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.