For those interested, I have a new cover. I like this older Rachel much better. It is a period photo I Photoshopped slightly to make her just a bit less plain looking, mainly her eyes and mouth.
Category Archives: Catahoula Books
The Brains of the Confederacy
In both of my books, The Last Day of Forever and, especially, An Eternity of Four Years, a gentleman by the name of Judah P. Benjamin plays a part. Judah P. Benjamin remains something of an enigma because he destroyed his private papers at the end of the Civil War, and in spite of leading a very public life as a successful attorney, planter, politician, and statesman, some aspects of his personal history remain cloaked in a mystery and speculation.
He was a most unusual man for his times and by all accounts very intelligent, a skilled debater with a gift for oratory and a ready smile.
It is said the ladies of Richmond adored him, but he had his detractors as well as those who admired him for his considerable intellect and outgoing personality. Jefferson Davis considered him one of his closest confidants with the writings of Davis’s wife, Varina, offering a small peek into his personal life.
Judah Phillip Benjamin was variously know as “the Jew,” “the Hebrew,” or “Davis’ pet Jew,” referring to his small stature (barely over five feet tall). Later historians sometimes refer to him as the “brains of the Confederacy.” During the war, the North derisively called him “the South’s evil genius.”
He was born to a family of Sephardic Jews in St Croix in 1811. When he was still a child, his family eventually settled in Charleston, SC, a southern city known for its religious tolerance. He attended Yale at the tender age of 14 but was expelled because of unspecified “ungentlemanly conduct.”
Benjamin then headed for New Orleans, where according to Bernard W. Korn in his volume on that city’s Jews, he arrived “with no visible assets other than the wit, charm, omnivorous mind and boundless energy with which he would find his place in the sun.” He remained a bachelor for several years, and at least one historian suggests he was a homosexual, but there exists no evidence beyond speculation to support this.
He clerked in a law firm and studied the law. Since fluent French was required to practice law in Louisiana, he needed to learn that language. To earn money, he tutored French Creoles in English and taught Natalie Bauché de St. Martin in exchange for her teaching him French.
In 1832 at the age of 21, he was admitted to the bar, and a year later, he married Natalie with the wedding in St Louis Cathedral. The couple moved into a four-story townhouse on Bourbon Street that is today a strip joint called “Temptations.” It seems the marriage did not work out for reasons unknown. Historians suggest Natalie was such a problem child her family was glad to be shed of her, and later, rumors of infidelity were associated with her. They had one child, a daughter, Ninette.
Benjamin became a successful lawyer in New Orleans and bought a plantation downriver from the city, Belle Chasse*, and built a fine home for his wife and daughter. Natalie, evidently, was unimpressed and decamped with her daughter for Paris where they remained for the rest of her life. Meanwhile, Benjamin experimented with different strains of sugar cane and became something of an expert on that crop.
The Louisiana Legislature elected Benjamin to the U.S. Senate where he became famous for his eloquent and fiery oratory. (Senators were appointed by the Legislature then.) Benjamin was the first Jew to serve as a U. S. Senator. He was twice offered to be nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court and declined both times. He would likely have been approved and would have been the first Jew on the U.S. Supreme Court.
With Louisiana’s secession in 1861, Benjamin became one of Jeff Davis’ closest advisors even though Benjamin had once challenged him to a duel. Davis first appointed him as Attorney General and then Secretary of War, but the Confederate Army existed mainly as untrained volunteers with supplies for waging war very scarce. With the Confederate retreat from Cape Hatteras, Benjamin was accused of failing to reinforce the garrison. He took the blame and resigned, but he did so to hide the fact that the Confederacy simply did not have the forces to send, and that weakness needed to be hidden from the enemy.
Davis then appointed Benjamin to Secretary of State where he was also in charge of the Confederate Secret Service and Confederate spies up north. It was in that capacity that my character, Ethan, has dealings with him in An Eternity of Four Years.
Very early in the war, he was one of the first to argue for recruiting the slaves into the Confederate Army, offering them freedom if they served. Near the end, when the situation was desperate for the South, he brought it up again in a speech and was renounced for it. He also suggested freeing the slaves to get France and/or England to enter the conflict on the side of the South, or at least recognize the South as a sovereign nation, opening the door to much needed war material from Europe. Again his ideas were rejected.
