I thought I might post a few excerpts from Walt Whitman's wonderful work "Specimen Days" about his time spent helping wounded soldiers during the war.
"Fifty Hours Left Wounded on the Field
HERE is a case of a soldier I found among the crowded cots in the Patent-office. He likes to have some one to talk to, and we will listen to him. He got badly hit in his leg and side at Fredericksburgh that eventful Saturday, 13th of December. He lay the succeeding two days and nights helpless on the field, between the city and those grim terraces of batteries; his company and regiment had been compell’d to leave him to his fate. To make matters worse, it happen’d he lay with his head slightly down hill, and could not help himself. At the end of some fifty hours he was brought off, with other wounded, under a flag of truce. I ask him how the rebels treated him as he lay during those two days and nights within reach of them—whether they came to him—whether they abused him? He answers that several of the rebels, soldiers and others, came to him at one time and another. A couple of them, who were together, spoke roughly and sarcastically, but nothing worse. One middle-aged man, however, who seem’d to be moving around the field, among the dead and wounded, for benevolent purposes, came to him in a way he will never forget; treated our soldier kindly, bound up his wounds, cheer’d him, gave him a couple of biscuits and a drink of whiskey and water; asked him if he could eat some beef. This good secesh, however, did not change our soldier’s position, for it might have caused the blood to burst from the wounds, clotted and stagnated. Our soldier is from Pennsylvania; has had a pretty severe time; the wounds proved to be bad ones. But he retains a good heart, and is at present on the gain. (It is not uncommon for the men to remain on the field this way, one, two, or even four or five days.)
The Wounded from Chancellorsville
May, ’63.—AS I write this, the wounded have begun to arrive from Hooker’s command from bloody Chancellorsville. I was down among the first arrivals. The men in charge told me the bad cases were yet to come. If that is so I pity them, for these are bad enough. You ought to see the scene of the wounded arriving at the landing here at the foot of Sixth street, at night. Two boat loads came about half-past seven last night. A little after eight it rain’d a long and violent shower. The pale, helpless soldiers had been debark’d, and lay around on the wharf and neighborhood anywhere. The rain was, probably, grateful to them; at any rate they were exposed to it. The few torches light up the spectacle. All around—on the wharf, on the ground, out on side places—the men are lying on blankets, old quilts, &c., with bloody rags bound round heads, arms, and legs. The attendants are few, and at night few outsiders also—only a few hard-work’d transportation men and drivers. (The wounded are getting to be common, and people grow callous.) The men, whatever their condition, lie there, and patiently wait till their turn comes to be taken up. Near by, the ambulances are now arriving in clusters, and one after another is call’d to back up and take its load. Extreme cases are sent off on stretchers. The men generally make little or no ado, whatever their sufferings. A few groans that cannot be suppress’d, and occasionally a scream of pain as they lift a man into the ambulance. To-day, as I write, hundreds more are expected, and to-morrow and the next day more, and so on for many days. Quite often they arrive at the rate of 1000 a day.
Bad Wounds—The Young
THE SOLDIERS are nearly all young men, and far more American than is generally supposed—I should say nine-tenths are native-born. Among the arrivals from Chancellorsville I find a large proportion of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois men. As usual, there are all sorts of wounds. Some of the men fearfully burnt from the explosions of artillery caissons. One ward has a long row of officers, some with ugly hurts. Yesterday was perhaps worse than usual. Amputations are going on—the attendants are dressing wounds. As you pass by, you must be on your guard where you look. I saw the other day a gentleman, a visitor apparently from curiosity, in one of the wards, stop and turn a moment to look at an awful wound they were probing. He turn’d pale, and in a moment more he had fainted away and fallen on the floor.
