On Having Money

 

Peggy, our five cats, and I, live in a modest 69-year-old house in a slowly deteriorating neighborhood. In the past five months we’ve spent: $11,000 for a new roof; $12,000 for plumbing repairs; $4,000 for property taxes; $2,000 for cat care; $3,000 for rain gutters and gutter screens (we installed the screens); hundreds for house paint (we did the painting); and an uncalculated sum of money on four vacations that Peggy took. Neither of us inherited wealth nor did our combined salaries exceed a middle class income, but because we saved and were frugal, we have never bought anything—including four homes in three states—that we couldn’t have paid cash for.

My pilgrimages to the marble and granite cathedral that was State Bank and Trust Company, are among my happiest childhood memories for several reasons: my town didn’t have another building half so beautiful; I enjoyed watching my money “grow”; and the young women who recorded my fifty-cent deposits treated me like an adult and had smiles that dwarfed the sunrise.

My parents also saved, but Peggy’s parents saw things so differently that saving money was the only thing her father ever criticized me for because he saw it as putting my faith in “mammon” instead of God. He advised that I should, in the following order: donate 10% of my income to the church; pay my “just debts”; spend the remainder as I pleased; and trust God for help if I ran short. I considered this the stupidest and most unwarranted piece of advice I ever heard, plus it left me to wonder how he could be completely ignorant of the fact that his daughter hated his religion and shared her husband’s values. In fact, mine and Peggy’s only significant disagreement over money occurred soon after we married when I decreed that we economize by drinking powdered milk. A three-times-a-day milk-drinker, Peggy objected bitterly, but because she still had a vestigial amount of respect for her husband’s intelligence and had been raised to believe that “the husband should rule the wife even as Christ rules the church” (not that it worked that way with her parents), she grumblingly went along for several weeks before staging an all-out coup during which she would toast my health while drinking “real milk.” (I drink powdered milk to this day.)

Peggy’s father wasn’t my only critic. Most commonly I’ve been warned, “You can’t take it with you when you die” (three such people later asked for loans), but I consider frugality a virtue; I would loathe owing interest; I like not having to worry about how to pay for things; I feel more secure for having money; having money means not having to deny myself; and despite my critics’ argument that unspent money is wasted money, I feel good about leaving money to charity. While it’s true that the squirrel who stores nuts for winter might never enjoy the fruits of his labor, it would be a silly squirrel who refused to store nuts. But then a squirrel is not a grasshopper…

One December when I was eight, my parents put me on a plane to travel the hundred miles to visit my 19-year-old half-sister, Anne, who was attending college in New Orleans. Our mother expected Anne to drive me home, but because Anne had no car—and no money, for that matter—she borrowed one. Upon discovering that the car had no gas, she asked me for a loan. Despite her promise to pay me back when we reached Mississippi, I refused. I don’t know where she got the money, but her considerable anger didn’t prevent her from covering me with her coat when she realized that the car’s heater was broken. 

Despite her goodness, the wound I inflicted festered to the point that I don’t think she ever recovered. Because I was a child, perhaps the severity of her hurt can be partially explained by previous hurts she suffered over money. Her first hurt was inflicted by her father, Dustin, who, in the midst of the Great Depression abandoned his impoverished wife and two small children to pursue a playboy lifestyle. Upon Dustin’s death at age 36, Anne’s destitute mother entrusted her two children to Dustin’s siblings. Anne went to Dustin’s miserly brother, Ernie, who made it clear that she was a financial burden who wasn’t his real daughter. Worse yet, he interpreted Anne’s generous heart as evidence of improvidence, which he attempted to correct by sharing an Aesop’s fable entitled “The Ants and the Grasshopper”:

One bright day in late autumn a colony of ants were busy drying the grain they had stored for winter, when a starving grasshopper with a fiddle under his arm begged for a bite to eat.

“What!” cried he nearest ant, “haven’t you stored food for winter? What were you doing all summer?”
“I was so busy making music that I didn’t have time to harvest food, and before I knew it the summer was gone.”

“Making music!” the ant retorted as he turned his back on the starving grasshopper. “Very well; now you have the leisure to dance!”

When Anne later learned that grasshoppers are doomed to die at summer’s end no matter how much food they have, she condemned her uncle’s story as a lie.

My friend, Walt—whose death I described a few posts ago—had a Washington state friend who was beyond frugal. One day when Walt was vexed that Bob never visited him, he said, “Bob spends as little as possible on everything he buys, which is why he doesn’t have a car that will hold together for a trip to Oregon. When you buy, you buy quality. You’re frugal; Bobs cheap.”

Years ago, I won a trip to a luxury resort. That trip was the only time in our long marriage that Peggy and I lived like rich people are said to live. One morning while lying in our plush bed and watching ships on the Pacific, I had the thought that I would be enjoying myself more if I were lying in the bed of our van and looking through steamy windows while drinking coffee brewed on a Coleman stove. I don’t know if it was luck or intelligence that led me to marry a woman who has never once said, “My idea of roughing it is to stay in a Holiday Inn.”

I’ve known people who consider their purchase of new, trendy, name-brand items as proof of refinement, but used items cost less, off-gas less, offer a wider selection, and don’t deplete the earth’s resources. A 94-year-old American investor named Warren Buffet wears plain clothes and drive an old pickup despite being a billionaire 150-times over. If I were Buffet, I would give more to charity; buy flood insurance; replace three missing teeth with implants; and re-roof my patio, but that’s all I can think of, and I could do them now if I wanted.

Even so, I never feel completely secure because I believe that wealth consists of having enough money in enough kinds of investments that Peggy and I would have enough to live on no matter what happened. This is not true for us, so a flood, costly medical bills, an economic depression, a prolonged stay in a nursing home, or Oregon’s coming +9.0 earthquake, could really hurt us. Although most risks can be mitigated, such measures are often expensive and come with their own risks. For example, flood insurance would cost us $8,400 a year, and we’re not even in a flood zone.