The war ended with the Confederate government on the run. Davis was captured, but Benjamin was not, only because he separated from the group the day before and made his way to England. There he became a successful barrister and was created a “Palatine silk” as the Queen’s Council.
With his health deteriorating and suffering from diabetes, he was injured in a fall in 1880. Judah P. Benjamin died of a heart attack in Paris in 1882 and was buried there in Père Lachaise Cemetery under the name of “Philippe Benjamin.”
In 1938 the Paris chapter of the Daughters of the Confederacy erected a plaque over his grave.
JUDAH PHILIP BENJAMIN
BORN ST. THOMAS WEST INDIES AUGUST 6,1811
DIED IN PARIS MAY 6,1884
UNITED STATES SENATOR FROM LOUISIANA
ATTORNEY GENERAL, SECRETARY OF WAR AND
SECRETARY OF STATE OF THE CONFEDERATE STATES
OF AMERICA, QUEENS COUNSEL, LONDON
Whatever your opinion of Judah P. Benjamin might be, one must agree he was a most amazing person and largely an unknown but significant figure in American history.
*Note: This link will take you to an image of Belle Chasse Plantation. It has long since been torn down. You can adjust the size of the image with the sliding bar at the top.
The Paperback Version of An Eternity of Four Years is now available!
Finally! It is done! I have been teasing you long enough.
The exciting conclusion to the two-part epic of the Legend of Rachel and Ethan, An Eternity of Four Years, is finally finished and published. Both the Kindle digital version and the paperback version are available at Amazon.
An Eternity of Four Years picks up the story four days after The Last Day of Forever ends and carries the reader through the turbulent years of the Civil War with Ethan searching for Rachel to mend what was broken between them.
If you haven’t read part 1 yet, The Last Day of Forever, you need to read it first. Either book can stand alone, but reading both in order fills in a lot of back story and detail you will find both interesting and helpful to your reading experience.
Get ’em while they are hot! And don’t forget to go back and post a review. It will help the books get visibility and credibility.
The Whitworth Gauntlet
I began a discussion here about the Whitworth Rifle used as a sniping arm by both sides in the American Civil War. I promised an excerpt from An Eternity of Four Years that featured Ethan “interacting” with that rifle. Here it is. The scene takes place during the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863.
*****
I left Pepper in the care of Blue at the Johnson home and made my way down South Stratton Street to find Hays. Aware of the threat of the sharpshooters, as I got closer to Winebrenner’s Run, I moved more cautiously from cover to cover to present as small a target as possible for them to take any interest in. At the end of South Stratton, I asked some Rebs taking potshots at Cemetery Hill from an abandoned building where I could find General Hays.
“He is in Winebrenner’s Run, sir. You ain’t planning on going down there are ya?”
“Yep.”
“You sure you need to do that, Captain? They’ll be takin’ shots at ya with them Whitworth rifles with the telescopic sights all the way down to the run. You’ll be a big fat target from here on.” He gestured towards the back corner of the building, and I saw a dead Confederate slumped against the wall with the top of his head shot away. “Ask him; he’ll tell you. He stuck his head out to just have a little peek, and splat! Them Whitworths are deadly. You’ll know when you have been shot at by one, ‘cause the bullet makes a shrill whistling sound on account of its hexagon rifling.”
That was sobering.
I nodded, and he shook his head. “It’s your funeral.”
I took several deep breaths to steel myself to run the “Whitworth gauntlet.” No use waiting any longer, I thought and pushed off. I had at least sixty paces of open ground exposed to observation from Cemetery Hill before I had any more cover, a small shed sitting forlornly out in the open. I was not even halfway there, when a ball kicked up dirt not two paces past me. Before I was to the little shed, a shot went past near my head, making the shrill whistling sound just described to me. Any slower, and I would have been hit. I reached the shed just as another round chipped wood splinters from its edge.
Some of the boys down in the run saw me coming under fire and began to cheer. I sank down behind the shed to catch my breath. For good measure, one of the Yanks put a round through the flimsy little building to remind me of the difference between cover and concealment. The ball whistled through the wooden structure right over my head. Had I been standing instead of crouching down as I was, I would be dead.
