Wednesday - Shriver House and Body Parts

Just down the street from David Wills’ in Gettysburg is the home of George and Hettie Shriver, an ill-starred couple; it is a monument to the permanent destruction of the war on families.  He’s a well established young man who inherits a farm and several thousand gallons of liquor.  The war intervenes and he’s never able to open the saloon and bowling alley he organizes.  He enlists early in the army, dies late in Andersonville.  They have two young daughters who escape Gettysburg with her as the battle begins to the safety of her parents’ farm. . .between Big Round Top and Little Round Top!  That home becomes a hospital, as does Hettie’s back in town, she discovers when returning a few days later.  At both places, as we hear at other stops, body parts were stacked as high as the fence.  (Our docs on board are fascinated by the medical practices of the day.  One buys books on the subject, another buys miniatures of the medical workers.)

Hettie discovers her house had been taken over by Confederates who knocked a hole in the attic wall for sharpshooters to whack Union soldiers.  They’ve used her furniture as barricades, her garden for dining.

The costumed docent tells us what was hubba-hubba in the day – her stockinged ankle. . .gasp!  As she describes Hettie’s domestic life, it seems more imagined than real, but I only had a vague “I read it differently somewhere” sense.  How to learn more?

We notice there are no closets in the rooms.  Closets were taxed, so clothes stayed in chests and chiffarobes.

As we go through this and other homes, I’m just sure that in a past life I was a wealthy Southerner.  How do I know?  When I look at all the lazy bits of me, the things I just WON’T do until I have to, these were the tasks of slaves.  And I would’ve been pretty firm about not joining in to do my part.  Happy to be waited on, thank you.  Still in my DNA, apparently.  Or, maybe I’m just bone lazy.

Thursday: Acting Our Age

The smiles are still firmly in place, but we’re beginning to act our ages.  Coughs from congested chests rumble through the bus.  Privately, a couple of us have bad back pain, we stop for drugs, we snooze between, sometimes during, lectures on the bus.  We have been on long-for-me marches, and my knees and back complain of frequent leaps from and into the bus.

We are still a jolly group.  Colonel Historian, after his daily puns, turns over the microphone to those who want it.  Colonel Jerry reads a moving piece about military spouses, Mark tells funny cop stories about stolen parrots and 80-year-old drivers, Carol about securing a meeting with Indira Gandhi the week before her assassination.  We hear jokes about the Keilor-inspired Lutheran Airlines (the first 10 rows bring casseroles, the next, salads), kindergartners reporting on summer vacations, coaching stories.

All the groans were not from pain. 

We arrive at Glen Allen, Virginia, where our trip will end Sunday morning.  When we arrive at our hotel after a rainy drive, we learn we've been driving through a tornado warning!

Are You Following?

It's Sunday evening and we head home tomorrow.  I'm just getting the chance to write up some of the days.  So, I'm skipping back and forth.  Sorry.  These have been exhausting battles.

Wednesday: Pickett’s Charge

I run a risky game trying to report Civil War facts that whiz by too quickly to grab and hold.  Is that general north or south?  Did 500 or 5,000 die there?  Oh, Jeb Stuart was CAVALRY!  Did the North or the South win that battle?  Okay, so Lee’s strategy was often defensive, and he would succeed by attacking the Northern flanks.    He would go at the flanks, then charge the middle, right?  Especially with Civil War enthusiasts, whose throbbing brains have every factoid DOWN, including those about the private from the 20^th Maine.  They remember and regurgitate, and I’d better get it right. . .but I’m not so sure I will.

As the weather girl, I’m not making my bus-mates happy.  It’s raining as we drive from one Gettysburg monument to the next, but the weather holds  for the deeply quiet, muddy tromp across the field of Pickett’s Charge on July 3.  Pickett’s boss, Longstreet, didn’t want to do it (and barely waved his order to commence), but Lee thought he could break the Union center, having gone at their flanks the day before.  Over half the 14,000 Confederates died who charged following an artillery barrage, and the loss broke the psychological back of the South (Vicksburg also fell that day).  Lee left Pennsylvania after Gettysburg; he hadn’t anticipated the Union numbers resisting him.

We begin where the charge did in the woods among the Confederate soldiers,  now brooded over by the imposing monuments raised by the units that fought here.  The more intrepid among us start across the field.  I collect acorns because it somehow makes me feel hopeful about what can grow from them; it seemed a fitting salute to those soldiers.  We unintrepid get on the bus and wheel over to the Union side, where we watch our bus-mates approach.  They are exposed on a ¾-mile stretch; they have to leap over two rows of split-rail fences, and we Union solders are protected behind a stone wall.  No wonder Pickett's guys got mowed down.  Terrible loss.  Lee's returning soldiers pass in front of him.  "It was all my fault men," he tells them.

