Let's Ban the Banning Before It's Too Late

The recent moves to ban Confederate flags, monuments and symbols reminded me of the description of a unique Confederate flag that I found in researching my book, Clear the Confederate Way!: The Irish in the Army of Northern Virginia.

An artist's rendition of the Emerald Guards flag.

 

One side of the flag featured the national colors of the Confederacy, the so-called Stars and Bars, with a standing portrait of President Washington super-imposed on its center. The reverse side of the banner was green, displaying a harp, the national symbol of Ireland, encircled by shamrocks. The Irish side of this most unusual Confederate flag included the inscriptions, “Erin go Bragh,” meaning “Ireland forever,” and “Faugh a ballagh,” the Irish battle cry translated as “Clear the way!”

 

This flag belonged to the Emerald Guards, a Confederate unit of Irishmen from Mobile, Alabama, part of the 8^th Alabama Infantry. They were the regiment’s color company, designated to hold the flags at the center of the battle line. They entered Confederate service in green militia uniforms and their banner was a ceremonial or presentation flag that remembered their Irish heritage but also showed allegiance to the Confederacy and to the founding of the nation under Washington. Washington after all was a Southerner who’d defeated the British in the War of Independence.

The intricacies of the Emerald Guards flag, its mixture of multi-cultural heritage and symbols, point up how this country’s history is layered, intertwined and complex. Pulling at the threads of history will unravel not just unpleasant images, but remembrance, and ultimately knowledge and understanding.

Banning historical relics seems a perilous step toward Orwellian dystopia. The Emerald Guards flag is lost to history, probably because of its fragile silk construction. But if we still had such a flag today, would it be banned? And who would decide? A banning czar? A banning panel? And how would they decide?

For now we ban the Battle Flag and its St. Andrew’s Cross.  But won’t other flags, other symbols replace it? For years, I am told, the Confederate battle flag was used by Irishmen serving with the British army as a symbol of their nationalist sympathies when the Irish Tri-Color was not allowed in barracks or mess.

The reverse of the Emerald Guards flag may have looked like this.

 

So what historical symbol will we ban next? The Stars and Bars seems already destined to fall. Eventually all Rebel flags will have to go, so says The Empire; even the Confederate national flag in its Emerald Guards incarnation, where it lurks behind a representation of the father of our diverse and tolerant nation.

We could ban all Confederate flags, but there were lots of different Southern flags. The Rebels could not defend their territory, feed their armies or win their independence, but they sure as hell knew how to design a flag. Who will even be able to identify the flag in its various forms? Who, after all, has the expertise to fathom all the symbols of every Confederate flag; the stars, the stripes, the bars, the crosses, the reds, the whites, the blues, the greens, the golds, the Irish harps, the nationalist sunbursts, George Washington?

To take this to its absurd yet logical conclusion, eventually the “Flag Police”, the "Department of Confederate Symbol Security," will develop the data collection systems and algorithms to detect and identify a criminal banner. They will move to protect the sensibilities of anyone who claims offense. But won’t those in the Underground, let’s call it the Flag Resistance Movement, like the Irish in the Queen’s army, find a way to preserve the meaning behind the discredited symbol by finding another one?

The symbol security bureaucracy will find other targets too. What if the meaning of a particular flag falls out of public favor--the rainbow flag say? Will the FP at the insistence of some furious mob of the future rip it down?

Perhaps we need to ban the banning before it’s too late.

When Confederate Flag Brought The Races Together

Flags decorate both Union and Confederate graves on Memorial Day.

The recent controversy over the Confederate flag reminded me of a story from the fall of 1999.

On a crisp October Saturday that year, about fifty family members gathered around a flag-draped grave in the Landa Cemetery in Suffolk, Virginia.

The event was the dedication of a new military grave marker for Civil War soldier Jason Boone. It was no different from dozens of such ceremonies which occur all across the United States every year.

Well, it was abit different. The flag on the grave was the Confederate Stars and Bars, the family was black and the soldier had served in the 41^st Virginia Infantry of the Confederate States Army. The black Boone descendants sat in a place of honor at the ceremony, surrounded by dozens of Sons of Confederate Veterans and United Daughters of the Confederacy wearing period dress.

The incongruent graveside tableau reminds us that history is not as “black and white” as we think.

The ceremony fifteen years ago was put together by Boone’s descendants led by Mrs. Katheryne B. Hamilton of Portsmouth and F. Lee Hart IV, then commander of the Tom Smith Camp of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, in Suffolk.

The story was chronicled in the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot by Linda McNatt (“Black Confederate Honored In Suffolk,” October 24, 1999) and later in the Washington Post by Linda Wheeler (“Honoring a Son of the South, Descendants of White Confederates Salute Black Man’s Service,” December 4, 1999).

Mrs. Hamilton had been researching family roots when she read a newspaper article about Hart’s efforts to restore Suffolk’s Cedar Hill Cemetery and mark the graves of every Confederate buried there.

 

She did not hesitate to call the SCV commander to tell him about her great grandfather Boone. He immediately asked if he had a headstone. Mrs. Hamilton did not even know where her ancestor was buried at that point, but when she located the grave in the old Landa Cemetery in the Skeetertown community south of the city near the airport, she found only an old concrete block marker.

Hart readily agreed to procure a new military gravestone from the United States Veterans Administration which provides stones for all American veterans, including those who served the Confederacy. In a perfect world we would salute an “only in America” moment and celebrate the happy ending to our story. But real life is not so simple.