I peeked around the building to see my next objective, and they put a ball into the edge of my little shed just as I withdrew my head. I was most impressed with both their rifles and their shooting skills. I did see enough to know this next leg was going to be a long one. There was a sizable oak tree about ninety paces away. I took two deep breaths and then stuck my head around the left side of the shed to draw their attention but quickly withdrew it and ran around the other side and headed for my oak tree.
The ruse worked. They put three balls into the edge of the building where I had stuck my head out, but they were not prepared for me to show myself at the other side. I ran like I was headed for the Baltimore Pike then cut back in the other direction. They fired two more shots at me just as I changed directions. I made it to the tree as another ball chipped bark off its side. The stout oak was more than concealment; it was cover. The cheering from Winebrenner’s Run grew louder as others joined in, but I was getting tired.
One last dash left to go. This one was only about forty paces and then the relative safety of the run’s high sides. Even though I was getting winded, I could not afford to wait and allow the Yankee sharpshooters time to reload, so I took one quick breath and broke from behind my tree and headed for the run. I ran left then zigzagged right, then left again with balls hitting all around me. As I neared Winebrenner’s Run and leaped into the air to clear some brush on its bank, I felt a ball tear through my shell jacket. I landed in a heap against the far side of the run and pulled myself up against its protection as close as I could get. Cheers went up and down the line. I even heard a cheer from the Yankees on Cemetery Hill.
I examined myself to make sure I had not been perforated and only found entry and exit holes in my shell jacket but none in me.
“They ventilated your jacket, Captain?” asked a familiar voice. I looked up and realized I had landed almost in Hays’ lap.
“My apologies, sir. With the compliments of General Ewell…”
Filed under An Eternity of Four Years, Catahoula Books, Civil War, Firearms
Civil War Sniping and The Whitworth Rifle
The two main shoulder arms of the American Civil War, for both the North and the South, were the U.S. Springfield Rifle-Musket of 1861 and the British Enfield Pattern 1852 Rifle-Musket. Both were nearly the same bore diameter, the Enfield being .577 caliber, and the Springfield being .58 caliber. Both accepted the Minié ball, developed by a Frenchman Claude Étienne Minié.
The Minié ball was not really a ball shape; rather it was conical shaped with a hollow base. Prior to its development and general adoption, military muskets were smoothbore (no rifling) because they were much faster to reload than rifled arms, which required a lubricated cloth patch to surround the ball and engage the rifling, more reloading steps, and more effort to get the ball seated against the charge. The Minié ball in a rifled musket was as easy to load as an unpatched ball in a smoothbore musket, but rifled muskets loaded with Minié balls were considerably more accurate.
The Minié ball was sub caliber like the ball in a smoothbore musket, but when the charge detonated behind it, its hollow base skirt expanded to engage the rifling so the projectile would have a stabilizing spin. The combination of adding rifling to the muskets and the Minié projectile greatly increased the accuracy of infantry small arms. And since the Civil War was fought using tactics designed for the less accurate smoothbore muskets but used “modern” more accurate weapons instead, the casualty rate went up dramatically.
Sniping was not new to the Civil War, having been used in previous conflicts, usually using a very heavy barreled target rifle and open sights or slow-loading “Kentucky rifles.” Along came a British gentleman by the name of Sir Joseph Whitworth, who experimented with rifled 
artillery that used hexagon-shaped bores instead of rifled round bores. The hexagon-shaped bores were twisted like the rifling in traditional rifled arms, affecting the projectile like rifling does, giving it a stabilizing spin. He extended his ideas to small arms and developed the “Whitworth Rifle.” Not only was the bore hexagon-shaped, but the bullets were an elongated hexagon shape, matching the size and twist of the Whitworth Rifle barrels. Whitworth discovered the longer projectile needed a faster twist rate than the Minié to stabilize it. The result was a major leap forward in small arms accuracy.
Tested against the Enfield Pattern of 1852 Rifle-Musket, the Whitworth could hold 9-inch groups at 500 yards (less than 2 minutes of angle), while the Enfield, which was considered very accurate in its day, could only hold 54-inch groups! For comparison, modern military small arms, like the M-16, can only hold about 2 minutes of angle (2 inches at 100 yards) unless accurized. The Whitworth could reliably hit targets out to 1,000 yards and beyond. Even though demonstrably superior in accuracy to the Enfield, the British rejected the design, because the Whitworth was four times more expensive than the Enfield to manufacture. That was not the death of the Whitworth.