In our battle discussions, I am frequently surprised to hear how battles end.  Credits, apparently, don’t roll over the sunset at the end of a fighting day.  Generals don’t give chase to solidify victories; exhausted soldiers can’t go on.  Armies slink away at night.  (How do neighing horses, tramping feet and wagon wheels sneak away?)

Tuesday: Gettysburg, Little Round Top and Story-Telling

Throughout our morning on the battlefield, we see Park Service people.  Are they rangers or docents?  Can't tell.  They may be one guy, like Paul, with many of us.  Sometimes we see them huddled with just a couple of people.  Paul is a great story teller and he holds us, rapt, with his skill.

We are a couple miles south of Gettysburg where the Battle of Little Round Top was fought on July 2.  We drive past the Peach Orchard.  We stand on Little Round Top  and imagine Chamberlain (a favorite of our Historian Al) ordering a bayonet charge.  Like the other battlefields, it is at once stirring and disturbing. . .and thrilling to imagine the engagement that ranged across our view.  What a contradiction in my heart!

Disobedience to orders figures here.  Union general Daniel Sickles disobeys his commander, General Meade, about defending Cemetery Ridge and moves his troops to the Emmitsburg Road instead.  Seeing the exposure, another general sends a message to a general to cover Little Round top.  The second disobedience comes when Col. Strong Vincent rides up, assesses the situation and tells the messenger he’s taking responsibility for leaving his orders to take the hill.  There isn’t time for anyone else to get on the scene.  Vincent is killed that day, but the Union was victorious.  Sickles is never court-martialed for his disobedience.  (In our bus discussions, one of the military guys talks about how that often happens, that guys like Sickles often advance!  Curious.)

You know what I wish?  It may already exist.  I can never follow those little blue or red lines snaking across a topographical map at the visitors’ centers.  I wish there was a video version of the war that really showed how all the troops moved, and I could be a goddess-like observer from above. 

We dine tonight at Hers Tavern, which existed at the time of the war.  It's at the edget of the battlefield.

Monday: Antietam and Emancipation

I am distracted on Monday by sad business calls from home, and so watch the group march away to Antietam on 9/17/62 with its loss of 23,000 soldiers (bloodiest day in U.S. battle history), which led the way to the Emancipation Proclamation, whose legal argument I had never before heard.  Because the Constitution permitted slavery, Lincoln would be hard-pressed under it to free slaves. . .except he declared that the South as seceded did not technically come under the Constitution, and he asserted his martial powers.  He announced his order in 1862; it took effect January 1, 1863.  Slaves in the north were freed two years later by the 13^th amendment.

Friday: The Conflict's Waning Days

I, being geographically challenged, had no idea we were THISCLOSE to Williamsburg and Yorktown.  I may never come home.

Today we visited the Museum of the Confederacy, just around the corner from Jefferson Davis' White House in Richmond, which we did not see.  There was a magnificent display of Confederate flags (right next to the magnificent gift shop), and a lesson that the flag I associate with the South's cause was a battle flag, not the official one.

One floor displays uniforms and belongings of various lights, including the sword Lee wore into the Appomattox court house.  (He did not offer it to Grant, and Grant did not request it)  What struck me here at the downstairs "Knickknackery" exhibit is how small and slight everyone was.  I know the war's privations brought some to near starvation, particularly towards the end, where we're currently marching to.  But these weren't tall guys or robust women.  A hard physical life, I'm told.

I loved the downstairs displays:  the doll whose hair concealed an opening for smuggling quinine in its head and chest, the grand painting of Lee and Jackson parting the day the latter is killed by his own men, the homespun dresses and suits, the woven straw hats and hair necklaces, medicines. . .

Racing yet again for the bus.  To be continued.

Pacifist Rant

War is like a football game, only the Super Bowl doesn't end the season. In each, you know your opponent, maybe even went to school with him. You know whether he delays pushing forward, is hot-tempered and impetuous, is flashy but can't be counted on in the crunch. You have your planned tactics which will change in an instant after the clash begins. You have leaders and fodder followers who may or may not know you stand a chance. You have sure victories and unexpected routs.