Hart had traditions to uphold. That summer, he and some other SCV members visited Hamilton’s home to explain how the group conducts its dedication ceremonies and how seriously they take their duty to honor Confederate veterans. Remember that Jason Boone was not buried at Cedar Hill with most of the other Southrons. His new gravestone would require its own dedication ceremony, Hart told her, and the Tom Smith SCV Camp would not leave even one man behind, so to speak. It did not matter to Hart that Jason Boone was black. He deserved all the honors that any Confederate soldier would get.

But here’s the thing, he went on. A Confederate honor guard would march in Skeetertown's largely black neighborhood. The Confederate flag, the Stars and Bars, not the Battle flag, would lay across the grave and re-enactors in gray and butternut would parade other Rebel flags. The Confederacy had many in the four years of the war: the Battle flag modeled after the St. Andrew’s Cross; the Stars and Bars or First National Flag, the Second National Flag known as the Stainless Banner and the Last National Flag, sometimes called the Blood-Stained Banner, among them. Private Boone’s ceremony could be no different from other Confederate dedications, Hart told her matter-of-factly. This is how we do this; it is a solemn ritual and we cannot change it, he said.

But Mrs. Hamilton had a problem with the SCV group displaying Confederate flags in a black neighborhood, in a black cemetery. She expressed concern that children might see them. Her 24-year-old daughter Tanya had the typical visceral revulsion to the thought of seeing those flags as well. "Definitely not!" other family members counseled.

But Hart’s sincerity touched Mrs. Hamilton, who was then a hospice nurse. She respected him when he told her he could not furl the flags for which his ancestors fought. He told her he understood how white supremacist groups had poisoned minds against the flag—but explained that all of that had occurred well after the war. Jason Boone knew nothing of the political hi-jacking of the flag he fought under.

Hart told her what the flag meant to him and his brothers in the SCV and he assured her that no offense was meant in its display by them.

And that’s when hearts began to change. Mrs. Hamilton took some time to think about the situation. She checked the historical record that Hart had hinted at; she considered Hart’s conviction and heartfelt sincerity.

And she thought about Jason Boone. He was someone she had come to proudly love. She liked his independence. She admired his loyalty to the mixed-race community where he had prospered.

Boone was mixed-race himself, the free-born great grandson of Joseph Skeeter, an English surveyor in Suffolk’s Colonial period. Boone was a farmer when the war began. He married twice and fathered 30 children. In Mrs. Hamilton’s thinking, Boone, along with his brother Anthony, chose to fight with the men they farmed, fished and hunted with, though another brother fought for the Union. Boone lived to be 105 years old and was granted a Confederate pension in 1924. She was especially proud that none of his children had been born out of wedlock.

And so Mrs. Hamilton decided to go forward with Hart’s vision for the ceremony. She put the word out to her family, to the Suffolk neighborhoods, to the city’s black community.

“We can’t judge 1865 by the standards of 1999,” she later told the Post. “I decided that I didn’t own Jason Boone and I had no rights to him. This is the thing to do for Jason…Jason marched under that flag. He wasn’t ashamed. He was proud of it. I can’t be in the way of that.”

The Fredericksburg National Cemetery.

And so that October day, Confederate flags snapped in the autumn breezes of Skeetertown. A piper piped, prayers were recited, historians marked the occasion. Hart spoke as did Mrs. Hamilton and her daughter Kristin. Daughter Tanya later said the ceremony was wonderful. She said her feelings about the flag changed that day. “I know the history now. When I see it I realize it’s part of their heritage.” And after a pause, “It’s part of my heritage.”

A Confederate artillery battery from North Carolina fired a three-gun salute, a Rebel bugler sounded “Taps.”

And then the honor guard unveiled Jason Boone’s new smooth granite gravestone.. The men dressed as Confederate soldiers removed and reverently folded the National Flag of the Confederacy—Jason’s flag—and presented it to the remarkable Mrs. Hamilton—and she accepted it—for Jason.

Charleston In Ruins: Holy City Knows Adversity

The recent violence in a historic church in Charleston, South Carolina, reminded me that the city of churches lay in ruins by the end of the Civil War.

St. John and St. Finbar Cathedral, Charleston, 1865.

Today, Charleston is one of the most beautiful cities in the United States. But along with Richmond and Columbia, Charleston probably suffered more destruction than any major city in American history. Because it was the cradle of the rebellion, it fought off Union siege and bombardment for years. By 1865, most of its architecturally significant buildings were reduced to little more than piles of rubble.

In my book, Soldiers Just Like You, a Civil War novel,  the city and its diverse population is the backdrop for what is arguably one of the most dramatic and unlikely trials of the Civil War.

Detail of 54th Massachusetts Monument.

When a Union force attacks Battery Wagner, a sand fort guarding Charleston Harbor, the 54^th Massachusetts Infantry is sent in for the first time in the war. The 54^th is the famous black regiment whose story is chronicled in the movie, “Glory.” But the movie ends with the failed Union assault, when in real life, about sixty black soldiers are captured by the Confederates. For them, the story is just beginning.

South Carolina decides to make an example of black men who take up arms against the South and puts the men on trial as “rebellious slaves.” What ensues is a court room drama like no other. The shooting war becomes a war of words, presided over by Judge Andrew McGrath, who later becomes the governor of the state. His brother Edward is serving in the Confederate army, as the colonel of the 1^st South Carolina Infantry.