Both Confederate and Union sharpshooters employed it as a sniper weapon, usually targeting artillery crews and officers at previously unheard of ranges. Most of these Whitworth Rifles used open, iron sights like those on the Springfield and Enfield, but some were equipped with 3-power telescopic sights mounted to the left side of the breech. These Whitworth Rifles were exceptionally deadly!
According to popular accounts, on May 9, 1864, during the Battle of Spotsylvania Courthouse, Union General John Sedgwick discovered just how accurate the Whitworth could be. Shots from Confederate Whitworth rifles, easily identified by the shrill whistling noises their hexagon-shaped bullets made in flight, caused members of his staff and artillerymen to duck for cover. Sedgwick chastised them and proclaimed, “I’m ashamed of you, dodging that way. They couldn’t hit an elephant at this distance.” Seconds later he pitched forward with a bullet hole below his left eye.
On Sept 19, 1863, at the Battle of Chickamauga, Union General William Lytle was leading a charge and became the target for a Confederate with a Whitworth. He was mortally wounded.
On the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg, disregarding warnings about the Federal sharpshooters armed with Whitworth rifles with telescopic sights mounted on them, Confederate General Richard Ewell and his engineer ventured to within 1,000 yards of the Union lines on Cemetery Hill. Ewell took a Whitworth round in his wooden leg, and the engineer was shot through the body and killed.
In An Eternity of Four Years, I have a scene where Ethan has an encounter with these same sharpshooters who shot at Ewell. That excerpt will be the next post.
Battlefield “technology” made huge advances just before and during the Civil War, and the resulting casualties were staggering compared to previous conflicts.
Filed under An Eternity of Four Years, Catahoula Books, Civil War, Firearms, History Lessons
Excerpt from An Eternity of Four Years
Since we are so close to publishing the print version of An Eternity of Four Years, I thought another teaser to get your interest up might be helpful. This scene takes place during the early days of the Battle of Chancellorsville as Stonewall Jackson’s staff considers the options for the Confederates facing a much superior force.
*****
Since re-crossing the Rappahannock and making another frontal attack at Fredericksburg was not an option for Hooker, in Late April 1863 he deployed 70,000 of his men to the west and moved them quickly across the river upstream in an attempt to flank Fredericksburg. Lee parried the move but left Early with the 1st Louisiana to hold Fredericksburg. Some skirmishes between Lee and Hooker resulted, but Fighting Joe suddenly drew back to defensive positions around Chancellorsville on the south side of the Rappahannock and sat there.
I was present when Jackson was studying a map with his staff, and one man quietly mused to himself, “What’s Hooker doing?”
Though deep in thought, Jackson must have heard him and looked up. He jabbed his finger at the map. “He wants to draw us out. He wants to choose the ground and have us come to him, so he can fight from a strong defensive position; thinks he can beat Lee that way.” Jackson looked around at his staff to observe their reaction to what he had just said and stopped when he got to me. “Captain, I have seen that expression on your face before back at the Institute. Something on your mind?”
I was somewhat startled but tried to quickly recover. “Yes, sir. I would have thought Hooker would understand that wars are not won fighting from the defensive. One must go on the offensive to completely defeat the enemy.”
Old Jack smiled. “As I recall, you were one of the few who remained awake during my lectures. You’re right. It is possible that Hooker could win the battle but only if he inflicts unsustainable casualties on us. But he’ll not win the war this way, and why will he not, Captain?”
I shook my head in the negative and replied softly. “Lee won’t fall into that trap.”
“And you would be correct. Lee is no fool. If you were Lee what would you do?”
I looked closer at the map and the dispositions of the two forces. “Well, sir, if a frontal attack is out of the question, then the alternative is a flanking maneuver.” I looked to Hooker’s left flank, the preferred choice to flank him, since it would sever his avenues of supply and retreat. “Hooker’s left flank is anchored on the Rappahannock, so we can’t get around that way; we would have to punch through it, which is almost the same as a frontal attack against the center.” My focus shifted to the western end of Hooker’s line. “His right flank appears to be in the air. If so, and he hasn’t reinforced it in anticipation of a flanking move, we might be able to move a large force undetected through the Wilderness and get around him that way.”