Whether it's a rebel yell or a "Hoo-wah"or "DE-fense," war and football are a guy thing.  Guys love the huddle, the strategy, the noise, the terrain and the endless analysis. If, like me, you look off into the trees for just a sec, you've lost the thread of the game and you might not recapture it.

I'm a devout coward and pacifist.  Our in-your-face film this morning on Pickett's Charge further bludgeoned that into me.  We've watched the 600,000 deaths mount up, lives be shattered, fortunes lost.  We're about to hear how scorch-and-burn seized the day, and the rapacious won.  I know I'm supposed to be happy the slaves were freed, and Mr. Lincoln explained the other night why he couldn't allow the South to secede and I see the point of that 150 years later.

The parallels of discord, then and now, keep laying down parallel tracks as we go.  The blustery stupidity of Texas governor Perry on secession, the Tea Party and states' rights, the financial inequity that will allow economic interests, "with Cromwellian efficiency," (I think that's from CONFEDERATES IN THE ATTIC) to mow down a vaunted and hopeless nobility, the racism that calls itself Republican politics, the simmering anger of a confused populace.

I haven't looked at a newspaper much since we've been gone, but don't feel I'm far from the headlines.  Maybe that's why I wander off into plantation life and what they cooked around the campfires.

Good Evening, Mr. Lincoln

On July 4, 1863, the three-day battle at Gettysburg has ended. The south is retreating to Virginia with an 18-mile train of ambulance wagons.  The battle has had as many as 50,000 casualties, about 3,000 dead from the North and 5,000 from the South.  Seven thousand horses have also died.  It’s raining.

Townspeople are beginning to creep out of cellars and to other locations where they’ve fled.  There’s no food.  Martial law has been declared, and it’s illegal to take or sell military souvenirs off the bodies now rotting in the streets.  Residents rub their upper lips with peppermint oil to mask the stench, which will hang in the air till November.  Lawyer David Wills has begun acquiring land for burying both blues and grays.

It’s November 18.  The new cemetery is about to be dedicated.  President Lincoln has ridden the train from Washington and walked a block to Wills’ house where he’d rest that night and complete the address begun earlier at the White House.  About 20,000 hear him give the Gettysburg address.

Tonight we had dinner at the Dobbin House, built in 1776, the home and school of Presbyterian minister Dobbin (father of 19!), who also is part of the underground railroad and harbors runaway slaves.  As we were finishing dinner, in walks President Lincoln!

For about 30 minutes the President (Jim Getty - jimgetty.com) talks about growing up, getting married, entering politics, his rivals, and the war.  After telling us Gen. Grant declined his invitation to the Ford Theatre, he opens it up for questions. . .a "press conference."  After his first five minutes we are in the thrall of this guy who absolutely WAS Abraham Lincoln, in command of the facts of his life and the politics of Illinois as easily as you or I would be of our own.  He’d ask people where they were from – like California – and then relate something about one of his pals and their political or historical goings on with great agility. He was the best storyteller I’ve ever heard, and I think it was fun for him to be in the midst of a knowledgable and curious audience.

What a great, great evening.

The People on the Bus

What an eclectic, amazing, charming, smart, group!  There are 22 of us; and there may be a handful younger than I, and a handful in their 80s, but they are all fit as a freakin’ fiddle.  Guess who came in last, gasping across that battlefield ridge?  They love to talk and eat and tipple.  For several of them, this tour is realizing a long-held dream.  There are a couple of not-battle-lover, loyal wives along, reading not-war books, but smiling and riding.

Most are retired.  Isn’t it cool that the retired motorcycle cop came with his DAD?  Their stories peel every day like fascinating onions.  There’s Hank, the 81-year-old professor from UC San Francisco AND professional singer who wrote the memoir of his dad, a Wobbly (look it up).  He’s here with his friend Jon.  They went to Stanford together and stayed friends. Jon became a Dean at Cal Poly; he wrote a book on rhetoric 50 years ago; still selling.

There’s Bill the OB, with his wife Kathleen, psychologist.  Professional speaker/author Carol with judge husband Irv.  Brave Wade who has a nuclear consulting company, who had a major stroke three years ago AND is recovering from surgery fusing eight discs; with his equally amazing wife Judy who works in the company.  A study in determination.  Gerontology psychiatrist Carl and child psychologist Susan who would remind you completely of Earl and Lannis.  Fighter pilot Jerry and immigration officer Susan.  Gail and sports coach/historian Bob.

To be continued.