The question at hand is: Are the black men Union prisoners of war, due all the rights of fair treatment that white men in uniform are afforded, or will they be returned to slavery or even executed?  Another question: Can black men who have attacked Charleston and killed white men get a fair trial in this southern city? An unsung hero of the city, a local attorney named Nelson Mitchell, steps up to defend the soldiers. He is paired with a Confederate officer, Colonel Edward McCrady, who is home on convalescence after being wounded in Virginia.

Col. Edward McCrady, a Confederate officer, defended the 54th.

Without giving too much away, the outcome of the trial is surprising. But knowing the verdict, I was not surprised at how positively Charleston has responded to its latest tragedy. The Holy City has been laid low before and still is an example for the rest of the country today.

If you like interesting takes on the Civil War, set in graciously beautiful places like Charleston, read Soldiers Just Like You or my newest novel, Burning Rage: A Ced Buckley Civil War Mystery. Both are available in Kindle or paperback at Amazon.com.

Clara Barton, Harriet Tubman Met On Hilton Head Island During the 1863 Charleston Campaign

In Soldiers Just Like You, my novel about the trial of captured black soldiers from the 54th Massachusetts Infantry, one chapter deals with a meeting between Clara Barton, the founder of the American Red Cross, and Harriet Tubman, of Underground Railroad fame.

 

Union ironclads try to destroy Fort Sumter in April, 1863. When the Naval attack failed, the siege of Charleston fell to the army. -A Currier & Ives print from the Library of Congress Collection.

 

Both historical figures were on Hilton Head Island in the summer of 1863 as Union forces tried to take Charleston, South Carolina. That campaign saw the famous attack of the 54th on Battery Wagner, a Confederate sand fort guarding Charleston Harbor. Barton and Tubman spent that summer in Carolina nursing wounded soldiers. In my telling, they meet in the field tent of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, the commander of the 54th, before the battle. Shaw and Barton of course were natives of Massachusetts and Tubman resided there, so they were acquainted with each other. The dialogue is mine, though it does incorporate some of Shaw's, Barton's and Tubman's writings and concerns at the time. For instance Tubman spoke out about the quality of troop rations and Barton was worried about malarial fever in the ranks. 

Here's an excerpt from the book, a chapter called "A Special Meeting," whereby I imagine what it must have been like to see the three legendary Americans together in such an unlikely place. Of course Shaw would lose his life in the ensuing attack, while Tubman and Barton would pen most eloquent reminiscences of the battle's aftermath, which I also include in Soldiers Just Like You.

 

A Special Meeting

 

On Hilton Head Island-54^th Massachusetts Headquarters

       “The droll Emerson has written: ‘A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer.’ Probably a truer statement than the master realized, though he surely was trying merely to be clever when he penned it.” Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, an admirer of the New England author, suavely smiled at his dinner guest.

       “A hero gains his status no matter how long it takes, I suppose, colonel,” the woman replied. “It has been my experience that most heroes, in the course of doing their duty, don’t live long enough. Five minutes? Five minutes is an eternity under fire.”

Robert Gould Shaw

       “Very true, my deah. Our duty now, however, is nothing more than dinnah,” Shaw retorted, playfully changing the subject. He stood and called to his personal assistant. “Orderly, we ah ready for suppah, when the cook is ready to serve.”

       The twenty-five year old Shaw contrasted sharply with his 54^th Massachusetts Infantry of black men. He could not help that he was rich, privileged and white. But he could volunteer as an officer in the only army ever raised to quell a rebellion and end slavery in one fell swoop. That he commanded that army’s first black regiment was an even more remarkable sacrifice. Shaw’s appearance belied his rare social conscience. He was small and lean and seemed boyish even behind a sharply cut goatee. And yet, the little colonel was the picture of Union dash and strength, in his bespoke Union uniform studded with rows of brass buttons and accented with bright infantry blue. His clear-eyed countenance reflected the moral clarity he felt in his abolitionist heart. Indeed, a few minutes with the man would convince you that he was an authentic vintage trampler cloaked in righteous indignation as well as blue wool.

       Dining with him at a camp table in a command tent was a remarkable woman named Clara Barton, a Washington Patent Office clerk turned battlefield nurse. Miss Barton, still attractive at forty-two, had never married, perhaps because her professional career absorbed all of her time.

      “Colonel Shaw, your hospitality here on the sands of Carolina would stand the scrutiny of the primmest marm back in the Bay State,” Barton said with the faintest smile on her strong face. The nurse, like Shaw, hailed from Massachusetts originally.

Clara Barton

      “Miss Barton, you have seen the worst of this war, at Antietam as I was, and at Fredericksburg. You alone know that every living moment must be cherished as the Almighty may ordain suffering and death with the rising sun,” the soldier said.

       “Yes colonel, death and suffering are my lot in life,” the dignified woman replied without false modesty. “I have been five days on a ship from New York to help defray those terrible things here. My friends said I would only find more trouble if I came to the South again.”

        Barton watched with some anticipation as stewards served a hot meal of some type of local fish, grilled over a campfire, along with corn cakes. Such a sumptuous meal was as precious as gold in the field with a fighting army. She wondered if the men were eating this well. It was a special dinner that Shaw knew was made even more extraordinary by the company he kept this night. Clara Barton was already a national hero. Among the soldiers she attended in Maryland and Virginia she had achieved mortal sainthood.

       “I told them, my friends, that I had never missed finding the trouble I went to find and I was never late for it,” she said with a self-assured chuckle. Shaw laughed along with her, and at the same time marveled at the confidence she oozed. She was truly a remarkable woman, just as he’d heard. But another notable was present as well.