Old Jack nodded. “You did pay attention in class. See any problems with that maneuver?” I felt like I was back at VMI and being tested by Jackson. All eyes were on me to see how well I would do in this exam. “Yes, I do. Longstreet’s Corp is still detached, and Early is holding at Fredericksburg, so the Army of Northern Virginia has already been divided into thirds.” I pointed to Chancellorsville on the map. “To take this largest third here before Hooker’s much superior force—and divide it again—is something any text on military strategy would advise against.” Several nodded in agreement. I looked to Jackson and smiled. “But that’s precisely what you have in mind to do.”
*****
Though the Battle of Chancellorsville ended in a victory for the Confederates, it was at an enormous cost, one that would haunt the Army of Northern Virginia for the rest of the war, especially during the coming fight at Gettysburg: General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson, perhaps Lee’s most able and talented commander, was killed.
Filed under An Eternity of Four Years, Catahoula Books, Civil War, Excerpts
“An Eternity of Four Years” is Published!
The exciting conclusion to the Legend of Rachel and Ethan, part 2 of the Catahoula Series, is up for sale at Amazon. However, this is the digital Kindle version. The paperback will be available soon, probably late next week.
The Kindle version is available for only $.99 for a limited time only. This is to allow my friends to get it at a reduced price.
You can scoop both up for only $1.98 total. Such a deal! 😉
If you don’t have a Kindle device, you can download the app for your computer, your iPad, or your phone for free. Use the device you want it on to get the app.
About THAT flag — and other thoughts.
In The Last Day of Forever, Ethan is a slaveholder, albeit by proxy; his father was the actual owner. He inherited them at Morgan’s death and promptly freed them. His underlying and unacknowledged (at the time) motive was his dislike for the “peculiar institution,” but his excuse was to save Catahoula Plantation through the coming war.
In An Eternity of Four Years, he began the war owning another slave he won in a duel, Blue, and he promptly freed him as well. But he discovered he could not distance himself from the institution of slavery with the simple stroke of a pen. He was sucked into the war on the side of the South (it was that or hang), but Blue stayed with Ethan for reasons of his own, remaining a constant reminder of the institution throughout the war.
While Ethan began the war somewhat reluctantly, he did believe he was defending hearth and home from the Yankee “host” about to invade his country and state. This was a common view of many southern soldiers, most of whom were not even slave owners. As the war dragged on, it became obvious to Ethan the war was about far more than defending his home, and he was on the wrong side of history. But the oath he took and “honor” compelled him to fight on even though his heart was not in it.
What was the war all about? If you answer the North fought to free the slaves, you would be only partially right. If you answer the South fought to keep the institution of slavery, you would be only partially right.
Initially, the North fought to save the Union, and though Lincoln wanted to free the slaves, he knew northerners would abandon the cause if he made the war about slavery. And they did once he announced his Emancipation Proclamation. Many northerners refused to join the fight after that.
The war was really about money. Isn’t it always? For the South to leave the Union, it would mean a terrific loss of tax revenues for the United States. For the South, the slaves represented a huge financial investment. It was their belief that only the black man was capable of laboring under the hot conditions found in the South. Remove that source of labor, and the southern economy would collapse.
But sooner or later, slavery had to end, or the Constitution of the United States and everything standing behind it was a farce. Someone once said of slavery, the South had a tiger by the tail; it could neither hold on forever nor let it go, lest the tiger consume it. The Civil War forced that issue, and the tiger is still feasting on the South.
Now, some 150 years after the war, we are embarking on the rewriting of history, using the excuse of political correctness as our guiding light. That, my friends, is a very slippery slope. Already, we have seen calls to ban all merchandise depicting the Confederate battle flag (AKA the Southern Cross, not the Stars and Bars), while at the same time, Nazi symbol merchandise is still available and happily sold by some of those hypocrites banning the Confederate flag merchandise. There have been calls to cease distribution of movies like Gone With The Wind—archive it forever, take down statues of Confederate officers and politicians, rename streets named for Confederates, and even rename military posts. As if these actions will change anything! They will not. The divisiveness will only get worse. Will we see book burnings next? A crystal night where southern businesses will be trashed? Anyone whose ancestors were slave owners will face persecution?