A final factor in mine and Peggy’s spending habits is that after being frugal our entire lives, we’re not inclined to spend money simply because we can, and there are also charitable bequests to consider. People talk as though unspent money is wasted money, but because I already have everything I want, I’m happy to know that charities will profit from my death.

Life Gets A Mite Hard: A Check-In

Today is Sunday. On Wednesday, Peggy left on her fourth vacation of the year. I kid her about only leaving home when the house needs cleaning, but this time was worse than that because all five cats were—and are—sick with URIs (upper respiratory infections), an extremely infectious illness commonly caused by feline herpesvirus. As with herpes in humans, herpes in cats is permanent, and can come screaming back when the cat is upset, after which he or she spreads it to other cats. It is often accompanied by a second viral or bacterial infection.

Saturday before last, I was out shopping when two of our sick felines started panting. We only have the one car, so Peggy had a friend take her and them to the emergency vet. Five hours and a thousand dollars later, they were sent home with meds, and we were advised to keep them quarantined so they wouldn’t make the other cats sicker by increasing their “viral load.” The room I’m in (the computer room) is where we put them. The day before she left, Peggy and I took the sicker of the two—Scully—to her regular vet and came home $250 poorer and with a week’s worth of Azithromycin.

Cats can’t blow their noses, so everytime the two sickest cats exhaled, they blew bubbles, and their fur became matted with snot which they put there while bathing. Snot also ran from their eyes, and their frequent sneezes left spots on windows, floors, and walls. The room even smelled of snot, but it being too cool to open windows, I had to live with it. I took Scully out of quarantine on Thursday, but Harvey was still so sick that I called the emergency vet for advice that same night. I thought they might tell me to bring him in, but I was instead told to apply warm compresses to his sinuses. I doubted that this would work, and when it didn’t, I got out a hot plate and a steam kettle, and imprisoned him in front of the kettle in his cat carrier. He liked the steam so much that I have kept him there for an hour a day for four days. To insure that he stayed warm, I also built him a cozy den in a cardboard box with a jerry-rigged roof. He preferred it to his regular bed as I discovered when I got up several times each night to check on him.

The other cats were so upset about Harvey being in quarantine that they shredded the hall carpet while trying to dig under the door. When I took him out of his weeklong quarantine yesterday, he walked around the house for a few minutes after which he returned to the computer room and showed every indication of wanting to make it his permanent abode. As of today, Harvey’s congestion has returned, and the other cats are sneezing, so I don’t know but what everyone is going to be sick again—two vets have warned that this could happen indefinitely. 

When Peggy is away the heart goes out of our home. I no longer have nearby friends, and if I didn’t have her, I would probably live in isolation. I still enjoy people—except on days when I can’t bear to be around them—but I no longer want to socialize. This is the opposite of how I spent much of my life. I understand that it’s not unusual for aging men to feel this way, whereas aging women often expand their friendship circles, as has been the case with Peggy. 

Additional reasons for my disinterest in socializing are a voice problem I’ve developed that makes it hard for people to understand me, and the fact that the back pain I suffer from is distracting, robs me of energy, and makes me feel vulnerable. I can’t even make plans to do things with people because I never know how much pain I’ll be in.

Because Peggy is away, I’ve been reflecting upon the fact that if I should, for whatever reason, need help, I don’t know anyone I would feel good about asking. I know people who I could ask, should it come to that, but I would feel like I was imposing because they and I don’t have a relationship built on reciprocity. In a few more years, my isolation could become a real problem, especially if I have to give up driving. 

This week has been especially hard for me, what with Peggy being gone, the cats being sick, and me being out of narcotics and sleeping pills. So it is that my days have been spent nursing—and anguishing over—cats; doing as much housework and yard work as I can manage; watching my beloved Grenada Television Sherlock Holmes series; and sitting up most of each night reading what is by far the most gory and depressing book about America’s Civil War that I’ve yet encountered (The Civil War Soldier, A Historical Reader). 

Despite how bad things have been, I can at least feel good that Peggy hasn’t been here because I have only negativity to offer, and all that would accomplish would be to make her feel bad and me feel worse. The good thing about cats is that, as long as their meals on time, they don’t seem to care how I feel. I can say what I want and do what I want, and they bear it extremely well unless I’m a half hour late with one of their three daily meals or their midnight snack. 

The Siege of Vicksburg As Experienced by a Woman

Emma Kline

 Hundreds of women served at Vicksburg in one way or another. A Confederate woman named Emma Kline was arrested for smuggling, and a Union nurse known as “Mother Bickerdyke” faced sexism from doctors while caring for the wounded of both sides. At least three women disguised themselves as men and served as soldiers while other women worked as laundresses. Former slaves became paid servants (aka “pet niggers”) to Union soldiers, and currently enslaved women braved the bombardment to prepare food, wash laundry, and run errands for their cave-dwelling mistresses. Women also numbered among Vicksburg’s war diarists. Among them were Emma Balfour, a Mississippi-born Confederate; Alice Shirley, a Mississippi-born Unionist; Dora Richards Miller, a Northern traveler who had become trapped in the city; and New York born, twenty-six-year-old, Mary Loughborough. This post will contain excerpts (in green font) from the diary of Mary Loughborough.

Mother Bickerdyke

By the time Mary was five, her mother was dead, and Mary was living in a New York City almshouse. By age thirteen, she and her father had moved to St. Louis, Missouri, where she later married James Moore Loughborough, a prominent lawyer. When war came in 1861, Missouri remained true to the Union, but Moore joined the Confederate army. That same year, the couple’s toddler died and Mary and their remaining child began following Moore as his unit moved through Arkansas, Tennessee, and Mississippi. In May, 1863, Mary and two-year-old Jean were in Jackson when word came that Grant was approaching. As the city panicked, they took one of the last trains to Vicksburg where Moore was stationed:

A Transgender Soldier?