      “Miss Barton,” Shaw said, grasping the hand of the servant who brought the food. “I would like you to meet someone as remarkable as yourself. Miss Harriet Tubman, meet Miss Clara Barton.” Miss Tubman curtsied briefly and offered her hand. Barton stood and the two women shook hands as if they were professional partners. “Miss Tubman...” the colonel began.

        “I know all about her,” Barton interrupted, meeting Tubman’s dark, stern eyes. “I am very honored to meet you, ma’am.”

       “And I you, Miss Barton,” Tubman replied.

       “I stand in the presence of greatness and humble piety all at once,” Shaw offered. The women smiled warmly.

       “I do what I can to help the Union war effort, that is all,” said Tubman.

      “And that is what I am here for, as well,” Barton added. “I am here to alleviate what suffering as I may find here, though my abilities are humble and resources few. I hear the mosquitoes are legion in this lowcountry, and that the malarial fever is as rampant as the enemy.”

Harriet Tubman

       “Disease takes many a good man, it is true. But the men ask for better food, mainly,” Tubman offered. “They call the hard beef they are provided ‘salt junk.’ It is exceedingly salty, like the water from the sea. The crackers are often buggy and wormy.”

       “This sub-par food is due to unscrupulous war profiteers, mainly, I believe,” Shaw added. “The judge advocate tries to prosecute these scofflaws. Death would not be too great a punishment for them, in my opinion.”

       “And yet death is what we wish to avoid on our side, isn’t it?” Barton replied with irony. Shaw looked uncomfortable with the remark. Like most men, he was not sure how to deal with a strong, opinionated woman like Barton. The young man changed the subject.

       “I could not ask for better victuals or more pleasant company for my last meal before battle,” Shaw said. “Shall we begin?”                       

       “Yes you should eat while it is hot,” Tubman admonished as she excused herself.

 Barton took her seat and she and her host said grace before they began arranging their plates. Neither spoke for a time. The flat clinking of tin utensils was the only sound for several moments.

       “We embark for James Island tomorrow,” Shaw confided to the nurse. “General Strong will lead the brigade to the front.”  

       “I should like to travel with you if you please. I have supplies and a small medical team to aid your regimental surgeon.”

      “Of course, Miss Barton, I wouldn’t have it any other way,” the colonel replied brightly. “The men will be eternally grateful that you have come to our humble regiment out of all the outfits in this army.”

      “You and your men are special. You know that, colonel. They will be a model for all Colored troops to follow.”

      “But will they—the legions of other Negroes whom we seek to inspire—will they follow us? And for what?  So far, we have been given little in the way of combat assignments,” the officer complained. “We need an opportunity to prove ourselves in battle.” Shaw knew that the glory of combat alone could bring the regiment the respect he and its men needed.

       “Your chance will come, Robert,” the older woman said tenderly. “The Lord put you here for a reason and He will make that reason clear on his own timetable. Be patient.”

       “Of course you are correct, Miss Barton,” Shaw agreed. “In the last few days I have come to realize that. Our time will come. The navy has failed and it falls to the army now to take Charleston the hard way.”

 

If you enjoy studying the Civil War and its many historical figures like Tubman, Barton and Shaw, read Soldiers Just Like You, or my newest novel, Burning Rage: A Ced Buckley Civil War Mystery. Both are available in digital or paperback formats at Amazon.com.

  

Stonewall Jackson: Normal or Nuts?

The Civil War’s Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson might have been the South’s greatest field commander, but for years modern historians have played up what they perceive are his nutty eccentricities. But was Jackson, whose campaign in the Shenandoah Valley and whose victory at Chancellorsville are still required reading at war colleges around the world, as crazy as some think?

J.G. Fay's 1877 print of the last meeting of General Robert E. Lee and Jackson at Chancellorsville.

In his short life, Jackson ran away from home to escape an abusive step-father, took jobs as a constable, a surveyor and teacher, graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point, earned three brevet promotions in the Mexican War, commanded artillery units in New York and Florida, became a college professor, toured Europe and became the stellar military leader that made him famous. He is perhaps the most misunderstood personage in Civil War history.

In some ways, Jackson was a man ahead of his time, but he also seems very much a product of his time. In our modern smugness, we struggle to comprehend the avant-garde genius Jackson’s contemporaries saw in him, and we need to understand a time long passed; a time for instance when people did not snap countless self-indulgent photographs, indeed a time when people did not even dare smile for a camera. They wanted to be taken seriously by posterity.

Let’s look at some popular anecdotes that have been used to caricature Jackson.

He was clueless as a professor at Virginia Military Institute.

At V. M. I. in Lexington, Virginia, where he taught before the war, some students called him Tom Fool. Whether this was because of the way he walked or talked or taught is not clear, but does that prove anything? Don’t teenage boys, especially at an all male military school, make fun of their teachers? It is classic attention-getting behavior. V.M.I. cadet James T. Murfee wrote, “As boys we were not able to comprehend the military genius that was within him…Not only did we not understand him, but I think that no one at that time understood him…”

Jackson, understood or not, commanded a certain respect at V.M.I. When the secession debate threatened to erupt into violence on campus, it was Major Jackson who stood between the factions and calmed the situation. When the cadets marched off to war, Major Jackson led the column out of Lexington.

Another story is told of a student who, instructed to read a passage for class, asked Jackson what it meant, whereby the major simply told him what he had already explained and instructed the boy to re-read the assignment. Today education emphasizes “teaching the child to think,” scaffolding and differentiation. But education then was not what it is today, for better or for worse. Back then the education of a fourteen-year-old had him “learn the material.” This was done by reading, memorizing and often reciting the facts. Understanding and experience could happen only after mastery of the material. Jackson simply used the tried and true “boring method” of teaching. A student who asked for more than that was often seen as insubordinate or even obstinate.