Death of a Hero
I WONDER if I could ever convey to another—to you, for instance, reader dear—the tender and terrible realities of such cases, (many, many happen’d,) as the one I am now going to mention. Stewart C. Glover, company E, 5th Wisconsin—was wounded May 5, in one of those fierce tussles of the Wilderness—died May 21—aged about 20. He was a small and beardless young man—a splendid soldier—in fact almost an ideal American, of his age. He had serv’d nearly three years, and would have been entitled to his discharge in a few days. He was in Hancock’s corps. The fighting had about ceas’d for the day, and the general commanding the brigade rode by and call’d for volunteers to bring in the wounded. Glover responded among the first—went out gayly—but while in the act of bearing in a wounded sergeant to our lines, was shot in the knee by a rebel sharpshooter; consequence, amputation and death. He had resided with his father, John Glover, an aged and feeble man, in Batavia, Genesee country, N. but was at school in Wisconsin, after the war broke out, and there enlisted—soon took to soldier-life, liked it, was very manly, was belov’d by officers and comrades. He kept a little diary, like so many of the soldiers. On the day of his death he wrote the following in it, to-day the doctor says I must die—all is over with me—ah, so young to die. On another blank leaf he pencill’d to his brother, dear brother Thomas, I have been brave but wicked—pray for me.
Unnamed Remains the Bravest Soldier
OF scenes like these, I say, who writes—whoe’er can write the story? Of many a score—aye, thousands, north and south, of unwrit heroes, unknown heroisms, incredible, impromptu, first-class desperations—who tells? No history ever—no poem sings, no music sounds, those bravest men of all—those deeds. No formal general’s report, nor book in the library, nor column in the paper, embalms the bravest, north or south, east or west. Unnamed, unknown, remain, and still remain, the bravest soldiers. Our manliest—our boys—our hardy darlings; no picture gives them. Likely, the typic one of them (standing, no doubt, for hundreds, thousands,) crawls aside to some bush-clump, or ferny tuft, on receiving his death-shot—there sheltering a little while, soaking roots, grass and soil, with red blood—the battle advances, retreats, flits from the scene, sweeps by—and there, haply with pain and suffering (yet less, far less, than is supposed,) the last lethargy winds like a serpent round him—the eyes glaze in death—none recks—perhaps the burial-squads, in truce, a week afterwards, search not the secluded spot—and there, at last, the Bravest Soldier crumbles in mother earth, unburied and unknown."
Sincerely,
Randy
Please visit my primary site at www.brotherswar.com
All original material Copyright © 2006. All Rights Reserved
Source: Walt Whitman: Specimen Days
Showing posts with label Whitman. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Whitman. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
Sunday, January 22, 2006
The Real War
Over the past few weeks, I have invested several late evenings re-editing those of my web site pictures which seemed less than inspiring (www.brotherswar.com). Obsessing over the minutia of the site becomes an increasingly common activity during the months when the lack of foliage deadens my enthusiasm for picture taking. Although re-editing occasionally proves a frustrating endeavor, each minor success brought with it the corresponding happy reminiscences of the brief but blissful moments exploring the now peaceful battlefields. Considering the impact I hoped each picture might have, I tested combinations of color, contrast, and tone, hoping to create a realistic window into the bloody fields of our past. As much as I enjoyed the work, an uneasy presence knocked at the edges of my contentment. The question grew. By expressing my admiration for the men who fought and love of the fields upon which our nation grew, have I contributed to an overly-romanticized, sanitized image of war?
Walt Whitman’s words came to mind. In his seminal work "Specimen Days", the great American poet said of the war through which he had just lived, "Future years will never know the seething hell and the black infernal background of countless minor scenes and interiors, (not the official surface courteousness of the Generals, not the few great battles) of the Secession war; and it is best they should not—the real war will never get in the books." Still, he offered more than a small glimpse as he spoke of the dead.