The depot was crowded with crushing and elbowing human beings, swaying to and fro—baggage being thrown hither and thither—horses wild with fright, and negroes with confusion; and so we found ourselves in a car, amid the living stream that flowed and surged along—seeking the Mobile cars—seeking the Vicksburg cars—seeking anything to bear them away from the threatened and fast depopulating town.

Upon arriving in Vicksburg, she wrote:

“Ah! Vicksburg, our city of refuge, the last to yield thou wilt be; and within thy homes we will not fear the footstep of the victorious army, but rest in safety amid thy hills! and those whom we love so dearly will comfort and sustain us in our frightened and panic-stricken condition—will laugh away our woman’s fears, and lighten our hearts from the dread and suffering we have experienced.

The Shirley House

Her hope of safety was short-lived for, even as she traveled, the rebel army of John Pemberton was retreating to the Big Black River Bridge where it lost a sixth battle that was meant to stop Grant from reaching the city. After burning the bridge, tens of thousands of hungry and exhausted Confederates streamed into Vicksburg where they were jeered by the city’s frightened women. Meanwhile, Grant’s 77,000-man army was ten miles away crossing the Big Black on inflatable pontoons.

“What can be the matter?” we all cried, as the streets and pavements became full of these worn and tired-looking men. We sent down to ask, and the reply was: “We are whipped; and the Federals are after us.” We hastily seized veils and bonnets, and walked down the avenue to the iron railing that separates the yard from the street. “Where are you going?” we asked. 

Mary Loughborough

“No one seemed disposed to answer the question. An embarrassed, pained look came over some of the faces that were raised to us; others seemed only to feel the weariness of the long march; again we asked: “Where on earth are you going?”

At last one man looked up in a half-surly manner, and answered:

“We are running.”

“From whom?” exclaimed one of the young girls of the house.

“The Feds, to be sure,” said another, half laughing and half shamefaced.

 “Oh! shame on you!” cried the ladies; “and you running!”

“It’s all Pem’s fault,” said an awkward, long-limbed, weary-looking man.

“It’s all your own fault. Why don’t you stand your ground?” was the reply.

“Shame on you all!” cried some of the ladies across the street, becoming excited…

“We are disappointed in you!” 

“Who shall we look to now for protection?”

“Oh!” said one of them, “it’s the first time I ever ran. We are Georgians, and we never ran before; but we saw them all breaking and running, and we could not bear up alone.”

The women’s terror was partly due to the behavior of Grant’s army in northern Mississippi a year earlier when, repulsed by the sight of wealthy planters living on the backs of overworked slaves, and embittered by their heavy losses at Shiloh, entire regiments defied orders to respect civilians and their property. Smoke filled the horizon in every direction as troops burned what they could burn; stole what they could steal; killed pets and livestock; and destroyed family heirlooms.

Even the threat of execution failed to deter men whose officers were their partners in crime, and instead of feeling ashamed, they boasted of their misdeeds in letters home. Another reason for the women’s behavior was that, after a winter spent watching mud-encrusted Northerners skulk in the willows on the far side of the mile-wide Mississippi, many had come to believe the propaganda about hardy Southerners whipping ten times their weight in pasty-faced Yankees. Later that day, the courage of Vicksburg’s women revived when fresh troops arrived from below the city. 

As the troops from Warrenton passed by, the ladies waved their handkerchiefs, cheering them, and crying:

“These are the troops that have not run. You’ll stand by us, and protect us, won’t you? You won’t retreat and bring the Federals behind you.”

And the men, who were fresh and lively, swung their hats, and promised to die for the ladies—never to run—never to retreat; while the poor fellows on the pavement, sitting on their blankets—lying on the ground—leaning against trees, or anything to rest their wearied bodies, looked on silent and dejected.

After the war, the Loughborough family settled in Arkansas where Moore served as state senator and Mary published the popular Southern Ladies’ Journal. In 1876, forty-two-year-old Moore committed suicide. Eleven years later, fifty-year-old Mary Ann died of an unknown illness while expanding her magazine, which died with her. What follows are additional excerpts from her 138-page Vicksburg diary, which covers the period from April to July, 1863. Because the entries are undated, I will preface each with an underlined introduction.

The Nighttime Sinking of a Union Troop Transport: The lurid glare from the burning boat fell in red and amber light upon the house, the veranda, and the animated faces turned toward the river—lighting the white magnolias, paling the pink crape myrtles [see photo], and bringing out in bright distinctness the railing of the terrace, where drooped in fragrant wreaths the clustering passion vine: fair and beautiful, but false, the crimson, wavering light. I sat and gazed upon the burning wreck of what an hour ago had thronged with human life; with men whose mothers had this very night prayed for them; with men whose wives tearfully hovered over little beds, kissing each tender, sleeping lid for the absent one. Had this night made them orphans? Did this smooth, deceitful current of the glowing waters glide over forms loved and lost to the faithful ones at home? O mother and wife! ye will pray and smile on, until the terrible tidings come: “Lost at Vicksburg!” Lost at Vicksburg! In how many a heart the name for years will lie like a brand!—lie until the warm heart and tried soul shall be at peace forever.

Pink Crepe Myrtle

Housekeeping: And so I went regularly to work, keeping house under ground. Our new habitation was an excavation made in the earth, and branching six feet from the entrance, forming a cave in the shape of a T. In one of the wings my bed fitted; the other I used as a kind of dressing room; in this the earth had been cut down a foot or two below the floor of the main cave; I could stand erect here; and when tired of sitting in other portions of my residence, I bowed myself into it, and stood impassively resting at full height.

Bombardment: Terror stricken, we remained crouched in the cave, while shell after shell followed each other in quick succession. I endeavored by constant prayer to prepare myself for the sudden death I was almost certain awaited me. My heart stood still as we would hear the reports from the guns, and the rushing and fearful sound of the shell as it came toward us. As it neared, the noise became more deafening; the air was full of the rushing sound; pains darted through my temples; my ears were full of the confusing noise; and, as it exploded, the report flashed through my head like an electric shock, leaving me in a quiet state of terror the most painful that I can imagine—cowering in a corner, holding my child to my heart—the only feeling of my life being the choking throbs of my heart, that rendered me almost breathless. As singly they fell short, or beyond the cave, I was aroused by a feeling of thankfulness that was of short duration.

