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Listening to Civil War Voices |
(Page 2 of 6) Watkins also tells us of the time he heard Jefferson Davis and Robert Toombs give a pep talk for the troops. "I remember how good and happy I felt when these two leading statesmen told of when grim visaged war would smooth her wrinkled front, and when the dark clouds that had so long lowered o'er our own loved South would be in the deep bosom of the ocean buried." (3)
John Hay, one of Abraham Lincoln's two personal secretaries, described one of the many soldiers bunking in the White House in April, 1861: "Good-looking and energetic young fellow, too good to be food for gunpowder."2 (4)
The next day, observing the Senate Chamber in its new function as a barracks for Union soldiers, Hay wrote, "The Spirit of our institutions seemed visibly present to inspire and nerve the acolyte, sleeping in her temple beside his unfleshed sword." (5) John Hay seems to have had the Battle of Shrewsbury from Henry IV, Part 1 in the back of his mind at the beginning of armed, civil rebellion in his own country.
The 54th Regiment of the Massachusetts Infantry, the "brave black regiment"3 memorialized on Boston Common by St. Gaudens (whose work is displayed in the National Gallery and described in Robert Lowell's great poem "For the Union Dead"), found it difficult, initially, to collect salaries equal to those of white soldiers. When, after eighteen months of duty, they were at last paid fully, an officer characterized the mood of the regiment as follows: "They have awakened 'the pert and nimble spirit of mirth, and turned melancholy forth to funerals.'" (6)
2 John Hay, Inside Lincoln's White House: The Complete Civil War Diary of John Hay. Michael Burlingame and John R. Turner Ettlinger, eds. Carbondale: Southern Illinois Press, 1997, pp. 3, 4.
3 Luis F. Emilio, A Brave Black Regiment. Boston, 1894; rpt. New York: Da Capo, 1995, p. 228. The quotation is from A Midsummer Night's Dream, as Theseus advocates the celebration of his military victory over the Amazons. Although unquoted by the officer, the very next line in the speech—"The pale companion is not for our pomp"—becomes ironically apposite. The black soldiers finally get their " pomp" or celebration; their pale companions do not.
Manuscript inscription to Clara Barton, Civil War nurse and future founder of the Red Cross. Folger Shakespeare Library.
(3) Gloucester: "Now is the winter of our discontent / Made glorious summer by this son of York, / And all the clouds that loured upon our house / In the deep bosom of the ocean buried… / Grim-visaged war hath smoothed his wrinkled front."
Richard III, Act 1, scene 1
(4) Prince: "I never did see such pitiful rascals." Falstaff: "Tut, tut, good enough to toss. / Food for powder, food for powder."
Henry IV, Part 1, Act 4, scene 2
(5) Prince: "Full bravely hast thou fleshed / Thy maiden sword."
Henry IV, Part 1, Act 5, scene 4
(6) Theseus: "Awake the pert and nimble spirit of mirth. / Turn melancholy forth to funerals."
A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act 1, scene 1