The Battle of Shiloh: The Lost 24,000

“The Battle of Shiloh, also known as the Battle of Pittsburg Landing, was a major battle in the Western Theater of the American Civil War, fought April 6 – 7, 1862, in southwestern Tennessee. A Union army under Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant had moved via the Tennessee River deep into Tennessee and was encamped principally at Pittsburg Landing on the west bank of the river. Confederate forces under Generals Albert Sidney Johnston and P. G. T. Beauregard launched a surprise attack on Grant there. The Confederates achieved considerable success on the first day, but were ultimately defeated on the second day.”

War is bloody business, but the blood shed during Shiloh…my God, my God, it was a devil’s orchard. During the American Revolution, fought from 1775 to 1783 approximately 25,000 American soldiers lost their lives. Shiloh witnessed, in a two-day period, not an eight year period, nearly 24,000 die. Indeed, war is a bloody business, splitting soldiers in two, literally and figuratively. Ironically, the battle was named for a small church set on the battlefield like a lost shoe, Shiloh Church. Shioloh means peace.

After the first day of battle drew to a close, Union General William T. Sherman said to his commanding general, Ulysses S. Grant, ““Well, Grant, we’ve had the devil’s own day, haven’t we?” Indeed they had. They all had, Confederate and Union troops alike.

In my next post, I’ll discuss one of the most tragic deaths, and they all were tragic, that Shiloh produced, the death of Confederate general Albert Sidney Johnston.

Here’s a ballad written about Shiloh, a good way to end.

The Drummer Boy of Shiloh by William S. Hays

On Shiloh’s dark and blood ground, the dead and wounded lay.
Amongst them was a drummer boy, that beat the drum that day.
A wounded soldier raised him up, His drum was by his side.
He clasped his hands and raised his eyes and prayed before he died:
Look down upon the battle field, Oh Thou, our Heav’nly friend,
Have mercy on our sinful souls. The soldiers cried, “Amen.”
For gather’d round a little group, Each brave man knelt and cried.
They listen’d to the drummer boy who prayed before he died.

“Oh Mother!” said the dying boy, “Look down from Heav’n on me.”
Receive me to thy fond embrace, Oh take me home to thee.
I’ve loved my country as my God, To serve them both I’ve tried.”
He smiled, shook hands. Death seized the boy who prayed before he died.
Each soldier wept then like a child, Stout hearts were they and brave.
They wrote upon a simple board these words “This is a guide
To those who mourn the drummer boy who prayed before he died.”

Related articles

• Shiloh: A Blaze of Glory (thelintinmypocket.wordpress.com)
• A Baseball Recovered From A Civil War Battlefield (outsidethebeltway.com)
• What happened to Union troops after Shiloh? (historynet.com)
• They Met at Shiloh (graceandfaith4u.com)

A Triumphant Yawp!!

I did it. It’s done. Save for a few minor edits and revisions, my second manuscript, The Journals of Lt. Kendal Everly: A Story of the American Civil War, is done and should be on book shelves later this year.

It was tough nut to crack, much darker than my first book, but it’s done and I’m happy.

Here’s the book’s first poem, the first entry in Kendal Everly’s journal. Everly is a teacher and a pacifist. He writes this not long before the Civil War begins.

English: Gen. Charles Griffin (1825 – 1867) (as Captain), career officer in the United States Army and a Union general in the American Civil War. He rose to command a corps in the Army of the Potomac and fought in many of the key campaigns in the Eastern Theater. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This is the Place

April 1, 1861

Here, beneath these trees –
oak and ash – shadows lay
like blankets spread
for a community of picnics.
I feast on a moment’s song:

breezes, still laced
with March’s chill, weave
as ribbons about these limbs,
Giggling children dart
behind stalwart trunks

hiding from each other and me –
children teasing me, their teacher,
as I walked to school.

But this spring rumbles.
Men who drape themselves
in the dark robes of politics

brandish words as warriors
brandish swords –
and I am afraid.

Related articles

• A Civil War Apocalypse (thelintinmypocket.wordpress.com)
• A Poem from my Forthcoming Book (thelintinmypocket.wordpress.com)
• Confederate Ghosts (thelintinmypocket.wordpress.com)

Everly Gets a Book Blurb

Sorry, folks. I’ve been busy. My high school students have
just finished a week of mid-term exams and I’ve been grading
them, all 125 of them. Additionally, the Spring semester has
started at Passaic County Community College. I’m a
writing professor once again.

Today, I’ve a bit of time to share a smidge of good news. My book
manuscript, The Journals of Lt. Kendal Everly: A Story of the American Civil War, is now officially a fothcoming book. The contract is in my hands. Additionally, historian and author Scott Mingus has agreed to provide the book with its first back cover blurb. Scott Mingus is the author of several books concerning the American Civi War and I’m very excited to have him be a part of my second book.