Union Artillery Battery

The Death of A Child: Sitting in the cave, one evening, I heard the most heartrending screams and moans. I was told that a mother had taken a child into a cave about a hundred yards from us; and having laid it on its little bed, as the poor woman believed, in safety, she took her seat near the entrance of the cave. A mortar shell came rushing through the air, and fell with much force, entering the earth above the sleeping child—cutting through into the cave—oh! most horrible sight to the mother—crushing in the upper part of the little sleeping head, and taking away the young innocent life without a look or word of passing love to be treasured in the mother’s heart.

I could not hear those sobs and cries without thinking of the night—that last night—when I held my darling to my heart, thinking that, though so suddenly stricken and so scared, she would still live to bless my life. And the terrible awakening!—to find that, lying in my arms all my own, as I believed, she was going swiftly—going into the far unknown eternity! Sliding from my embrace, the precious life was called by One so mighty—so all-powerful—yet so merciful, that I bowed my head in silence.

Still the moans from the bereaved mother came borne on the pleasant air, floating through the silvery moonlit scene—saddening hearts that had never known sorrow, and awakening chords of sympathy in hearts that before had thrilled and suffered. Yet, “it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”  

Pretty Airs: That evening some friends sat with me: one took up my guitar and played some pretty little airs for us; yet, the noise of the shells threw a discord among the harmonies. To me it seemed like the crushing and bitter spirit of hate near the light and grace of happiness.

The Following Was Written After Moore Moved Mary from the City to A Cave at the Front

Wounded Federals: I was distressed to hear of a young Federal lieutenant who had been severely wounded and left on the field by his comrades. He had lived in this condition from Saturday until Monday, lying in the burning sun without water or food; and the men on both sides could witness the agony of the life thus prolonged, without the power to assist him in any way. I was glad, indeed, when I heard the poor man had expired on Monday morning. 

Another soldier left on the field, badly wounded in the leg, had begged most piteously for water; and lying near the Confederate intrenchments, his cries were all directed to the Confederate soldiers. The firing was heaviest where he lay; and it would have been at the risk of a life to have gone to him; yet, a Confederate soldier asked and obtained leave to carry water to him, and stood and fanned him in the midst of the firing, while he eagerly drank from the heroic soldier’s canteen… Truly, “the bravest are the tenderest; the loving are the daring.” [Quotation by Bayard Taylor]

Amusements: They amused themselves, while lying in the pits, by cutting out little trinkets from the wood of the parapet and the MiniÉ balls [a large caliber rifle bullet—see photo] that fell around them. Major Fry, from Texas, excelled in skill and ready invention, I think: he sent me one day an arm chair that he had cut from a MiniÉ ball—the most minute affair of the kind I ever saw, yet perfectly symmetrical. At another time, he sent me a diminutive plough made from the parapet wood, with traces of lead, and a lead point made from a MiniÉ ball. I had often remarked how cheerfully the soldiers bore the hardships of the siege. I saw them often passing with their little sacks containing scanty rations, whistling and chatting pleasantly, as around them thickly flew the balls and shells.

Worn and Pale: I am told by my friends, who call, that I am looking worn and pale, and frequently asked if I am not weary of this cave life. I parry the question as well as possible, for I do not like to admit it for M——’s sake; yet, I am tired and weary—ah! so weary! I never was made to exist under ground; and when I am obliged to, what wonder that I vegetate, like other unfortunate plants—grow wan, spindling, and white! Yet, I must reason with myself: I had chosen this life of suffering with one I love; and what suffering, after all, have I experienced?—privations in the way of good and wholesome food, not half what the poor people around us are experiencing…To reason with myself in this time of danger was one of the chief employments of my cave life.

Eloquent Suffering: One evening I noticed one of the horses tied in the ravine, acting very strangely—writhing and struggling as if in pain. One of the soldiers went to him and found that he was very badly wounded in the flank by a MiniÉ ball. The poor creature’s agony was dreadful: he would reach his head up as far as possible into the tree to which he was tied, and cling with his mouth, while his neck and body quivered with the pain. Every motion, instead of being violent, as most horses would have been when wounded, had a stately grace of eloquent suffering that is indescribable. How I wanted to go to him and pat and soothe him! The halter was taken off, and he was turned free. Going to a tree, he leaned his body against it, and moaned, with half closed eyes, shivering frequently throughout his huge body, as if the pain were too great to bear…

Becoming restless with the pain, the poor brute staggered blindly on. And now my eyes fill with tears; for he has fallen, with a weary moan, between the banks of the little rivulet in the ravine, his head thrown on the sod, and the bright, intelligent eye turned still upon the men who have been his comrades in many a battle, standing still near him. Poor fellow!—those low and frequent moans and trembling limbs tell them that death has stricken you already—that you are far beyond human sympathy. In the midst of all the falling shells, cannot one reach him, giving him peace and death? I see an axe handed to one of the bystanders, and turn suddenly away from the scene.

A Gray-headed Soldier: One old, gray-headed, cheerful-hearted soldier, whom I had talked with often, was passing through the ravine for water, immediately opposite our cave. A MiniÉ ball struck him in the lower part of the leg; he coolly stooped down, tied his handkerchief around it, and passed on. So constantly fell projectiles of all descriptions, that I became almost indifferent to them. Only the hideous noise of numerous shrapnell could startle me now.