Tuesday: Gettysburg 1

Um, I went to a Catholic all-girls’ high school and here’s what I remember about the Civil War:  Somebody fired on Fort Sumter in 1861, Lincoln gave the Gettysburg address in 1863 and he was shot in 1865.  Oh, and the slaves got freed.  And our summer vacations never included a painful trip WITH PARENTS in a station wagon to battlegrounds that were so BORING.  If I was going to take an SAT, surely I would've had to learn more than that.

I still haven’t told you about Antietam and today I got the firehose lesson of the first day of Gettysburg.  How do I synopsize all that? Maybe you’ll have to read your own Civil War books.  No, I promise I’ll do my reporterly duty.  I think I have free time tomorrow afternoon.  We’re supposed to do Day 2 and walk the two miles of Pickett’s Charge, but it’s supposed to rain and rain and rain, so we’ll see how skippy everyone’s feeling.

One of our group at dinner tonight, happy in her Martiniland, was distraught at hearing our schedule, “But I’m on vacation!” she wailed.  Here’s how the day goes:  Breakfast at 7:00, historian lecture at 8:00, hop on the bus at 9:30, walk and drive battlefield with running historian commentary while I take notes like we're going to have a pop quiz tomorrow, lunch at noon, walk and drive battlefield or see museum and gift shop, return to hotel at 5:30, dinner at 7:00, enjoy the people in Martiniland, and collapse in bed at 9:30.  Lots to absorb.

Are we related to Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock who fought at Gettysburg, taking over on the first day when his friend Gen. John Reynolds was shot and killed in the woods?  (Confederate sharpshooter?  Friendly fire?  Historians argue.)  He does more on days 2 and 3, so stay tuned.  But could we actually have in our family tree someone who  followed orders and loved the military? 

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winfield_Scott_Hancock

Maybe I’ll just claim it while I’m here.  The nice thing about being older is truth and memory keep drifting farther apart.

So, tomorrow you’ll hear about Gettysburg and the Shriver house and the earlier things as well.

Snore.

Monday: Harpers Ferry, September 1862

Thanks to my competitive nature , my iPhone spokesmodel talents and my weather map for all our cities, I’m the weather girl! Each night Colonel Historian asks me what the next day’s weather holds.  I announce the temperature and sun status so my bus-mates know how to dress.  Jeez, people can get ticked about weather.  I promised them mid-80s for today and they showed up in shorts, but shivered in the morning’s mid-50s temperatures.  I was shunned, till that old sun and humidity cranked up and they’d ditched the sweaters and recognized my innate superiority.  Ya gotta be tough in a job like this.

We’re heading north, following the Confederates’ push.  Lee has left Manassas and wants to make his first invasion of the North.  He sent Stonewall Jackson to Harpers Ferry, an industrial city, maker of firearms, outfitter of Lewis and Clark, at the convergence of the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers and three states (Maryland, Virginia and what would become West Virginia).  It was a return trip for Robert E. Lee (my personal fave) who, in 1859 had come at the head of a unit of Marines to get John Brown who wanted the 100,000 guns in the armory for his war to liberate the slaves.  Less than two days later, after a white-flag confab failed, the Marines moved in and ended it.  A few weeks later John Brown’s body lay a-mouldering in the grave.

Ah, the Shenandoah Valley and the Blue Ridge Mountains.  (“I may leave the Shenandoah, but she’ll never leave my heart”)  Thomas Jefferson stood on the hill overlooking the valley and declared it “one of the most stupendous sights in nature.”  Indeed.

Oh, right, this is about war.  Okay.  It’s September 1862.  Lee sends Stonewall Jackson to take Harpers Ferry and its railroad and to capture Federal troops, which he does, in a three-pronged, three-day, three-“Heights” attacks which by the end of the day resulted in a Confederate victory and the capture of 12,000 Federal troops (which would stand as a record till World War II). The North, already at Harpers Ferry, neglected to scoop up the heights, so blam! blam! blam! 50 artillery guns on the hills pointed at the valley won the day. Stonewall was an intense private eccentric, graduate of West Point, VMI instructor, a devout Presbyterian who was ruthless in battle.  He succeeded because of surprise, speed and tenacity.  He was brilliant at maneuvering weaponry but bad at making clear his “commander’s intent,” which meant his subordinates didn’t know how to organize themselves under him.  Lee was fine with that because Jackson could intuit Lee’s wishes. 