Here’s a link to Mr. Mingus’s website: http://www.scottmingus.com/Books_by_Scott_Mingus.html

A Civil War Apocalypse

New Jersey poet Adele Kenny has challenged me again. Via her blog, Kenny recently tasked her readers to write an “Apocalypse” poem. You can read Kenny’s challenge here. My effort is posted below. It’s a poem from my new manuscript,
The Journals of Lt. Kendal Everly: A Story of the American Civil War. My protagonist, Lt. Kendal Everly, a school teacher, a pacifist, is about to be brutally enveloped by war. To a degree, he is about to face a personal
Apocalypse. Everly, wrapped in rage, has already stabbed his adversary, a young Confederate soldier (detailed in a earlier poem); now, Everly straddles his foe, bends over him, and wraps hisfingers around the boy’s neck.

Lost

August 4, 1861 – Entry IV

His neck was thin. My fingers
slid around it as they might caress
your neck, Elizabeth. Yet, it was slicked

with blood so it felt as if I tightened
my grip around a fish. Hunched over
like Notre Dame’s bell ringer, I pulled his head

closer to mine. He might have thought
I meant to kiss him. My heart, my mind,
both bubbled with some foul Satanic froth,

both marvelled at the deepening color
of his face, a deep purple, a fine wine.
I gulped the dying gasps of this boy

as if his death would envelop me
with the silken filaments of salvation.
My fingers tightened. His neck grew thinner,

a wet string. His mouth, like a gate, opened,
dark and wide, attempting to conjure breath.
His limbs flailed attempting to embrace the air.

His eyes, opened wide like globes.
Damn you, I screamed. DAMN YOU. And then, there was
death. He was still and I was lost. Dear God, I am lost.

Related articles

• A Poem from my Forthcoming Book
  (thelintinmypocket.wordpress.com)
• On my Horizon…
  (thelintinmypocket.wordpress.com)
• Women of the Civil War
  (cbsnews.com)

A Note from One of my Readers

I recently received this note, caps and all, from someone
who read my book, Private Hercules McGraw: Poems of
the American Civil War. “I TOOK MY TIME READING YOUR BOOK
BECAUSE I KNEW THE STORY HAD TO END AND DIDN’T WISH THAT TO HAPPEN.
IT IS A WONDERFUL READ AND MAKES ONE HUNGER FOR MORE OF THE SAME.
NOT THAT I RELISH WAR STORIES, BUT THE HUMAN ELEMENT IS COMPELLING
AND APPLICABLE TO ALL AMERICAN WARS. THANK YOU FROM A NEIGHBOR IN
HASKELL. THANK YOU ALSO FOR BEING A TEACHER.” I am
pleased!!!

Confederate Ghosts

The poem posted below is taken from my developing
manuscript, The Journals of Lt. Kendal Everly: a
Story of the American Civil War. I thought it well
met a writing challenge presented on New Jersey poet Adele Kenny’s
blog, The Music In It. The
challenge is to write a “mysterious” poem. Would you like to read
the challenge? Just visit Adele’s blog.
In this journal entry/poem, Everly imagines his enemy,
Confederates. What will they be like? He wonders for he is soon to
meet them. Let me know what you think. Confederates July 17,
1861 – Entry Two Night comes and my heart finds its
rest. But daylight: a cursed time, when the enemy unfurls long
shadows, long fingers that stretch from behind the wrinkled hide of
trees and stones, scratch promises on the wind: blood and death.
Damned, foul ghosts: gray, so gray.

Related
articles

• Writing Challenge: Christmas and the Civil
  War (thelintinmypocket.wordpress.com)
• A Poem from my Forthcoming Book
  (thelintinmypocket.wordpress.com)
• Where I (Wish I Could) Write
  (thelintinmypocket.wordpress.com)
• I Wonder as I Wander – Why?
  (thelintinmypocket.wordpress.com)
• One Writer’s Resolutions
  (thelintinmypocket.wordpress.com)
• Faces of the Civil War
  (cbsnews.com)

A Poem from my Forthcoming Book

I thought I’d share a poem that will be featured in my new book, The Journals of Lt. Kendal Everly: Poems of the American Civil War. Lost in a murderous shroud of war and hate, Everly kills an enemy, a young Confederate solider.

A dead Confederate soldier

Silken Filaments of Salvation

August 4, 1861 – Entry IV

His neck was thin. My fingers
slid around it as they might caress
your neck, Elizabeth. Yet, it was slicked
with blood so it felt as if I tightened

my grip around a fish. Hunched over
like Notre Dame’s bell ringer, I pulled
his head closer to mine. He might
have thought I meant to kiss him.