The Death of Henry: A soldier, named Henry, had noticed my little girl often, bringing her flowers at one time, an apple at another, and again a young mocking bird, and had attached her to him much by these little kindnesses. Frequently, on seeing him pass, she would call his name, and clap her hands gleefully…

Afterward I saw him come down the hill opposite, with an unexploded shrapnel shell in his hand. In a few moments I heard a quick explosion in the ravine, followed by a cry—a sudden, agonized cry… Henry—oh, poor Henry!—holding out his mangled arms—the hands torn and hanging from the bleeding, ghastly wrists—a fearful wound in his head—the blood pouring from his wounds. Shot, gasping, wild, he staggered around, crying piteously, “Where are you, boys? O boys, where are you? Oh, I am hurt! I am hurt! Boys, come to me!—come to me! God have mercy! Almighty God, have mercy!” 

My little girl clung to my dress, saying, “O mamma, poor Henny’s killed! Now he’ll die, mamma. Oh, poor Henny!” I carried her away from the painful sight. My first impulse was to run down to them with the few remedies I possessed. Then I thought of the crowd of soldiers around the men; and if M—— should come and see me there—the only lady—he might think I did wrong; so I sent my servant, with camphor and other slight remedies I possessed, and turned into my cave, with a sickened heart.

A Jaybird: We were now swiftly nearing the end of our siege life: the rations had nearly all been given out. For the last few days I had been sick; still I tried to overcome the languid feeling of utter prostration. My little one had swung in her hammock, reduced in strength, with a low fever flushing in her face. M—— was all anxiety, I could plainly see. A soldier brought up, one morning, a little jaybird, as a plaything for the child. After playing with it for a short time, she turned wearily away. “Miss Mary,” said the servant, “she’s hungry; let me make her some soup from the bird.” At first I refused: the poor little plaything should not die; then, as I thought of the child, I half consented. With the utmost haste, Cinth disappeared; and the next time she appeared, it was with a cup of soup, and a little plate, on which lay the white meat of the poor little bird.

After the Surrender: On the hill above us, the earth was literally covered with fragments of shell – Parrott, shrapnel, canister; besides lead in all shapes and forms, and a long kind of solid shot, shaped like a small Parrott shell. Minie balls lay in every direction, flattened, dented, and bent from the contact with trees and pieces of wood in their flight. The grass seemed deadened – the ground ploughed into furrows in many places; while scattered over all, like giants’ pepper, in numberless quantity, were the shrapnel balls.

Vicksburg Passes from View: Saturday evening, Vicksburg, with her terraced hills—with her pleasant homes and sad memories, passed from my view in the gathering twilight—passed, but the river flowed on the same, and the stars shone out with the same calm light! But the many eyes—O Vicksburg!—that have gazed on thy terraced hills—on thy green and sunny gardens—on the flow of the river—the calm of the stars—those eyes! how many thou hast closed on the world forever!

The Campaign for Vicksburg

Ironclads Running the Batteries at Vicksburg

Abraham Lincoln called Vicksburg “the key to the war,” and his Confederate counterpart, Jefferson Davis, labeled it “the nailhead that holds the South’s two halves together.” So it was that the Confederate States of America invested heavily in Vicksburg’s defense, while the Union invested even more heavily in bringing the “Gibraltar of the Confederacy” to its knees in what became a 16-month-long campaign defined by many battles and fought along many fronts. My father first sat me astride a Vicksburg cannon 69-years ago, and the sacred soil of Vicksburg continues to bear fruit in my heart as the scene of a great event in my Southern homeland and as the birthplace of my wife.

David Farragut

England, Germany, fifteen other nations, and the continent of Africa, were represented in Vicksburg’s antebellum population; and the city was praised for its beauty, culture, literacy, diversity, cleanliness, and prosperity. Even Vicksburg’s slaves—many of them anyway—lived better than they would have in other places. Joseph Davis (brother to the Confederate president), even encouraged his 365 slaves to pursue an education, assume managerial duties, and run their own judicial system.

The wealthy riverports of Vicksburg and Natchez (the latter had more millionaires than New York City) were pro-Unionist until Mississippi voted to secede. After his gunboats captured New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and Natchez, Admiral David Farragut reluctantly obeyed Abraham Lincoln’s order to move his fleet upriver to the city of Vicksburg, a city he knew he couldn’t defeat. When Farragut demanded the city’s surrender, its military commander responded: “Mississippians don’t know, and refuse to learn, how to surrender to an enemy. If Commodore Farragut or Brigadier General Butler [Butler wasn’t present] can teach them, let them come and try.”

Shots were exchanged, but Farragut couldn’t elevate his cannon sufficiently to hit the higher parts of the city, so he soon returned to New Orleans. His fellow admiral and foster brother, David Dixon Porter, critiqued the absurdity of sending an unassisted Navy to capture Vicksburg: “Ships and mortar vessels…can not crawl up hills 300 feet high.”

David Dixon Porter

During the fall and winter of 1862, Admiral Porter, and Generals Sherman and Grant, floated downriver from Memphis to find the bluff-top city protected by swamps, cliffs, seasonal flooding, the mile-wide Mississippi, nine hilltop forts, 13 riverfront gun batteries, and eight miles of land-facing rifle pits and artillery batteries. Porter’s guns couldn’t hit Vicksburg, but his men could be killed by riflemen on the riverbank. To the horror of Abraham Lincoln and the nation’s newspapers, Grant spent the next six months undertaking a series of unlikely measures to capture the city. Some examples...

He channeled through a bend in the Mississippi in an effort to change its course, leaving Vicksburg high and dry. He tried to make Vicksburg irrelevant by dredging a ship channel through a series of Louisiana lakes. He nearly lost a fleet of gunboats when he sent them through a flooded forest in order to attack the city from the east. As hundreds died in these and other misadventures, an enraged Northern press portrayed Grant as a drunken imbecile. 

