MAY 24, 1863
Trials a man survives make him more alive.
A WARM BREEZE brings the scent of the muddy Mississippi River into the earthworks. It smells like fresh-plowed ground. Honeysuckle helps mask the awful odor of human waste and swollen corpses—if the wind blows the right way. A welcome reprieve from the rags we tie over our noses and mouths. The smell still creeps in as the heat rises. And cottonwood seeds snow like Christmas time.
The Yanks must be having it hard today. They took a lot of losses. For a second, I sob for them. But only for a moment, after all, they invaded Mississippi like a locust plague destroying everything in their path. They came to steal Vicksburg. They crossed the deadly space between us. They charged with no other intention than to make us bait for buzzards and possums. They killed boys in my company. They did only what they were ordered to do. Just like me.
A sharpshooter’s musket brings death early. A boy gets his head taken completely off by a random cannon ball. I’m glad I didn’t see it. I’ve seen more than I want. We expect another attack today, and if they come, we’ll kill them all. I hate these thoughts. It’s not who I am. It can’t be the true nature of the Yanks either.
J.A. wipes sweat from his arms. “You’d think the men runnin’ the two governments, claimin’ to watch over us, protectin’ us, and lookin out for the common man, could find a better way to solve their fusses.”
Sarge stomps his way towards me. “Shut the hell up, all of you. Nobody wants to hear all that shit. Stay ready. Them Yanks hope we don’t lob a grenade at ’em. Keep it up, and you’ll catch one in your lap. And Lummy, I swear, that talkin’ out loud will get you killed.”
A whitish, foul-smelling, thick liquid splatters next to me. We jump back holding our noses and checking our pants for splatters.
J.A. looks up into the sky. “Buzzards. They did that to me once when I walked a creek goin’ to my fishin’ hole. I saw their shadows pass by as I sloshed along. One made a loud screechin’ sound, and a shit bucket full of puke fell from the sky. I ran under a willow tree quick.” I hope Sarge is distracted by the buzzard puke. He isn’t. I didn’t know I was talking out loud. Sarge only says such things to keep us alive. I quietly move a few yards down the line.
“Pssst, hey, Reb.” It’s coming from the ditch in front of us. “I agree with you. Sure wish you butternuts would quit so we can go home. What do you say, butternut? Will you give it up? Grant’ll take good care of you boys. No prison camp or nothin’ like that. Just go home.”
“You lie like a damn dawg. We ain’t no damned butternuts, you ignert ass. We’re gray-suited Looseanans ready to pour it on your sorry asses again if you ain’t had enough.”
Sarge looks surprised. It’s quiet for a moment.
“Don’t mean no harm, Reb.”
I don’t want this conversation, so I try to end it.
“You think we should surrender? Tell me, where’s Grant? Drunk? Where’s Sherman? With his head up his ass?”
The Yank whimpers, “They said nobody’s goin’ home ’til you men lay down your muskets.”
That same small, pitiful voice resides in me. That’s a voice that gets a man killed.
“So, Yank, lay down your muskets and crawl over here. We won’t shoot nary a one of you.”
The Yank says nothing after that. I lean back, tired of war, tired of talk, tired of bad food and little sleep, and very tired of our prison behind these dirt mounds. We can’t get out, and the Yanks can’t get in. I hate it for the Yanks lying in the mud and filth a few feet away. Then again, I don’t. After all, they came looking for it. It reminds me of Thermopylae, the Trojan Horse, and George Washington’s battles, but Grandpa Temple’s stories were best.
The Tulloses are Scots, but we had another name before that—Picts, the people painted blue. Grandpa Temple said the word means “the ancestors.” We didn’t come from somewhere else. We were always there. We lived peaceful lives until threatened. We were one with the land. Our people just wanted to be left alone in the hills above the two walls, enjoying the world as we understood it. We believe there’s a thin line between the land of the livin’ and the place of the dead. We included them in all we did. Granny Thankful spoke often of those things.
The Romans built two walls to keep us out. End of the civilized world the Romans claimed. There wasn’t anything civilized about men who raped, plundered, killed, and burned. They built walls to protect themselves from free men attacking the invaders. Walls never control people who see them as nothing more than manmade hills to climb over. “Never kept us from raidin’ the bastards, though,” he’d say.
The Romans tried to end our ancestors’ way of life. The massacre of the 9th Legion changed that. They came to take what wasn’t theirs, and they disappeared into the wilds of Pict land without a trace. Romans. Nothing but bullies. Now a Roman legion dressed in blue sits across the gully. They ring our defenses with cannons, not catapults. They’re armed with muskets, not bows and arrows. They’ve built their own Hadrian’s Wall, not to keep us out, but to keep us in.
