Civil War History

During my research for Widow of Gettysburg, I read everything I could related to the battle of Gettysburg (July 1-3, 1863) and its aftermath. I read so many gory descriptions of the carnage that I started to glaze over them. But one day, a sweet letter from a soldier to a Sunday school girl brought tears to my eyes. I want to share it with you. First a little background: during the Civil War, the Christian Commission (born out of the YMCA) encouraged Sunday school classes in the North to put together "comfort bags" which were distributed by delegates of the Christian Commission to soldiers. These bags were small cloth kits which included thread, sewing needles, small scissors, and scraps of material. Each child also included a note with the bag to encourage the receiving soldier. At Gettysburg, a wounded Confederate received one of these comfort bags from a little girl in Massachusetts. He wrote back to her: My Dear Little Friend--I received your present, the comfort bag, and it is thrice welcome, although it was intended for Union defenders. It was given to me by a Christian woman, who lost her holy anger against Rebels--for such am I--in her bounteous sympathy with the unfortunate. My little friend can imagine my thankfulness for the favor, when I inform her that I have no friends this side of heaven--all gone, father, mother, sister and brother, and I am all alone.   The dear comfort-bag I shall always keep as a memento of true sympathy from a generous heart in the loyal State of Massachusetts. I hope you will not be disappointed by this, coming as it does from a Rebel; for I was forced into the ranks at the point of bayonet, for I would not go willingly to fight against the dear old flag, whose ample folds have always shielded the orphan and made glad the oppressed.   I have read your note very many times over, and have wished it could rightfully be mine. "Do they think of me at home?" Silence--all is silence! Not so with the Union soldier; a thousand tokens tell him yes.   I was wounded in the second day's fight and am now packing up my all to be exchanged or sent back a cripple for life. I am seventeen years old, and now am turned out with one arm to carve my way through the world; but my trust is in my heavenly Father, who will forgive and bless. Hoping that God may in mercy reunite us all again as brothers and sister. I am your unworthy friend.   E--A--Co--. Miss. Volunteers This touching letter appears in many documents and books, including Gettysburg and the Christian Commission by Daniel Hoisington. Following the battle of Gettysburg, the United States Christian Commission provided spiritual and physical care to thousands of wounded and dying soldiers of both armies. More than three hundred volunteers came to the battlefield, leaving a legacy of “a thousand little nameless acts.” The book includes important contemporary accounts of the battle’s aftermath, including the first complete publication of the diary of John Calhoun Chamberlain, one of the first delegates at Gettysburg and brother of the hero of Little Round Top. Jane Boswell Moore’s letters provide a glimpse of women’s work among the soldiers. Andrew Cross’ official report describes the carnage of battle as “a most fearful judgment of God upon a nation and people.” In a postwar story, George Peltz tells of a return to the Second Corps Hospital eight years later on a final mission of mercy. For more about the Heroines Behind the Lines Civil War novels, visit the Web site.