Thomas Jonathan Jackson

Jackson was a hypochondriac who continuously sucked lemons.

For years, on the anniversary of Jackson’s death at Guinea Station, Virginia, someone anonymously sent a funeral wreath adorned with lemons to the appropriately named Stonewall Jackson Shrine. The lemon story never sours.

Jackson seems to have suffered for many years from stomach ailments or dyspepsia as it was called. Fruits, especially citrus fruits like lemons were a common salve for dyspepsia back then, and sometimes are still used today in homeopathic remedies. The lemon story was perpetuated in the reminiscences of Richard Taylor, the son of President Zachary Taylor who commanded Jackson’s old brigade when he was promoted to Corps commander. It probably happened that Jackson came into some lemons at some point and used them accordingly. Taylor’s yarn lives on, but it has been taken out of context in subsequent years. Other contemporaries of Jackson make no mention of lemons.

Some writers have mocked Jackson’s belief that one arm was longer than the other. He is said to have sometimes held up one of his arms to “balance the humors” in his body. Was that so crazy? Almost everyone has one arm that is longer than the other, it is usually our dominate arm, so Jackson was right about that. Almost everyone in the 1860s still followed the Hippocratic theory of humors which had dominated Western medicine for centuries. Jackson was not different, we are. It seems clear that he had chronic dyspepsia and relied on the best theories of medicine at that time; medical practices that included no concept of sanitation or infection and still used cupping, bleeding and toxic chemicals for cures. Again we misunderstand the context of the times as we point out what we perceive to be Jackson’s hypochondria.

Jackson was a religious zealot.

And what’s worse, he was a hypocritical Christian; a blue-eyed killer as the late novelist-historian Shelby Foote dubbed him. It’s true he was an Old Testament Presbyterian who had a sincere commitment to the faith of his Northern Irish forebears. Again that was true for most civilized men and women in his time. We are the ones who have changed in regards to religious devotion.

Today’s cafeteria Catholics, food Jews and the mainstream denominations, some of whom have replaced the Apostle’s Creed with environmental poems, are far removed from the Presbyterianism of Jackson’s time. The educated class, to which Jackson belonged, strove to live up to the high standards of a Christian leader.

Christianity does not preclude justifiable war and Jackson thought about and wrote extensively about the morality of war. He kept holy the Sabbath day. He did not drink because, he once said, I like it too much.  He once walked two miles in the rain to return a library’s key because he had promised to return it within an hour. He kept even the smallest promise. Yes, he was particularly committed to faith and honesty and piety. All the more to his credit, and like everyone else back then, he did not smile for his photographs.

So was Stonewall Jackson normal or nuts? Well, would Robert E. Lee have entrusted his army to a flake? The very sober Lee called Jackson his right arm and had full confidence in the man, most pointedly when he trusted Jackson at Chancellorsville. There he bet on Jackson’s ability to split an already outnumbered army, march an entire corps in the dark wilderness for miles, and effectively strike the enemy’s flank. Chancellorsville is considered Lee’s greatest victory. His faith in Jackson won it for him.

Stonewall Jackson’s life story belies the idea that he was loony. He came from the humblest of beginnings, overcame many obstacles including a lonely orphaned upbringing. He worked his way up in life, was well-educated as an engineer at West Point, the country’s elite school for that discipline. He finished 17^th out of 59 in his class despite his lack of preparation for university work.

He had broad horizons, and took every opportunity to see the world, serving in Mexico, where he immersed himself in the Spanish language and Catholic theology. He lived and traveled in Florida and New York, choosing Niagara Falls for his honeymoon. He toured Europe and loved the history and cultures he experienced there.
 

Niagara Falls, New York, where Jackson honeymooned.

In his military career he chose the artillery over cavalry or infantry, because the artillery branch was on the cutting edge of military science and technology. He embraced new technology and modern ideas. He put gas lights and stoves in the only house he ever owned. He tried hydrotherapy and other medical innovations for his chronic ailments. At the First Battle of Manassas, he used trains to move troops to the front for the first time in military history. He defied the law and his Lexington neighbors by organizing a school to teach black slaves to read and write.
 
Even so Lexington’s elite judged Jackson worthy of its respect. He married Ellie Junkin, whose father was president of Washington College, and when she died in childbirth, he married Mary Anna Morrison, the daughter of the president of Davidson College; two very respectable alliances for a man with his common roots. Like those university presidents, Robert E. Lee knew he could trust Thomas Jackson.

Perhaps one of Jackson’s V.M.I. cadets said it best when sizing up the true Stonewall Jackson. James H. Lane wrote that he was “wonderfully eccentric…a man of great bravery, conscientious and fearless in the discharge of every duty, strictly honest and just in his intentions.”

Stonewall Jackson: Normal or nuts? How about  wonderfully eccentric!
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Kelly J. O’Grady is the author of Burning Rage: A Ced Buckley Civil War Mystery and Soldiers Just Like You, based on the true story of the trial of the 54^th Massachusetts. If you like looking at the Civil War, its time and its people, in a different way, look for these books at Amazon.com.