Neither accusation was accurate. Grant was modest, soft-spoken, tenacious, aggressive, and a quick learner. He realized that the North had far more troops than the South, but that it was running out of patience with the war, and this led him to sacrifice his men to the point that he came to be called “Grant the butcher.” He was also an occasional binge drinker whose friends kept liquor away from him when they could and kept other people away from him when they couldn’t. General Sherman—who suffered from clinical depression, paranoid delusions, and periods of emotional collapse—described his relationships with Grant as follows: “Grant stood by me when I was crazy, and I stood by him when he was drunk, and now we stand by each other.”

PVT Orion P. Howe

Far more deadly than the Confederate defenses were enemies that the troops couldn’t see. At any given time during the cold and wet winter of 1862-63, over half of Union troops and sailors  were too sick to fight. Some were trapped in warships; some amidst the filth of livestock on overcrowded transport ships; and some in the levee-top encampments to which they had fled from floodwaters. When people died in these encampments, they were wrapped in blankets and buried underfoot from where, the earth being saturated, they often floated to the top. 

Dysentery, pneumonia, mumps, measles, scurvy, cholera, smallpox, typhoid, and tuberculosis, raged among tightly packed troops who lacked clean water and toilets. Lice were ubiquitous; some men suffered from gonorrhea or syphilis; few of the sick received adequate medical care; and many had to suffer outdoors. Even so, they were all better off than the thousands of sick and starving slaves who lay half-naked and hungry in the mud. Springtime warmth brought hope but with it yellow fever and malaria, diseases to which Northerners were more vulnerable than their Southern counterparts. General Sherman’s visiting nine-year-old son, Willie, joined the ranks of the dead despite Sherman’s assurance to worried Ohio relatives, “I have a healthy camp, and I have no fear of yellow or other fevers.”

13-inch Siege Mortar

In May, 1963, Grant undertook an amphibious invasion that wouldn’t be surpassed in size until D-Day, but even after his army was ashore below the city, he had to fight five battles to reach it. As he chased refugees, livestock, and a defeated rebel army into Vicksburg, Grant worried that in the absence of a quick victory, he was at risk of being trapped between the city’s defenses on the west and the army of General Joseph Johnston on the east. To avoid this, he ordered two all-out assaults in two days. These attacks cost many Union lives but didn’t compromise Vicksburg’s network of 19-foot-high earthen forts (which were themselves protected by seven-foot-deep trenches and a forest of abatis (see photo). Grant’s men were already angered over their losses when he further infuriated them by refusing a Confederate offer of a cease-fire that would have allowed them to retrieve their dead and wounded. As their injured begged for water and their dead bloated, blackened, and burst, Grant’s men accused him of getting them killed “for nothing.” He agreed to the cease-fire and said there would be no further assaults.

Abatis

Thus began a 47-day siege during which Union snipers worked two hour shifts, and coal miners tunneled beneath Union forts where they planted tons of explosives. Grant and Porter bombarded the city around the clock with, among other guns, 17,000-pound siege mortars that could lob shells more than two miles. Their guns hit every building in the city at least once. Dead mules, horses, and cattle clogged the streets, but human casualties remained low thanks to the city’s 500 hillside-tunnels. Diarists described the deadly beauty of 220-pound shells traveling in a high arch, trailing smoke in the daytime and becoming one with the stars at night. Vicksburg being encircled by artillery, shells often crossed paths en route to their targets, and inventive troops added to their arsenal by making mortars from the trunks of sweet gum trees. The following site has a working model: (https://starkvillecivilwararsenal.com/the-sweet-gum-mortar/).

As their city collapsed around them, a petition was created demanding that Grant allow the city’s women and children to escape. Vicksburg’s women refused to go, saying that they could withstand the trials of war as well or better as any man. Today’s women might have fled to save their children, but 19th century Americans were less protective. Grant even took his twelve-old-son, Fred, on the Vicksburg Campaign and kept him there even after Fred was shot in the leg during one battle and barely eluded capture in two others. It was also at Vicksburg that Private Orion P. Howe, a 14-year-old Ohio drummer boy—who had joined the army with his younger brother—received the Medal of Honor for completing a dangerous mission while seriously wounded.

Kitten Fricassee

When Vicksburg’s residents and defenders ran low on food, they ate mules, horses, dogs, cats, rodents, and even tree bark. One of the South’s most beautiful, literate, and diverse cities was down to a single newspaper, and it had to be printed on wallpaper.

After 47-days of hunger, terror, and death, Vicksburg’s Pennsylvania-born commander, John Pemberton, surrendered the city on July 4, 1863, amid baseless cries of treason. July 4 remained an occasion for mourning in Vicksburg until 1945, when the city renamed the day “The Carnival of the Confederacy.” Finally, in 1976, 113 years after its surrender, the day that America declared its independence from Britain in 1776 was again celebrated in Vicksburg.

Roofing Day

 

As I start this post, eight men are tearing the roof from my house with square-pointed shovels. The noise from yesterday’s shingle delivery was horribly upsetting to the cats, but it was nothing compared to this. It bothers me too, but at least I know that it serves a good purpose. There are so very many things that cats don’t know and might not wonder about, things like where their food comes from; why we let strangers poke thermometers up their asses; and what keeps the rain out of our house. Perhaps the cats don’t wonder about the source of the current noise; perhaps it’s noise itself that scares them.

Clearly, cats have thoughts, but I know tragically little about what they think. Cats also have feelings—joy, lust, rage, trust, terror, hunger, safety, happiness, affection, suspicion, uncertainty, and curiosity—and I think I do understand these. Descartes—the “father of modern philosophy”—regarded other mammals as “unfeeling automata” and thought he could prove it by publicly torturing dogs while assuring audiences that God had only given non-humans the appearance of emotion. Descartes’ view  persists among some modern scientists, especially in regard to so-called “lower forms of life.” Yet when an insect or a spider flees and squirms in apparent terror when I’m trying to take it outdoors, I doubt that they’re right.