Today in 1863, Gettysburg shuddered beneath its second day of battle. Yesterday, I shared housewife Sarah Broadhead's perspective of hiding in the cellar during the July 1 fighting. Today, it's teenaged Tillie Pierce's turn in the spotlight. The following is excerpted from my nonfiction book, Stories of Faith and Courage from the Home Front: A Field for Profound Thought [[{"type":"media", "view_mode":"media_large", "fid":"677", "attributes":{"class":"media-image alignleft wp-image-228 size-full", "typeof":"foaf:Image", "style":"", "width":"124", "height":"179", "alt":"BB-homefront-cover_125"}}]] When fifteen-year-old Tillie Pierce fled to a neighbor’s farmhouse a few miles away, she thought she would be safe from the battle. Instead, she was right behind the Union lines on the eastern slopes of the Round Tops for the second and third days of the battle. She and her neighbors passed out water to the soldiers in blue as they proceeded into battle, and watched in horror as they came back wounded or dead. After tearing all the muslin and linen in the house into strips for bandages, Tillie finally looked up. I was looking out one of the windows facing the front yard. Near the basement door, and directly underneath the window I was at, stood one of these [amputating] benches. I saw them lifting the poor men upon it, then the surgeons sawing and cutting off arms and legs, then again probing and picking bullets from the flesh. Some of the soldiers fairly begged to be taken next, so great was their suffering, and so anxious were they to obtain relief . . . To the south of the house, and just outside of the yard, I noticed a pile of limbs higher than the fence. It was a ghastly sight! [[{"type":"media", "view_mode":"media_large", "fid":"1285", "attributes":{"class":"media-image wp-image-3305", "typeof":"foaf:Image", "style":"", "width":"300", "height":"316", "alt":"Tillie Pierce"}}]] Tillie Pierce   After the battle ended, Tillie and many other women in the town threw themselves into whatever they could do to bring comfort to these strangers, who by now felt more like family. They brought lemons, oranges, cakes, jellies and rolls. The women also spent hours reading to the wounded and participated in their religious services at the hospital. Though the Battle of Gettysburg certainly left a mark on Tillie, she chose to dwell not on the human suffering now forever linked with her hometown, but on God’s sovereignty. What in my girlhood was a teeming and attractive landscape spread out by the Omnipotent Hand to teach us of His goodness, has by His own direction, become a field for profound thought, where, through coming ages, will be taught lessons of loyalty, patriotism and sacrifice. . . . we cannot fail to learn that: “The God of battles” is ever present, that on those memorable days at Gettysburg “The hand of our God was upon us, and He delivered us from the hand of the enemy.” Prayer: Lord, help me focus on You and learn the lessons you have for me. “The hand of our God was upon us, and he delivered us from the hand of the enemy.” ~Ezra 8:31 ___________________________ [[{"type":"media", "view_mode":"media_large", "fid":"771", "attributes":{"class":"media-image alignleft wp-image-891 size-full", "typeof":"foaf:Image", "style":"", "width":"125", "height":"193", "alt":"Widow cover 3 125"}}]]Tillie's diary, At Gettysburg: Or What a Young Girl Saw and Heard of the Battle, is a wonderful eyewitness account, and one I used in my research for Widow of Gettysburg. It can be read online in its entirety for free at Google Books or purchased in paperback (or 99 cents for Kindle). Tillie's house is now the Tillie Pierce Inn, where you could lodge during your next visit to Gettysburg! (Also be sure to check out the home of Tillie's neighbor, Hettie Shriver. The Shriver House Museum is on my list of 9 Must-See Sites of Gettsyburg!) If you liked meeting Tillie Pierce and Sarah Broadhead, you may also enjoy 3 Heroines of Gettysburg. Learn more about Widow of Gettysburg here, or view the one-minute trailer below for a taste of the story.

[[{"type":"media", "view_mode":"media_large", "fid":"771", "attributes":{"class":"media-image alignright wp-image-891 size-full", "typeof":"foaf:Image", "style":"", "width":"125", "height":"193", "alt":"Widow cover 3 125"}}]]Both Hollywood and history books tell stories of valor from the battle of Gettysburg. But before the word "Gettysburg" was synonymous with battle, it was simply the name of a town where ordinary people lived—until extraordinary circumstances brought out strength and courage they did not know they possessed. These stories of resilience inspired me to write my novel Widow of Gettysburg, book 2 in the Heroines Behind the Lines series. Today I'd love to introduce you to just three real women of Gettysburg. Sallie Myers [[{"type":"media", "view_mode":"media_large", "fid":"1278", "attributes":{"class":"media-image wp-image-3260 size-medium", "typeof":"foaf:Image", "style":"", "width":"201", "height":"300", "alt":"Sallie Myers"}}]] Sallie Myers   Gettysburg school teacher Sallie Myers never could stand the sight of blood. But on the morning of July 2, 1863, the second day of battle, she could not ignore the desperate cries of the wounded lying in a church across the street. Kneeling by the first man inside the door of