New Civil War Detective A Complex Character

Brother Ced Buckley, the main character in the new murder mystery Burning Rage, has been compared to G.K. Chesterton’s famous Catholic sleuth, Father Brown. While Brown solved capers in the early 20th Century, Buckley fights crime in the closing days of the Civil War. In Burning Rage, when Union cavalryman Tupper Long finds the horribly mutilated corpses of a Kentucky regiment, he knows who killed them and why. But Long doesn’t know the whole story. To see justice done, General Sherman turns to Buckley, a peg-legged former Confederate soldier who has dedicated his life to the Rule of St. Benedict—and to crime detection.


Van Dyke's Portrait of a Benedictine Monk.

 Brother Cedric Patrick Buckley is a complicated new literary character with a complex pedigree. We first met him in my previous novel, Soldiers Just Like You, on the battlefield during the Charleston campaign of 1863. That summer, Charleston is besieged by a powerful Union force on land and by sea.

Buckley is a private in the Confederate army, defending his city against invasion. When a Union attack approaches Charleston along the Stono River, he is badly wounded, his leg shattered. The campaign is famous for being the first time the black troops of the 54^th Massachusetts are sent into battle.

Later on, the 54^th finds immortality when it takes part in the assault on Battery Wagner. Their exploits there were chronicled in the movie Glory. But prior to that battle, the 54^th makes a stand at a place called Grimball’s Landing on James Island, and this is where they find the Confederate boy soldier, unable to move and threatened by an ensuing wildfire.

The black men find it in their hearts to rescue Buckley; a selfless, spontaneous act that touches off a series of serendipitous events. Dozens of black men of the 54^th are captured in the subsequent Battle of Battery Wagner and South Carolina decides to make an example of them by charging them with being slaves in rebellion, a capital offense. Buckley becomes a surprise witness at the 54^th’s trial, attesting to their status as bona fide Union soldiers, soldiers no different from other men in blue and the equal of those who fought for the South.

When defense attorney Nelson Mitchell asks Buckley if he was afraid when he saw Negroes with guns, he characterized his rescue this way:

Detail of the 54th Massachusetts Monument.

“Well, sir, I didn’t notice they were Negroes…No, I didn’t take note of their black skin…It didn’t matter if they were Negroes anyway. They were helping me—saving me—saving my life. I didn’t know they were Negroes until you told me they were and that they were on trial here in Charleston.”

When Mitchell, a historical figure who really defended the 54^th in 1863, tells the court that Buckley believed his rescuers were sent by God, the young soldier reveals his motivation for taking a religious vocation:

“I want to be a priest now, because I lived. Maybe I will be the first one-legged priest in South Carolina.”

Mitchell judges that Buckley already exhibits the dedication and intellect that make him the monk-detective who will perform so ably in Burning Rage. The attorney glibly responds with an old Irish-ism that means he will be well-suited for the profession. “You won’t come to the priesthood on one leg, my man,” Mitchell replies ironically, considering Buckley’s handicap. From this episode in Soldiers Just Like You, we  glimpse Buckley’s wisdom and open mindedness; we see the young monk’s innate ability to see men as individuals, not concerned whether they are black or white.

But readers of Burning Rage will see that Brother Buckley is not only wise and even-minded, he is dedicated to his faith and devoted to his vows. He is sincere, but not so pious as to be off-putting. He can be playful at times, and sarcastic if it suits him. He shows justifiable anger over the conduct of the war, unimpressed as he is by the politicians and the generals.

He is usually soft-spoken, but he is not a pushover. He is talented but not an egotist. He is well-read for one so young, but not didactic. He has concluded that slavery is evil, but understands its evolution in America. He has experienced the epiphany that the war’s aims have changed from a second revolution for sectional independence to a fight to secure liberty for all.


Kurz & Allison's print of the storming of Battery Wagner.

Like G.K. Chesterton’s Father Brown, Brother Buckley’s manner and looks belie this complex man and shrewd detective. The former Confederate still wears gray, the gray robes of the Benedictine Order of the time. Because there is a dearth of proper prosthetic devices, he lumbers about with a wooden peg crafted from his grandfather’s blackthorn walking stick. He seems sickly and vulnerable, but he is battle-tested.

When General Sherman asks him peevishly why he tends to amend each address to him with “my friend,” he answers matter-of-factly. “You’ll excuse my presumption, sir. It’s merely a peculiar affectation of mine, a way of speaking. You see, General, I have been a soldier. I have seen war. I have been shot in battle. I want everyone I meet to be my friend.” In that statement, we see the essence of Brother Buckley. He realizes that he has been given a gift, a second life, a second chance; an opportunity to right the wrongs of the past and sow friendship in a reunited country.

Confederate soldier, Benedictine brother, Civil War detective. Explore the complex humanity of Brother Ced Buckley. Peer into the quaint world of the Civil War South. Read Burning Rage and Soldiers Just Like You. Both are available at Amazon.com.

Five Things You Don't Know About Civil War Armies

As we remember the sacrifice of the American soldier on Memorial Day 2015, here's some insight into the world of the men who served in Civil War armies.

1. THEY FOUGHT LIKE CATS AND DOGS.

Tactically speaking, Civil War armies act more like cats than dogs. If you’ve ever tripped over a cat that chooses to sleep right in the middle of the family room floor, you know that cats feel safer in wide open spaces. Cats, big and small, want to size up enemies or eye prey from a distance. Likewise armies need open spaces to mass an attack, maneuver quickly or retreat if they are overmatched. A lion out on the savannah uses open spaces in much the same way. Dogs tend to hole up in a lair. At the time, Robert E. Lee considered his defensive position on the Sunken Road at Fredericksburg fatally flawed because if the Confederate line was overwhelmed, there was nowhere to retreat.