"The Million Dead, Too, Summ’d Up
THE DEAD in this war—there they lie, strewing the fields and woods and valleys and battle-fields of the south—Virginia, the Peninsula—Malvern hill and Fair Oaks—the banks of the Chickahominy—the terraces of Fredericksburgh—Antietam bridge—the grisly ravines of Manassas—the bloody promenade of the Wilderness—the varieties of the strayed dead, (the estimate of the War department is 25,000 national soldiers kill’d in battle and never buried at all, 5,000 drown’d—15,000 inhumed by strangers, or on the march in haste, in hitherto unfound localities—2,000 graves cover’d by sand and mud by Mississippi freshets, 3,000 carried away by caving-in of banks, &c.,)—Gettysburgh, the West, Southwest—Vicksburgh—Chattanooga—the trenches of Petersburgh—the numberless battles, camps, hospitals everywhere—the crop reap’d by the mighty reapers, typhoid, dysentery, inflammations—and blackest and loathesomest of all, the dead and living burial-pits, the prison-pens of Andersonville, Salisbury, Belle-Isle, &c., (not Dante’s pictured hell and all its woes, its degradations, filthy torments, excell’d those prisons)—the dead, the dead, the dead—our dead—or South or North, ours all, (all, all, all, finally dear to me)—or East or West—Atlantic coast or Mississippi valley—somewhere they crawl’d to die, alone, in bushes, low gullies, or on the sides of hills—(there, in secluded spots, their skeletons, bleach’d bones, tufts of hair, buttons, fragments of clothing, are occasionally found yet)—our young men once so handsome and so joyous, taken from us—the son from the mother, the husband from the wife, the dear friend from the dear friend—the clusters of camp graves, in Georgia, the Carolinas, and in Tennessee—the single graves left in the woods or by the road-side, (hundreds, thousands, obliterated)—the corpses floated down the rivers, and caught and lodged, (dozens, scores, floated down the upper Potomac, after the cavalry engagements, the pursuit of Lee, following Gettysburgh)—some lie at the bottom of the sea—the general million, and the special cemeteries in almost all the States—the infinite dead—(the land entire saturated, perfumed with their impalpable ashes’ exhalation in Nature’s chemistry distill’d, and shall be so forever, in every future grain of wheat and ear of corn, and every flower that grows, and every breath we draw)—not only Northern dead leavening Southern soil—thousands, aye tens of thousands, of Southerners, crumble to-day in Northern earth.
And everywhere among these countless graves—everywhere in the many soldier Cemeteries of the Nation, (there are now, I believe, over seventy of them)—as at the time in the vast trenches, the depositories of slain, Northern and Southern, after the great battles—not only where the scathing trail passed those years, but radiating since in all the peaceful quarters of the land—we see, and ages yet may see, on monuments and gravestones, singly or in masses, to thousands or tens of thousands, the significant word Unknown."
I have to wonder if perhaps Mr. Whitman’s small glimpse is a bit more realistic than that which I have offered. Perhaps moving away from romanticization and underscoring the raw brutality of war more fittingly honors those men and women who sacrificed tremendously that we might enjoy all we have today.
Respectfully,
Randy
Please visit my primary site at www.brotherswar.com.
All original material Copyright © 2006. All Rights Reserved
******************
References for this article: Prose Works
Walt Whitman’s words came to mind. In his seminal work "Specimen Days", the great American poet said of the war through which he had just lived, "Future years will never know the seething hell and the black infernal background of countless minor scenes and interiors, (not the official surface courteousness of the Generals, not the few great battles) of the Secession war; and it is best they should not—the real war will never get in the books." Still, he offered more than a small glimpse as he spoke of the dead.
"The Million Dead, Too, Summ’d Up
THE DEAD in this war—there they lie, strewing the fields and woods and valleys and battle-fields of the south—Virginia, the Peninsula—Malvern hill and Fair Oaks—the banks of the Chickahominy—the terraces of Fredericksburgh—Antietam bridge—the grisly ravines of Manassas—the bloody promenade of the Wilderness—the varieties of the strayed dead, (the estimate of the War department is 25,000 national soldiers kill’d in battle and never buried at all, 5,000 drown’d—15,000 inhumed by strangers, or on the march in haste, in hitherto unfound localities—2,000 graves cover’d by sand and mud by Mississippi freshets, 3,000 carried away by caving-in of banks, &c.,)—Gettysburgh, the West, Southwest—Vicksburgh—Chattanooga—the trenches of Petersburgh—the numberless battles, camps, hospitals everywhere—the crop reap’d by the mighty reapers, typhoid, dysentery, inflammations—and blackest and loathesomest of all, the dead and living burial-pits, the prison-pens of Andersonville, Salisbury, Belle-Isle, &c., (not Dante’s pictured hell and all its woes, its degradations, filthy torments, excell’d those prisons)—the dead, the dead, the dead—our dead—or South or North, ours all, (all, all, all, finally dear to me)—or East or West—Atlantic coast or Mississippi valley—somewhere they crawl’d to die, alone, in bushes, low gullies, or on the sides of hills—(there, in secluded spots, their skeletons, bleach’d bones, tufts of hair, buttons, fragments of clothing, are occasionally found yet)—our young men once so handsome and so joyous, taken from us—the son from the mother, the husband from the wife, the dear friend from the dear friend—the clusters of camp graves, in Georgia, the Carolinas, and in Tennessee—the single graves left in the woods or by the road-side, (hundreds, thousands, obliterated)—the corpses floated down the rivers, and caught and lodged, (dozens, scores, floated down the upper Potomac, after the cavalry engagements, the pursuit of Lee, following Gettysburgh)—some lie at the bottom of the sea—the general million, and the special cemeteries in almost all the States—the infinite dead—(the land entire saturated, perfumed with their impalpable ashes’ exhalation in Nature’s chemistry distill’d, and shall be so forever, in every future grain of wheat and ear of corn, and every flower that grows, and every breath we draw)—not only Northern dead leavening Southern soil—thousands, aye tens of thousands, of Southerners, crumble to-day in Northern earth.