I replaced the last roof in 1997 at age 48, but since it was hard for me then, I knew it would take all summer for me to replace it again, and by then the unused shingles and underlayment would have become glued together. Among his other skills, my father was a roofer. When he and I worked together—in the ’70s and ’80s in rural Mississippi—shingles had to be hand-carried to the rooftop in 80-pound bundles. When he reached his mid-sixties, Dad began sipping 16-ounce Miller High Lifes in order to keep going, plus he started carrying shingles up a few at a time. He was too impatient to teach me more than I needed to know to perform a specific task, so I relied on books to tell me how to replace the rather complicated roof on this house. It has served me well, but its end has arrived, and my end can’t be far off.

I didn’t how far ahead roofers booked, so I got estimates in December. The company I hired wanted to do the job in a month or two, but I didn’t want them working in the cold and wet, so I asked that they wait until May. They said fine, but that it might cost more. I considered the extra cost worth it because I know what it’s like to work in shitty weather, and I prefer that such work be done on someone else’s roof.

After hiring Huey and Sons, Peggy got to worrying that the crew might roof over nails that were left laying on their sides following the removal of the old roof, so she decided to warn them. I thought, oh, great, our roofing crew is going to start their day hating my wife, so I suggested that if journeyman roofers were stupid enough to make that mistake, our roof was going to be fucked no matter what she said, so she didn’t warn them. When they broke for lunch, she and I climbed onto the roof with the foreman (seeing a 72-year-old woman up there just had to impress the crew) to examine the work, and we actually did find one serious mistake when the foreman’s foot fell through an un-attached piece of decking.

The roofers have been at it for hours, and all but one of the cats have come out to eat—our bravest is even sitting beside me as I write. I love it when cats prove superior to my fears for them.

A Son of the South Looks at the Civil War

Retreat from Bull Run (aka First Manassas)

On an average day, 425 men died during America’s four-year-long Civil War. Although the country’s total population was but 19-million (it now stands at 332-million), more Americans died in the Civil War than in the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, the Spanish American War, World War I, World War II, and the Korean War, combined. One in four men were killed, and 8% of those who survived had missing limbs. I was ten when the last Confederate soldier died, and I fell into despair that the greatest generation that ever lived was gone from the earth. 

On July 21, 1861, thousands of thrill-seekers walked or rode the thirty miles from Washington D.C. to witness the Civil War’s first—and many thought its last—major land battle near a Virginia creek named Bull Run. A Yankee army captain described the scene as follows: “They came in all manner of ways, some in stylish carriages, others in city hacks, and still others in buggies, on horseback and even on foot.” The sightseers cheered the cannons’ roar until late afternoon when the 35,000 man Northern army fled the field in their direction: “Pleasure-carriages, gun-carriages, and ammunition wagons…were abandoned and blocked the way, and stragglers threw aside their muskets and cut horses from their harness and rode off upon them.” Confederate newspapers labeled the event The Great Skedaddle.

Six months earlier, my home state of Mississippi became the second of eleven Southern states to secede from the Union. It explained its decision as follows:

“Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery—the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization.”

Despite such directness on the part of many Confederate states and statesmen, generations of Southern white children were taught that the war was caused by the federal government’s trampling upon “state’s rights.” South Carolinian Presidential candidate Nikki Haley recently reflected this view: “I think the cause of the Civil War was basically how government was going to run, the freedoms and what people could and couldn’t do. Government doesn’t need to tell you how to live your life. They don’t need to tell you what you can and can’t do. They don’t need to be a part of your life.” In her eagerness to make the South look good, Haley failed to mention that the freedom for which the Confederacy fought was the freedom to own people.  

When asked about Haley’s response, Biden replied: “Slavery was the cause of the Civil War. There is no negotiation about that.” When I was a kid, a Northern sixth grader would have answered like Biden, a Southern sixth grader like Haley; and while the former would have come closer to the truth, more needs to be said.

Robert E. Lee

Southerners justified slavery by quoting the Bible and arguing that black people were better off in America. In its 1857 Dred Scott decision, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed, arguing that blacks, “were so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect,” and that “the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit.” Robert E. Lee (General of the Armies of the Confederate States) held a similar view: “The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially & physically. The painful discipline they are undergoing, is necessary for their instruction as a race, & I hope will prepare & lead them to better things.” Slave-owners commonly argued that the more intelligent blacks recognized their inferiority and were grateful to their white masters for giving them food, clothing, shelter, security in old age, and most of all “the good news of the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Yet, few white Southerners owned a single slave (a good field hand cost $60,000 in today’s money) and most were financially harmed by their inability to compete with slave labor. This suggests that the rank and file Confederate soldier fought for reasons other than slavery (see addendum).

Although anti-slavery sentiment was strong in the North, most Northerners were as racist as their rebel counterparts, and so it was that they didn’t fight to end slavery but to preserve the Union. This is evident from the fact that before the Emancipation Proclamation (a document in which Lincoln freed the slaves in the rebellious states free—doing so had no immediate effect), anti-war sentiment had increased in the North due to the personal and financial cost of the war, but after the Emancipation Proclamation, it exploded. The poor feared that they would lost their jobs to former slaves, while soldiers and sailors so resented being told that they were fighting to free the slaves that desertions became commonplace. 

Northerners also worried that the Emancipation Proclamation would prolong the war. Hatred of blacks was especially strong among Irish immigrants in New York City, most of whom couldn’t afford the $300 legal cost of hiring someone to join the military in their place. During a five day rampage, they set fire to a black orphanage, looted and burned black-owned businesses, and lynched black people—the riots finally ended when troops from Gettysburg fired cannons at the rioters.

I had several ancestors who fought for the Confederacy but only one—a 30-year-old Alabamian named Sarah Jane Newby—who opposed it. At war’s end, she successfully petitioned the federal government to reimburse her for a horse that its cavalry requisitioned—one of her witnesses testified that her gender alone saved her from assault. 