Union and Confederate armies fight the Battle of Nashville in December 1864.

 

2. THEY KNEW NAPOLEON COULDN’T SHOOT STRAIGHT

Though considered suicidal by modern observers, Civil War assaults were no more foolhardy than infantry attacks in any other war. If you’ve ever watched a Civil War movie, you’ve probably disgustedly asked: Why aren’t they hiding behind trees and picking off the enemy from one-thousand yards? Civil War armies used classic Napoleonic tactics necessitated by the limits of the weaponry of the time. Even rifled muskets had a short effective range and limited direct fire accuracy. Use of these single-shot, barrel-loaded shoulder arms meant that effective firepower must be massed firepower, fired in a volley and must get close to its target--fifty to one hundred yards, not one-thousand.

3. THEY DIDN’T KNOW WALTZING MATILDA. THAT WAS WWI!

Civil War formations did not waltz into battle or stand and fire on an open field. If you’ve ever watched a modern day reenactment you may think columns of men slow-stepped across a field or lines of infantry stood on a ridge and calmly fired away. In reality, the idea was to use speed and timing, along with overwhelming firepower, to carry the enemy line. An effective attacking commander looked for a weak spot in the other army’s line; a thinly held post or a unit that seemed untrained, ill-lead, or out of ammunition. A successful assault force kept close together and closed on the enemy using bluster, guile, speed, or cover. Once within the effective range of their muskets, the attackers might let the other line expend a volley, withstanding the fire briefly. But then they struck quickly while the enemy was reloading. Simply put, the plan was to come down on the front with the most men, still closely dressed, firing together into the face of the enemy. This was what these Civil War soldiers were drilled to do. A unit that seized the initiative and executed the evolution properly would carry the position. Believe it or not, this was often the case, but sometimes it did not carry the position because the enemy was strong in number, well supplied, well-drilled, battle tested and expertly commanded.

4. THEY SLAUGHTERED MILLIONS OF HORSES

Logistically, the most important “foot soldiers” in Civil War armies were the ones with four feet. Without horses and mules, the armies could not travel, eat, or shoot. There were about six million horses in the entire United States when war broke out. Estimates reckon that between one and three million horses were killed during the war. Even at the lower estimate, that means nearly two horses died for every soldier lost. Mules died too. Six-mule teams pulled the wagons that supplied both sides. Monstrous wagon trains transported troops, food, munitions, uniforms and other supplies across the continent. General Sherman’s force in Georgia traveled with 5,000 wagons and well over 30,000 horses and mules.

Union Telegraph Corps wagon train in Richmond 1865.

At Atlanta, the Union train stretched for sixty miles. Horses carried thousands of cavalrymen into battles. Mules muscled thousands of artillery pieces onto contested fields along with accompanying caissons rolling along with powder, shot and shell. Ambulance and Engineer Corps also utilized these beasts of burden. Horses carried each army’s officer corps, and a multitude of couriers and scouts. Army commanders knew how precious the equine resource was. In one action, a retreating General Phillip Sheridan slaughtered 2,000 of his own mounts rather than allow them to fall into the hands of the Confederates.

5. THEY DIDN’T TWEET OR HAVE 4G COVERAGE

Civil War armies didn’t have smart phones, texts or tweets. Communications in battle relied on couriers on horseback, unit flags, drums and bugles, semaphore signals and in rare instances hot air balloons and field telegraphs. Command and control is an army commander’s most important function in a fight, but Civil War communications were decidedly “analog.” Unit flags could help army HQ pinpoint where the battle line stood or faltered, but this was by no means foolproof along a smoky, chaotic battlefront that often ranged for miles. The soldier could not hear shouted orders once the thunder of the battle commenced and bugle calls to charge or retreat often were muffled as well. Couriers could be injured, captured or killed in the course of delivering important messages.

And technology was not ready to fill in these gaps. At the Battle of Fredericksburg in 1862, the trailing wires of incipient field telegraphs were trampled and destroyed making the electric gadgets all but useless. Aeronaut Thaddeus Lowe used hot air balloons tethered behind Union lines to monitor the action on battlefields across Virginia early in the war, but the army did not appreciate the innovation and the Balloon Corps as it was called was disbanded by 1863. Considering all this, it is a wonder that army commanders had any notion what went on during a battle involving fifty to two hundred thousand men. One can imagine Fighting Joe Hooker yelling, “Can you hear me now?” as Stonewall Jackson folded up the flank of his 120,000-man army at Chancellorsville.

Thaddeus Lowe demonstrates his balloon.

RETRO-TECHIES, THE 2^ND AMENDMENT AND BURNING RAGE

In the course of the war technological innovations changed the nature of Civil War armies and how they fought. Recently I had the pleasure of taking my son and a friend of his to the national competition of the North-South Skirmish Association. The group maintains the knowledge and use of the weapons of the Civil War. The men and women of the N-SSA are not re-enactors, though they do dress as the units did. They are competitive marksmen, historians, skilled mechanics and artful gunsmiths.

At their permanent base, Fort Shenandoah near Winchester, Virginia, you can watch this brain trust of “retro-techies” preserve, repair, maintain and shoot Civil War muskets, revolvers, carbines and artillery. Once you witness how much maintenance and practice goes into the effective use of these throwback weapons, you will not doubt what the authors of the Second Amendment meant by the right to keep and bear arms. The weapons the founders knew, only a bit removed from these Civil War guns, have to be kept handy, cleaned often, and practiced with regularly for them to be of any use when needed.