And everywhere among these countless graves—everywhere in the many soldier Cemeteries of the Nation, (there are now, I believe, over seventy of them)—as at the time in the vast trenches, the depositories of slain, Northern and Southern, after the great battles—not only where the scathing trail passed those years, but radiating since in all the peaceful quarters of the land—we see, and ages yet may see, on monuments and gravestones, singly or in masses, to thousands or tens of thousands, the significant word Unknown."
I have to wonder if perhaps Mr. Whitman’s small glimpse is a bit more realistic than that which I have offered. Perhaps moving away from romanticization and underscoring the raw brutality of war more fittingly honors those men and women who sacrificed tremendously that we might enjoy all we have today.
Respectfully,
Randy
Please visit my primary site at www.brotherswar.com.
All original material Copyright © 2006. All Rights Reserved
******************
References for this article: Prose Works
Sunday, September 11, 2005
A Brothers War
While recently enjoying a three-day trip to some of the battlefields in Virginia, I decided to stop by Chatham Manor which overlooks the Rappahannock River and the town of Fredericksburg, Virginia. Part of the Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park, Chatham served as headquarters to Major General Edwin Vose "Bull" Sumner, commander of the Army of the Potomac's Right Grand Division, during the battle of First Fredericksburg in December of 1862. Although certainly looking forward to my visit, having walked the grounds there many times previously, I thought not much new would likely present itself.
However, one of the new National Park Service volunteers, stationed at the Manor for just over one month, made my visit much more meaningful than anticipated. Eager to provide a tour of the grounds, she enthusiastically instructed me concerning the history of the property. While enjoying her presentation, I waited somewhat impatiently for her to address the mid-19th century and the era that has become my consuming passion.
Moving throughout the old manor, we made our way to the northern most room. Void of furnishings, the somewhat small room had a solid, dark wood floor, white walls, a painting of George Washington, and a tattered Federal Division flag. As her discussion progressed to the battle's aftermath, she mentioned the building's use as a hospital, somewhat reverently mentioning that the room in which we stood served as the main center for surgery. Now thoroughly riveted to her words, she relayed that Walt Whitman had come to Chatham after learning that his brother, serving with the 51st New York, had been wounded during the fighting. At some point, he sought him here.
What Whitman saw horrified him. From this very room, a steady stream of lifeless severed limbs flew towards the yard from the open westerly-facing window. Fragments of shattered humanity piled under the two still present catalpa trees just outside the room.
Wounded soldiers experienced immense suffering on a sustained and grand scale. Many of those treated on these grounds would be buried here, resting under its sod until re-interred at the National Cemetery on Marye's Heights. Ironically, the ground no Union soldier could take, the ground whose attempts to storm would destroy thousands of lives, now served as the hallowed resting place for over fifteen thousand.
One of the included displays at the manor housed the grim instruments of Civil War medicine that earned the physicians of the time the epithet "Sawbones". Bone saws, scalpels, and needles now harmlessly encased in glass meant pain and misery to the men who obeyed their orders and braved the fields east of the solid Confederate lines. All around lurked reminders of what these men endured, underscoring the degree of valor and bravery each displayed as they, knowing what could be their fate, advanced forward as volunteers for the Union Army.
