had drunk the cup containing the concentrated solution of opium, the doctor held up his right arm so he could write: “My dear mother. . .Remember that I am true to my country and my regret at dying is that she is not free. . .you must not regret that my body cannot be obtained. It is a mere matter of form anyhow. . .Send my dying release to Miss Mary. . .” He signed, JERE S. GAGE, Co. A, 11 Miss. By that time, the letter was covered with blood.
Then he raised his cup to a group of soldiers. “I do not invite you to drink with me,” he remarked wryly, then with fervor, “but I drink a toast to you, the Southern Confederacy, and to victory.”
* * *
Then Pickett stood in front of his division and gave the final word: “Charge the enemy and remember old Virginia!” His voice was clear and strong as he spoke the order: “Forward! Guide center! March!” . . .
“I don’t want to make this charge,” Longstreet declared emphatically. “I don’t believe it can succeed. I would stop Pickett now, but that General Lee has ordered it and expects it.”
Further remarks showed he wanted some excuse for calling off the whole attack.
But Longstreet and Alexander had lost control. As they talked, the turf trembled about them and the long line of grey infantry broke from the woods. First came Garnett’s Virginians, the general in front, his old blue overcoat buttoned tightly around his neck. Abreast was Kemper’s trim line marching majestically into the open fields, the fifes piping “Dixie,” the ranks in nearly perfect alignment. Far to the left could be heard the drum rolls of the Carolina regiments — Pettigrew and Trimble were in motion. The hour of the generals had passed. The infantrymen from the Richmond offices and Pearisburg farmlands, the “Greys” from the halls of “Old Miss” and the “flower of the Cape Fear section,” had taken the Confederate cause into their hands.
* * *
The assaulting column consisted of 41 regiments and one battalion. . .Nineteen of the regiments were from Virginia, 15 from North Carolina, 3 each from Tennessee and Mississippi, and one regiment and one battalion from Alabama.
* * *
Garnett, with a big voice issuing from his frail body, rode ahead of his line regulating the pace, admonishing his men not to move too rapidly. From the skirmish line, Captain Shotwell obtained one of the rare views of the Confederate advance: the “glittering forest of bright bayonets,” the column coming down the slope “in superb alignment,” the “murmur and jingle” and “rustle of thousands of feet amid the stubble” which stirred up a cloud of dust “like the dash of spray at the prow of a vessel.”
In front of Pickett flew the blue banner of the Old Dominion with the motto, “Sic Semper Tyrannis,” and the Stars and Bars of the Confederacy (the red battle flag with its blue cross not yet being in general use). The regimental flags flapped. A soft warm wind was blowing from the land they loved.
For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it’s still not yet two o’clock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with his long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand probably and his sword in the other looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to give the word and it’s all in the balance, it hasn’t happened yet, it hasn’t even begun yet, it not only hasn’t begun yet but there is still time for it not to begin against that position and those circumstance which made more men than Garnett and Kemper and Armistead and Wilcox look grave yet it’s going to begin, we all know that, we have come too far with too much at stake and that moment doesn’t need even a fourteen-year-old boy to think This time. Maybe this time with all this much to lose than all this much to gain: Pennsylvania, Maryland, the world, the golden dome of Washington itself to crown with desperate and unbelievable victory the desperate gamble, the cast made two years ago.
Metal detectors find vast quantities of Civil War bullets. Bullets bitten on during surgeries are not rare. Also, bullets whittled into game pieces for checkers and chess are frequently encountered. These expressions of war-time animosity are extraordinary and very amusing.
Lacking supplies, Grant was compelled to retreat for a time, and Vicksburg remained uncaptured until the following July.
The fiery rebel was Catherine Sherwood Bonner, who later became secretary and muse to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and a successful novelist and regional author in her own right.