In my new book, Burning Rage, I try to accurately portray the realities of Civil War armies in battle. Specifically the book opens with Judson Kilpatrick’s cavalry raid of Richmond in 1864 and his assault of Confederate batteries on Brook Hill north of the Confederate capital. The Union leader believed timing, speed, overwhelming force, and massed firepower would carry the heights there.

If you are one of those armchair generals who asks why Civil War armies charged well-defended positions, ponder these questions: What makes a football team think it can run the ball up the middle on an All-Pro defensive line?  Like a Civil War army, a team’s coaches believe proper execution of a good plan by the right personnel will open up a hole. Does that calculation always lead to victory for army or team? Is execution the only difference between success and failure on a football field? Or is a different kind of execution always the likely result for an army’s attacking force?

Immerse yourself in the life of Civil War armies. Read Burning Rage, a Civil War mystery featuring Confederate soldier-turned-detective Ced Buckley. Pick up a copy at Amazon.com.

Baltimore: Of Riots, Martial Law and the Preakness

In Burning Rage, my new Civil War mystery, smuggler Nathaniel Tilghman arranges to meet Confederative operatives at the Cathedral of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Baltimore.

Construction of the Benjamin Latrobe designed edifice began in 1806, under the leadership of Archbishop John Carroll, the founder of Georgetown University, and his cousin Charles Carroll of Carrollton, the only Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence. It was America’s first cathedral and today is designated both a national shrine and a basilica. It is the seat of the Archdiocese of Baltimore.

A 19th Century engraving of the old Baltimore Cathedral.

 In Burning Rage, Confederate raider Raphael Semmes wants Tilghman to sneak a shipment of Confederate gold into Baltimore. Why Baltimore? Of course the sea captain is originally from Tilghman Island, and knows the city well. Of more practical importance is the mid-Atlantic port’s proximity to Richmond, the Confederate capital. But perhaps most important is the presence in Baltimore of a network of Southern operatives that goes back to the attempt on Abraham Lincoln’s life as he passed through the city to assume his duties as president in February 1861.

The Pinkerton detectives who uncovered the plot to kill the new president believed it was orchestrated by George Procter Kane, Baltimore’s marshal of police, and the city’s Democratic mayor, George William Brown. Baltimore, run by the Democratic Party as it still is today, simmered with Southern sympathies. Indeed Lincoln garnered only 1,100 of the 30,000 votes Baltimore cast for president.

By April, riots erupted, targeting Union troops passing through Baltimore heading for Washington. When a Massachusetts regiment was set upon by a mob, four soldiers were killed and another thirty-six were wounded. The troops killed twelve civilians. To restore order Lincoln and his generals declared martial law, suspended the Writ of Habeas Corpus and arrested Kane, Brown and anyone else who opposed the Republican administration. The arrestees included newspaper editor Francis Key Howard, the grandson of Francis Scott Key, who wrote “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

Ironically Howard was imprisoned at Fort McHenry where Key had witnessed “bombs bursting in air” and “the twilight’s last gleaming” during the British bombardment of Baltimore in the War of 1812.

The outrages of the riots, martial law and unconstitutional arrests did not sit well with the city’s Democrats. James Randall Ryder, a Baltimore native who lost a friend in the riots, was inspired to pen “Maryland, My Maryland,” a staunchly Confederate poem, which will be sung by the revelers at the Preakness horse race this weekend. It is still Maryland’s state song.

Sisters of Charity in Civil War camp. Note the winged cornettes.

In Burning Rage, historic Baltimore is the backdrop where certain priests and nuns connected with the cathedral collaborate with Confederate agents and a fictionalized Marshal Kane to help Tilghman hide the gold from Union forces. These religious, including “butterfly nuns,” so-called after the winged cornettes that some orders wore then, help the Confederates out of personal allegiance rather than church policy.

Though the Catholic Church took no official stand in the war, it accepted slavery where it existed and even owned slaves where it was legal. Northern bishops supported the North and Southern bishops like Richmond’s John McGill and Charleston’s Patrick Lynch, supported the South. The pontiff, Pope Pius IX, voiced sympathy for the Confederacy, sending Jefferson Davis (who had attended Catholic school as a youth) a symbolic crown of thorns in 1864.

In Burning Rage, the Southerners in the cathedral end up fighting their way out after Union forces charge the altar looking for the gold. Eventually the Rebels escape into the building’s unfinished crypt, two levels below the sanctuary, hidden one level below the undercroft.

A modern photo of the Baltimore Basilica's crypt.

There is no more historic place for Catholics in America than the Baltimore Basilica. From the beginning of English settlement, Maryland was granted to Lord Calvert as a refuge colony for British Catholics. Mother Elizabeth Ann Seton, America’s first saint, founded the Sisters of Charity in Emmitsburg. The Venerable Father Michael J. McGivney, the founder of the Knights of Columbus, was ordained in the basilica. Both Saint John Paul II and Blessed Mother Teresa graced its aisles.

In 1866 President Andrew Johnson attended a church council there calling for the evangelization of newly freed slaves and the Indian people. It was from Baltimore in 1808 that the Church created four new dioceses in New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Bardstown, Kentucky. And it was from Baltimore that the American Church began its Catholic schools program guided by the Baltimore Catechism.

For more on Catholics in the Civil War and especially in the Confederacy, read my non-fiction book, Clear the Confederate Way! The Irish in the Army of Northern Virginia. To enjoy a good mystery that includes the charm of old Baltimore, read Burning Rage: A Ced Buckley Civil War Mystery, available at Amazon.com.