the church, Sallie asked what she could do for him. "Nothing," he replied. "I am going to die." Overcome with emotion, Sallie ran outside and wept. With great effort, she finally calmed herself and returned to the soldier, where she learned he was Sgt. Alexander Stewart of the 149th Pennsylvania Volunteers. With the surgeon's permission, she then had Sgt. Stewart brought to her home where she could better care for him. Though a bullet narrowly missed her where she sat fanning her patient, she refused to leave him for the safety of the cellar. After Sgt. Alexander died on July 6, 1863, Sallie took in eleven more soldiers while continuing to work in the make-shift hospitals of the town for weeks after the battle ended. "The sight of blood never again affected me and I was among the wounded and dying men day and night," Sallie recalled. "While the battle lasted and the town was in possession of the rebels, I went back and forth between my home and the hospitals without fear." The next summer, Sgt. Alexander's widow and his brother Henry came to visit her. From that meeting, Sallie and Henry began a relationship which resulted in their marriage in 1867. Sadie Bushman Nine-year-old Sadie Bushman was running to her grandparents' house for safety when the battle roared into action. I don't have a picture of Sadie, but I do know what nine looks like. My own daughter is currently the same age Sadie was when the following story took place. [[{"type":"media", "view_mode":"media_large", "fid":"1279", "attributes":{"class":"media-image wp-image-3258", "typeof":"foaf:Image", "style":"", "width":"400", "height":"270", "alt":"This is my 9-year-old daughter looking on as my 6-year-old is being treated for his broken arm. "}}]] This is my 9-year-old daughter looking on as my 6-year-old is being treated for his broken arm. Little Sadie had a much different experience, as the youngest nurse in the Civil War.   Sadie tells the story in her own words: "There came a screech and a shell brushed my skirt as it went by. I staggered from the concussion of it and almost fell, when I was grasped by the arm and a man said pleasantly, ‘That was a close call. Come with me and hurry,' he added in a tone so commanding that I meekly followed. [That man was Dr. Benjamin F. Lyford, a surgeon in the Union army]. He led me to . . .  an army corps hospital and then he put me to work. Wounded and dying men were then being carried to the place by the score. . . "As I reached the hospital tent a man with a leg shattered almost to a pulp was carried in. ‘Give him a drink of water while I cut off his leg' was the command I got. How I accomplished it I do not know but I stood there and assisted the surgeon all through the operation. I was in that field hospital all during the three days of the battle, climbing over heaps of bodies six and eight deep and always with the doctor helping him in his work. Then my father found me and took me home. Soon, the Christian and Sanitary Commissions set up a hospital on the scene of battle, and Sadie nursed there, too. "I was placed in charge of one of the wards and I was so small I had to climb up on the beds to attend to the sick and wounded men," she said. Having conquered her fear, Sadie served in that hospital nearly five months, though her father whipped her for nursing against his will. Elizabeth Thorn [[{"type":"media", "view_mode":"media_large", "fid":"1280", "attributes":{"class":"media-image size-full wp-image-3259", "typeof":"foaf:Image", "style":"", "width":"260", "height":"357", "alt":"Peter and Elizabeth Thorn"}}]] Peter and Elizabeth Thorn   Elizabeth her husband Peter were caretakers of Gettysburg's Evergreen Cemetery, and lived in the cemetery gatehouse with Elizabeth's parents and her three small sons.  With Peter away as a soldier, Elizabeth tended the cemetery in his absence. She was six months pregnant in July 1863. Like most other Gettysburg women, she gave food and water to passing soldiers in both blue and grey before fleeing to safety during the battle. The Thorns returned to find their home severely damaged. But there was work to do. The cemetery president instructed her to bury the soldiers as fast as she could. The stench from the bloated corpses, both human and horse, was nauseating, but she and her father, aged 63, had little choice. The longer the bodies lay sweltering in the sun, the more of a health hazard they became. Elizabeth and her father buried 102 soldiers in Evergreen Cemetery. She was never compensated for her work in the aftermath of the battle, or for the damages to her home. [[{"type":"media", "view_mode":"media_large", "fid":"1281", "attributes":{"class":"media-image wp-image-3179", "typeof":"foaf:Image", "style":"", "width":"500", "height":"375", "alt":"Monument to Elizabeth Thorn, the pregnant gravedigger, in Evergreen Cemetery."}}]] Monument to Elizabeth Thorn, the pregnant gravedigger, in Evergreen Cemetery.   These women, and so many others (Sarah Broadhead, Tillie Pierce, Hettie Shriver, etc.), did not ask to be heroines, but when war demanded it of them, they quietly filled the role. Their courage, sacrifice, and ability to love their enemies inspired Widow of Gettysburg, and I hope the book, in turn, inspires you. *Visiting Gettysburg soon? Don't miss these 9 Must-See Sites (Plus 5 Spots for R&R)!