Hip wound caused by a Minie Ball

While Sarah Jane was backing the Union, another ancestor—26-year- Francis Marion Sides—was fighting for the Confederacy. After his hip was shattered by a .58 caliber Minie Ball at the Battle of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, (aka the Slaughter Pen) his comrades were forced to leave him behind when they retreated. After his capture by Northern troops, he died in an open-air prison. Weeks earlier, he had written his wife: 

“You said you and the children was all well and the baby was talking I cant tell how bad I want to see you and my baby Mary dont kill yourself working and dont grieve yourself about me for I will take care of myself Mary if you can send me a pare pants & a pare socks & a pare galles ses without taking it of you or the children do so So if not dont do it Mary I am as big as Sam Cooner I cant do without galles sis So write to me as soon as you get this letter So hug and kiss the children for me Nothing more at this time I will rite again in a few days Remains your affectionate Frank til death.”

During the war, my first college was converted to a military hospital, and able-bodied men being scarce, the dead were buried in shallow graves on campus. At the front entrance to my second college stood a granite monument honoring the 103 students and teachers who fought for the Confederacy, 96 of whom died. The monument has been removed now that any respectful remembrance of Confederate troops is considered offensive.

The South pinned its hopes on two assumptions. One was that Britain and France would aid the Confederacy to assure access to Southern cotton. The other was that Northern men were unwilling to fight despite outnumbering Southern troops two to one and dominating the industries of war. As an example of what the South was up against, when the war started in April, 1861, the South had 30-seaworthy warships and the North 42; eight months later, the South still had 30, while the North had 264 ships with which to blockade Southern ports, depriving the South of guns, ammunition, medicine, clothing, and even coffee.

As it turned out, Britain and France never entered the war, and the textile workers of Manchester, England, even went so far as to vow to Abraham Lincoln that they would refuse slave-produced cotton even if it cost them their livelihoods. A statue of Lincoln still adorns a Manchester city park, and their letter and his response can be seen at its base.

During my childhood and adolescence, the South remained bitter over a war that wrecked its economy, burned its cities, destroyed its infrastructure, caused large scale theft and vandalism, and killed 258,000 of its young men (the Union lost 360,000). By my birth in 1949, the 58% of Mississippians who were white had erected thousands of monuments to honor “our boys,” and held to the belief that the Old South could never die because God loved it above all other places on earth. Yet, Mississippians knew that the rest of America regarded the South in general—and their state in particular—as a backwater of ignorance, poverty, and bigotry. In 1968, Jerry Lewis delighted his Tonight Show audience by boasting that he had recently fulfilled a lifelong dream by using the toilet when his plane flew over Mississippi. Like many of my generation, I’ve yet to forgive him.

As did many twelve-year-old Mississippians in the 1960s, I proclaimed my loyalty to Dixie by tying a Confederate flag to the antenna of my parents’car. Having never met a Yankee, I sometimes dialed Northern directory assistance to learn if they really were rude as I had heard and talked faster than they could think. I never found that they were even when I later spent a month in that Southern version of deepest hell, New York City. In fact, upon hearing my accent, New Yorkers took pains to make me feel welcome.

An Afterward

The time was 4:30 a.m. when Edmund Ruffin, a wealthy 67-year-old planter, had the dubious honor of firing the opening shot of the Civil War. His target was Fort Sumter, a federal installation in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. During the following four years, Ruffin lost his wife and eight of his eleven children to war. Weeks after Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia, Ruffin wrapped himself in a Confederate battle flag and stuck the muzzle of a rifle in his mouth. As he prepared to push the trigger, a visitor knocked, and Ruffin went to greet him. After the visitor left, Ruffin returned to his room to kill himself. This time, the percussion cap exploded but the main charge didn’t, but he managed to reload before his daughter-in-law could investigate the noise. Beside his corpse were these words:

“And now with my latest writing and utterance, and with what will [be] near to my latest breath, I here repeat, & would willingly proclaim, my unmitigated hatred to Yankee rule—to all political, social and business connections with Yankees, & to the perfidious, malignant, & vile Yankee race.”

The North and South Unite at Gettysburg, 1913

The above photo was made at the fiftieth reunion of Pickett’s 6,500-casualty charge at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. During the event, the remaining Confederates charged the Union lines as they had on that disastrous day in 1863, but instead of waiting for the Southerners to reach them, their former enemies ran forward in friendship.

Yankee-hating Ruffin couldn’t have imagined that 150-years after the war, the South would unite under an incendiary politician from New York, but rather than dwell upon words of hatred, I will share the healing words of a New Hampshire infantryman named S. M. Thompson: 

“I remember now how we sat there and pitied and sympathized with these courageous Southern men who had fought for four long and dreary years, all so stubbornly, so bravely, and so well, and now, whipped, beaten, completely used up, were completely at our mercy.” 

As the words of former Confederate generals and the actions of the men who attended the Gettysburg reunion suggested, many of those who fought for the South were also eager for reconciliation. Perhaps if the people of America can find it in their hearts to forgive one another for our present day wrongs, a second Civil War can be prevented.

“I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing. Therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live.” Deuteronomy 30:19

 

Appendum: Why the South Went to War:

(1) Cultural tensions between the industrial North and the agricultural South had been worsening for years with both sides perceiving the other as hypocritical and degenerate. This was true in that many laborers were legal slaves in the South and de facto slaves in the North).

(2) Many 19th century Americans put loyalty to their state above loyalty to their nation. As Robert E. Lee expressed it: “I have not been able to make up my mind to raise my hand against my relatives, my children, my home…. If Virginia stands by the old Union, so will I. But if she secedes…I will follow my native State with my sword, and, if need be, with my life.” 

(3) Because their states had entered the union voluntarily, Southerners believed they were free to leave it voluntarily. 

(4) When U.S. troops and ships entered the South to protect military installations, Southerners believed that they were being been invaded and responded accordingly. 

(6) While parts of the South were strongly pro-Union, men in much of the South were under enormous social pressure to join the Confederate military. 

(7) No one anticipated the war’s incredible misery and expense, most people having believing that war would either be avoided or that it would end within days.