While the Confederates won the day, they retreated from the Valley to set up their winter camp after the Battle of Antietam that shortly followed.  Never mind.  Harpers Ferry would change hands eight times during the war.  But that defeat boosted Southern morale and scared the North.

Yawn.  It’s night-night time and I haven’t even begun Antietam.  I’ll catch up tomorrow.  So much to tell.  Bloody Lane.  The people on the bus.  The North’s leadership.  Why the North and the South gave battles different names.  Uh, can y’all stay after class?

Sunday: Manassas

We are standing in a field by Rickett's line of artillery, gazing across several hundred yards beyond a line of trees, imagining what it would be like to suddenly hear blasts of gunfire and the blood-curdling Rebel yell from as-yet-unseen rebels.  What would that have done to the inside of my drawers?

This was the first real battle since the firing on Fort Sumter in April of 1861. There had been a few skirmishes, but Lincoln was anxious to get this going -- and make it a short war -- and capturing Richmond, the Confederate capitol, was the aim.  Battles were fought here in 1861 and 1862, both won by the Confederates.  A giddy air began it.  People from nearby Centreville brought picnic lunches to watch from the high ground.  New recruits from New York had answered their president's call for a three-month sign-up, and OF COURSE showed up in uniforms that were red pantaloons and fezzes!

The North won the first part of the day, but failed to consolidate a win; the South jumped in, with reinforcements arriving, and took advantage of that mistake and by 4 pm had routed the Yankees, though they were too tired to chase 'em.  "Fatigue makes cowards of the bravest men."  George Patton

This is where Stonewall Jackson got his name; his men said he sat firm against the onslaught, like a stone wall.  It's also where everyone realized this would be a long war.  Our Harvard-trained historian guide, a retired colonel and West Point graduate, quoted several rueful comments:  that the soldiers felt the "old gung ho" was only in the other regiments; that they felt a physical fear of going forward and a moral fear of turning backward. . .and they longed for a hole to fall into.

As we watched a film about this battle (and later learned about the Napoleonic tactics) where lines of infrantrymen stand and mow each other down, while captains galloped and brandished swords, and sergeants and lieutenants ran around behind urging the men to keep going, it further underscored for me my firm belief that nothing is worth dying for.  If we had any Hancocks in these skirmishes, I can't imagine them being content to be generals' fodder; surely they were looking for the hole.

Ed got to be a "gunner" with the artillery, pulling the cord that would blast the rebs.  It was amazing to be on this huge field where over 70,000 men clashed to the death, to see a home on the hill in the middle of the battlefield was blasted by the North's artillery, killing an invalid old lady.

Tonight we learned about smooth bore flintlock muskets, and the lack of reliability and accuracy and limited range, and how you could only fire three rounds a minute; how rifle bored barrels brought greater spin, more accuracy and greater range, and how minie balls (not little, and not a ball) blasted the shit out of people.

I now know the functions of the 8-man artillery crew, the introduction of trenches and breech loading field artillery, and how the military units are named and commanded. And fortunately, the bus ride from the hotel was mercifully brief.

I just KNOW you'll tune in tomorrow for Harper's Ferry and Antietam.

It Begins

Turns out this isn't such a big bus tour after all.  Our route covers major battles of the "Eastern Theater," Like Manassas, Gettysburg, Antietam, Appomattox; not the Western:  Shiloh, Vicksburg, Mobile, Atlanta.  It's a north-south corridor about 200 miles long.

Today we hopped on our bus - noonish - for a 30-minute ride, trudged the whole damn battlefield of Manassas (Battles 1 and 2) (Bull Run is the river that runs through it), hopped back on the bus, quaffed a quick Manhattan and jollied through a "Howdy!" dinner with the other 20 passengers.  Yippee!  We hall had space to lounge on the bus.  Now we've skipped off to bed because we leave at o-dark-hundred for Gettysburg.

Okay, I Lied

Apparently, I'm not a woman of my word.  When Ed and I took the Mount Rushmore bus tour a couple of years ago, I stomped around the blog and snapped:  "I told Ed to wring every single second of enjoyment out of this bus trip because it's the last we'll take."

I meant it, then at the beginning and even more so at its end.  But I was the one who suggested we take a bus tour of the Civil War, this being the Sesquicentennial and all (150th anniversary).  We leave Sunday for DC and an 8-day romp around Pennsylvania and Virginia.  We've been watching Ken Burns' Civil War series, and I'm wondering why I thought it would be interesting to revisit carnage.

I never did get a good grade in "Consistency" on those psychological tests.

See you when we hit the road!