On this day in 1865, three days after General Lee's surrender, and four years to the day after the war began in 1861 with the firing on Fort Sumter, Confederate troops formally surrendered to Union. The work of art above, "Salute of Honor" by Mort Kunstler, is so moving to me. But it's even more profound when we consider what was happening at this moment in history. Kunstler's Web site describes it so poignantly, I'm going to quote from it directly: They faced each other in two long straight lines - just as they had so many times before on so many bloody fields of fire. This time was different. Three days earlier, General Robert E. Lee had surrendered the skeletal remnants of his hard-fighting Army of Northern Virginia to General Ulysses S. Grant in farmer Wilmer McLean's parlor. Now it was time for the Sons of the South to lay down their arms and give up their bloodied battle flags. As enemies, these men in blue and gray had faced each other at Petersburg and Cold Harbor, at Gettysburg and Chancellorsville, at Fredericksburg and Antietam, at Second Manassas and Malvern Hill. Now they again stood in great ranks opposite each other - one now the victor, the other now the vanquished. Placed in command of receiving the Southern surrender was Brigadier General Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, a Northern war hero who bore four battle wounds inflicted by these men in gray and butternut now assembled before him. Absent in Chamberlain, however, was any animosity toward these former foes; present instead was a sense of respect for fellow countrymen who had given their all in the grip of war. At Chamberlain's order, there was no jeering. No beating of drums, no chorus of cheers nor other unseemly celebration in the face of a fallen foe. "Before us in proud humiliation," Chamberlain would later recall, "stood the embodiment of manhood: men whom neither toils and sufferings, nor the fact of death, nor disaster, nor hopelessness could bend from their resolve; standing before us now, thin, worn, and famished, but erect, and with eyes looking level into ours, waking memories that bound us together as no other bond. Was not such manhood to be welcomed back into a Union so tested and assured?" At Chamberlain's command, the Northern troops receiving the surrender shifted their weapons to "carry arms" - a soldier's salute, delivered in respect to the defeated Southerners standing before them. Confederate General John B. Gordon, immediately recognized this remarkable, generous gesture offered by fellow Americans - and responded with a like salute. Honor answering honor. Then it was over. And a new day had begun - built on this salute of honor at Appomattox. Former foes both North and South - in mutual respect and mutual toleration - now faced the future together. As Americans all. That future-- the Reconstruction period-- was anything but smooth sailing. In fact, Reconstruction has even been called the Second Civil War due to the intense struggles Americans faced as they pieced their lives and their country back together. But on April 12, 1865, whether they were heartbroken or joyful, there must have been a shared feeling of sober relief that the carnage of the war was over. *If your fascination with the Civil War has not ended with the close of the 150th anniversary dates, I invite you to browse through thirty (and counting) posts I've written on Civil War history. Find them here.