But this day, one other scene surprisingly lacking in horror would singularly capture the imagination. Also housed safely behind glass sat a sword scabbard with fading, chipped paint, obviously not of the original form. A closer look revealed the word "Fredericksburg" and several scenes painted on its sides. To my astonishment, the display's interpretive note reported that a convalescing soldier painted the vastly incongruous images on this instrument of war. Towards the top of the scabbard, clear for all to see, a Union and Confederate officer shook hands in reconciled friendship. Just beneath it, hands labeled "US" and "CS" embraced with similar sentiments.
This soldier, this man, surrounded by suffering, misery, and death, wounded during one of the Union's most tragic bloodbaths, thought only of rekindled friendship. While his body strove to again become whole, as many of his comrades slept eternally under Virginia's sod, this man dreamed of peace. Never did the label of "The Brothers War" fit so well.
Respectfully,
Randy
Please visit my primary site at www.brotherswar.com.
Also, today especially, please take a moment to remember those who lost their lives and loved ones during the September 11, 2001 attacks. Pray for their families and all who remain to carry on.
All original material Copyright © 2005. All Rights Reserved
However, one of the new National Park Service volunteers, stationed at the Manor for just over one month, made my visit much more meaningful than anticipated. Eager to provide a tour of the grounds, she enthusiastically instructed me concerning the history of the property. While enjoying her presentation, I waited somewhat impatiently for her to address the mid-19th century and the era that has become my consuming passion.
Moving throughout the old manor, we made our way to the northern most room. Void of furnishings, the somewhat small room had a solid, dark wood floor, white walls, a painting of George Washington, and a tattered Federal Division flag. As her discussion progressed to the battle's aftermath, she mentioned the building's use as a hospital, somewhat reverently mentioning that the room in which we stood served as the main center for surgery. Now thoroughly riveted to her words, she relayed that Walt Whitman had come to Chatham after learning that his brother, serving with the 51st New York, had been wounded during the fighting. At some point, he sought him here.What Whitman saw horrified him. From this very room, a steady stream of lifeless severed limbs flew towards the yard from the open westerly-facing window. Fragments of shattered humanity piled under the two still present catalpa trees just outside the room.
Wounded soldiers experienced immense suffering on a sustained and grand scale. Many of those treated on these grounds would be buried here, resting under its sod until re-interred at the National Cemetery on Marye's Heights. Ironically, the ground no Union soldier could take, the ground whose attempts to storm would destroy thousands of lives, now served as the hallowed resting place for over fifteen thousand.
One of the included displays at the manor housed the grim instruments of Civil War medicine that earned the physicians of the time the epithet "Sawbones". Bone saws, scalpels, and needles now harmlessly encased in glass meant pain and misery to the men who obeyed their orders and braved the fields east of the solid Confederate lines. All around lurked reminders of what these men endured, underscoring the degree of valor and bravery each displayed as they, knowing what could be their fate, advanced forward as volunteers for the Union Army.
But this day, one other scene surprisingly lacking in horror would singularly capture the imagination. Also housed safely behind glass sat a sword scabbard with fading, chipped paint, obviously not of the original form. A closer look revealed the word "Fredericksburg" and several scenes painted on its sides. To my astonishment, the display's interpretive note reported that a convalescing soldier painted the vastly incongruous images on this instrument of war. Towards the top of the scabbard, clear for all to see, a Union and Confederate officer shook hands in reconciled friendship. Just beneath it, hands labeled "US" and "CS" embraced with similar sentiments.This soldier, this man, surrounded by suffering, misery, and death, wounded during one of the Union's most tragic bloodbaths, thought only of rekindled friendship. While his body strove to again become whole, as many of his comrades slept eternally under Virginia's sod, this man dreamed of peace. Never did the label of "The Brothers War" fit so well.
Respectfully,
Randy
Please visit my primary site at www.brotherswar.com.
Also, today especially, please take a moment to remember those who lost their lives and loved ones during the September 11, 2001 attacks. Pray for their families and all who remain to carry on.
All original material Copyright © 2005. All Rights Reserved
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