Isham wakes from a bad dream and yells into the night. “No more frontal assaults, you say? Why, Grant? Lost too many men? Where’s Sherman’s army? Lost your pride?”
A Yank laughs. “Bet Ole Shermy is fit to be tied with what happened here.”
There’s nothing funny about that. Many a good boy died in front of the 27th Louisiana Lunette. It’s just crazy. A hundred years from now, no one will remember this place or why we fought and died here. They won’t remember how we hid behind these earthen walls in our own filth, nursing our wounds, living with death, starving. Nobody will remember that most of our men fight for home and family, and most never owned a slave or ever wanted one.
I elbow J.A. “You awake?”
“Am now.”
“Ain’t it strange some men brought Negroes to cook and wash for them?”
“They treat them fairly well, from what I’ve seen.”
“Some are restless, hoping they be freed soon. Some already ran off.”
“Hell, I would.”
I check the cap on my musket. “Most of these boys fight for their lives, home, and family.”
“That’d be me. Now go to sleep.”
John Hall of Company G brought an old slave along to tend to his needs. Jasper threatened to whip him the other day for treating him too roughly. Hall walks through the rifle pit this morning complaining about Jasper chastizing him.
I tossed a clod at his boot. “If all you got is complain about a man you keep chained, Hall, take it on down the road. I don’t want to hear it.”
“May I sit?”
“Yeah, if you shut up about your slave.”
Hall rubs his eyes. “My first wife, Tranquillam died in childbirth. I married her sister before I enlisted. She writes nasty letters sayin’ how I left her with all my bad children.”
I try not to be too hard on him. “Ain’t a reason to treat that old man so bad, is it?”
“No, it ain’t. Guess I could sell him like Isaac in E Company did. Said his wife and kids were starvin’. My family could use the money, too.”
“Why not set him free and trust the Lord will bless you.”
“What do you mean, set him free? By God, I’m fightin’ for my family, our Negroes, and our country. What’s that old man gonna do if I don’t take care of him?”
Hall doesn’t understand. Slavery is too ingrained in his thinking to separate it out.
The world will keep turning no matter what happens here. This war will end one day, and little will change if John’s thinking prevails. Pushing that aside, I just have to hold on. And live.
It’s madness. What becomes madness breeds madness. This won’t be the last battle of the last war. Makes me wonder how civilized we are with dead and rotting bodies a few feet away, wounded screaming into the dark night, and Grant doesn’t have the mercy or the decency to bury the dead and tend to the suffering. Heathen anyway.
My Creator taught me better. “Hell, I’d get shot tryin’ to help those men.”
Jasper plops down beside me. “Shoot you deader’n dirt.”
“I just wish… I need to stop all this cussin’.”
“Get your mind off it and write Ma a letter.” Douglas the camel bellows out one of his regular grunts of dissatisfaction for being tethered. “Think I’ll get James and go see Douglas again.”
I’ll write Ma, but don’t expect she’ll ever get it. I borrow an envelope from a boy in the next company over and set pen to paper.
Vicksburg,
May 24th, 1863
Ma, I hope you’re safe from the Yanks. We heard Grierson made a ride down through Missip. I pray to God he don’t come your way. We saw pretty hot action few days go, but we held the bluecoats off. We don’t hear much now from outside, and rumors can’t be trusted. We hope General Johnston will attack Grant soon so we can squeeze the Yanks flat like a corn fritter between our two armies.
I put in a bit of dirt from our defenses. Should I die on this sacred hill of honor, I want you to have a piece of God’s troubled earth where I stand to defend our home. I know you worry, but me, Jasper, and James made it through the fightin fine. They’re good soldiers. You’d be proud. You heard from George? I wish I’d said more to him and Elihu before I left home.
We don’t get paid no more, so I can’t send money. I would if I had it. Tell my sweet cousins Mary and Emaline hello and that I read the Bible Mary gave me. It gives great comfort.
Make sure you tell them about Douglas the camel the boys of the 43rd Missip have as a mascot. He’s a one hump camel that gripes and grunts because he don’t like horses or bein tied up. If he gets loose, he kicks up a fuss somethin terrible. I wish you could see him.
Don’t worry, Ma. We’ll make it through this. Trials a man survives make him a man more alive. I don’t understand it all, and it seems such a waste of good men, but I’m committed to this thing bein over, one way or another. I just hope I’m not a lesser man for it.
Though what I see everday is gruesome, my soul has hope. You taught me that no matter how bad life gets, the Lord makes it come out right somehow. I never wanted to admit it as a young man, but I am my momma’s son. I’m proud to say it now. Tell all to stay strong and trust the Creater who gives life. Pray this will be over soon.
Your affectionate son,
Lummy