“It is not two years since the sight of a person who had lost one of his lower limbs was an infrequent occurrence. Now, alas! There are few of us who have not a cripple among our friends, if not in our own families. A mechanical art which provided for an occasional and exceptional want has become a great and active branch of industry. War unmakes legs, and human skill must supply their places as it best may.” ~Oliver Wendell Holmes, M.D., “The Human Wheel, Its Spokes and Felloes”  If necessity is the mother of invention, it should come as no surprise that the Civil War, which produced some 45,000 amputee veterans, also prompted major progress in the development and production of artificial limbs. One of the characters in my novel Widow of Gettysburg is the recipient of one of these limbs. Let’s take a closer look at what was involved in this rehabilitation of amputee veterans. (You can see more on amputations in a previous blog post, here.) Once the stump was healed after amputation and the patient able to do without dressings, the surgeons' work was finished, and the patient was left to shift for himself in securing the best apparatus. But not everyone was a good candidate for a prosthetic. If the limb was taken off at the joint, such as the hip or shoulder, there was no stump to which an artificial limb could be attached. The surgeon may have performed the operation too high or too low on the limb for a good fit to be possible. Also, if the stump was prone to frequent infection, it would have been too painful to attach an artificial limb to it. For those who could pursue a prosthetic, in the North, the most popular artificial leg was a “Palmer” leg, named for Benjamin Franklin Palmer, who patented the design. A previous design by James Potts was made of wood, leather, and cat-gut tendons hinging the knee and ankle joints, and dubbed “The Clapper” for the clicking sound of its motion. Palmer improved upon this design with a heel spring in 1846, and his “American leg” was produced continuously through World War 1. Palmer’s leg cost about $150, a prohibitive amount for the average private, whose pay was about $13 per month. Add to that the cost of travel and lodging expenses to see a specialist, and the number of amputees who could afford it went down even further. The cost of an artificial limb for Confederate veterans was between $300-$500, due to the soaring inflation. [[{"type":"media", "view_mode":"media_large", "fid":"1196", "attributes":{"class":"media-image size-full wp-image-2943", "typeof":"foaf:Image", "style":"", "width":"496", "height":"600", "alt":"Wooden leg"}}]] Wooden leg   Since the majority of veterans had been farmers, planters, or skilled laborers before the war, the need for artificial limbs was, indeed, a crippling problem. To help address it, the U.S. government appropriated $15,000 in 1862 to pay for limbs for maimed soldiers and sailors. In January 1864, a civilian association in Richmond was established to pay for artificial limbs for Confederate amputees. After the war in 1866, North Carolina became the first state to start a program for thousands of amputees to receive artificial limbs. The program offered veterans free accommodations and transportation by rail; 1,550 veterans contacted the program by mail. During the same year, the State of Mississippi spent more than half its yearly budget providing veterans with artificial limbs. Many entrepreneurs who developed artificial limbs were Civil War veteran amputees themselves. In fact, one of the most successful pioneers in prosthetics was Confederate veteran James Edward Hanger, whose amputation in West Virginia was the first recorded amputation of the Civil War. He was 18 years old at the time. Union surgeons discovered him wounded and performed the amputation, giving him a standard issue replacement leg: a solid piece of wood that made walking clunky and difficult. Hanger’s adjustments included better hinging and flexing abilities using rust-proof levers and rubber pads. He also used whittled barrel staves to make the limb lighter-weight. He won the Confederate contract to produce limbs, and by 1890, had moved his headquarters to Washington, D.C., and opened satellite offices in four other cities. The company he founded – Hanger, Inc. – remains a key player in prosthetics and orthotics today. [[{"type":"media", "view_mode":"media_large", "fid":"1197", "attributes":{"class":"media-image aligncenter wp-image-2942", "typeof":"foaf:Image", "style":"", "width":"550", "height":"398", "alt":"hange-decker"}}]] The Civil War-era commitment to support veterans continues today through programs of the VA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to ensure ongoing progress in prosthetics design. The war set the prosthetics industry on a course that would ultimately lead to today’s quasi-bionic limbs that look like the real thing and can often perform some tasks even better. For further reading: Hasegawa, Guy R. Mending Broken Soldiers: The Union and Confederate Programs to Supply Artificial Limbs. Southern Illinois University Press, 2012.