My heart, my mind, both bubbled
with some foul Satanic froth,
both marvelled at the deepening color
of his face, a deep purple, a fine wine.

I gulped the dying gasps of this boy
as if his death would envelop me
with the silken filaments of salvation.
My fingers tightened. His neck grew

thinner, a wet string. His mouth,
like a gate, opened, dark and wide,
attempting to conjure breath. His limbs
flailed attempting to embrace the air.

His eyes, opened wide like globes.
Damn you, I screamed. DAMN YOU.
And then, there was death. He was still
And I was lost. Dear God, I am lost.

Emancipation is Here: A Glorious Anniversary

“On this day in 1863, President Abraham Lincoln signs the final Emancipation Proclamation, which ends slavery in the rebelling states. A preliminary proclamation was issued in September 1862, following the Union victory at the Battle of Antietam in Maryland. The act signaled an important shift in the Union’s Civil War aims, expanding the goal of the war from reunification to include the eradication of slavery” (This Day in History – History Channel).

Here’s a poem from my book Private Hercules McGraw: Poems of the American Civil War. In it, Private McGraw, atop a large tree, sees former slaves fight for the first time.

The Emancipation Proclamation

Shards of Night

Them Feds started pouring through
the wood like a river that run its banks.
My heart started thunking wilder than a cat’s
heart after that cat scampered up a tree
cause a dog done breathed on its tail –

and sure enough, I was up a tree.
But, hell – my jaw almost clanked
the ground when I see that flood
a might closer. I was perched on top
a whole cluster of Yankee darkies.

Shit, I says, Abe sent them damn slaves
to fight. I first guessed they’d be whooping
and shucking like a gaggle of monkeys,
but they clutched their guns like soldiers
and their faces where all chiseled from stone

solid as Zion. Our boys started popping muskets
first and a few of them niggers fell,
but the others paid no mind to that. They ran
straight at those pickets like shards of night,
screaming hell and spitting lead.

I seen one take three bullets before
he toppled. Each time blood puffed
from his belly like a red cloud at sunset.
And the one swinging the flag made certain
them stripes never scraped the ground.

I swear them darkies be men.
By God, they be men.

Related articles

• The Emancipation Proclamation takes effect – History.com This Day in History – 1/1/1863 (civilwarironclads.wordpress.com)
• On This Day In 1863, The Emancipation Proclamation Takes Effect (rememberinghistory.wordpress.com)
• The Emancipation Proclamation (neatorama.com)
• The Emancipation Proclamation paved the way for the politics of self-liberation | Priyamvada Gopal (guardian.co.uk)

Sunday Poem: The American Civil War Decorates the Tree

“The most beloved symbol of the American family Christmas–the decorated Christmas tree–came into its own during the Civil War. Christmas trees had become popular in the decade before the war, and in the early 1860s, many families were beginning to decorate them. Illustrators working for the national weeklies helped popularize the practice by putting decorated table-top Christmas trees in their drawings” (http://dburgin.tripod.com/cw_xmas/cwarchristmas.html).

Here’s a poem inspired by the information presented above.

`Round that Tree

Me and a few boys got ta thinkin’ –
we need ourselves a tree all dressed up
like Christmas time. Found ourselves

a stout pine on the skirts of camp,
but spent more than a minute scratchin’
our heads what ta hang on it.

Jasper hung his hat on a limb.
Smiling, we all done the same.
Started collecting hats from this fella and that –

they all gave`em too, once they
knew what we was doin’. We all stood
`round that tree for a bit,

even when the wind strated ta bite.
All said and done, for a time
none of us thought

about the blood and chunk
we usually gotta juggle.
Damn nice tree it is.

Related articles

• The Beautifully Decorated Christmas Tree (answers.com)
• Do it yourself: Christmas tree (cathwall.com)

Writing Challenge: Christmas and the Civil War

I posted this poem last year, but thought to post it again when I read New Jersey poet Adele Kenny’s writing challenge. Basically, Adele challenged her readers to write a Christmas/winter poem. You can view the challenge here.

I enjoyed the colloquial aspects of this poem. All spelling mistakes are made on purpose. The poem is inspired by an actual letter written by a Civil War soldier to his wife. Let me know what you think.

Merry Christmas.

Private Levi McCormick Writes His Wife: Christmas 1864

I bin down with squirts.
My backend’s raw as a sun bernt scalp
and cold air snaps at me
when I drop my trousers.

I borrow’d some clothes.
Had to wash mine, bein’ so smelly.
Ther hangin’ on a tree limb near the fire –
stil they be frozen, stiff as a ten day corpse.

Seen me plenty of them.
Anyway, send on a box. I need a scent of home.
Tell the boys mery christmas.
I’ll be lookin’ for that christ star whilse I wate.