We are NOT a racist country, but we are rapidly becoming one. I was born and raised in the South, and I am here to tell you, in my lifetime, I have seen the racial attitudes of southerners dramatically change for the better. But in the last six or seven years, all that progress has been reversed. Ironically, it is being driven by those who claim, falsely, they are not racists.
God help us!
Where does it end? Short answer: It does not. The New American Taliban, focused on symbols rather than substance, will not stop until everything they view as offensive is destroyed—exactly like what we see the Taliban and Isis doing in the Middle East today—no difference!
I leave you with these comments by General U.S. Grant from his memoirs of Lee’s surrender at Appomattox. Consider that they were spoken by the victor after four years of a brutal war.
“I felt like anything rather than rejoicing at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and valiantly, and had suffered so much for a cause, though that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least excuse. I do not question, however, the sincerity of the great mass of those who were opposed to us.”
America’s slide down this slippery slope will not end well, and what is at the bottom is a monster none of us want to even think about.
Wake up, America!
The Last Day of Forever a prop in a movie?
Whenever my sister, Jeanne, does anything, it is with “gusto.” She is reading The Last Day of Forever right now, and it goes where she goes.
She is also an actress and has had quite a few small parts in local movie and TV productions. A few I recall are Left Behind, Bonnie and Clyde, and at least one NCIS NOLA from this past season, but they are many more. She even had a speaking role in Bonnie and Clyde. If you saw the movie, she was one of the “gossiping ladies” walking past Bonnie Parker’s mother’s house. (If you ask her, she may give you an autograph!)
She is working in another movie I can’t name yet, and she is in a bank robbery scene. Jeanne is a customer in the bank, and she has a prop. Guess what it was? That’s right, The Last Day of Forever, which she was reading while waiting for her camera call. But they wouldn’t allow her to show the title!
I will let Jeanne describe the scene. “Anyway in the scene, I am writing out checks and deposits at the center counter … The book (on my left) along with a checkbook, deposit slip and some invoices are spread out on the counter, but the book is face down and at one point I rest my arm on it while filling out the forms. Damn, isn’t that a lot of action going on in the background that most people don’t even realize they are seeing?”
You may be able to see it (sans title) in the movie when it comes out. Once it is released, I can reveal the title.
She even gets into the part when just reading. Here she is dressed as Analee as she continues The Last Day of Forever. 😉
Filed under An Eternity of Four Years, Catahoula Books, Family History
Rachel Sees the Elephant
All of my excerpts from An Eternity of Four Years have featured scenes with Ethan. Rachel is still very much in the story and has an even stronger role than she had in The Last Day of Forever. In An Eternity of Four Years, the two are separated and have very different life experiences.
Why is that? Well, you will have to read the book to find out.
In this series of excerpts, you see her experiencing the aftermath of the Battle of Gettysburg. Until this point in the story, she has been largely isolated from any direct effects of the war, but it has now caught up with her. The battle was fought all around her, and in its aftermath, she gets to experience the horrors of a battlefield.
*****
15 July 1863 (From diary entries recording earlier events.)
Both armies are gone, and we are left with the remnants of the great battle. Words cannot begin to describe what awaited us as we ventured out of our homes and hiding places after the armies left. Broken wagons, gun carriages, caissons, abandoned muskets, canteens, sabers, ration boxes, ammunition—all manner of military equipage is everywhere, not to mention all the damaged or destroyed buildings.
Men must relieve themselves even during war. The smell of urine and human excrement can be encountered almost anywhere, unless it is overpowered by the smell of death, which is often the case. The entire town is permeated with the stench of corruption. Dead animals and dead men have lain out putrefying in the hot July sun, some for as long as five days! One cannot escape the smell. It seeps into everything, your home, your clothing, your very being, it seems.
The flies have descended upon the town like some Biblical plague. They are everywhere, and you cannot escape them! They are in your face, in your nose, and even your mouth if you open it too wide to speak. Eating a meal, if one can stomach food with the smell of death so strong, is a battle with the flies.
Rats! Rats are everywhere! Where have they come from and so soon after the battle? They feed on the dead and seem not the least concerned when humans approach them, sometimes even behaving aggressively if you venture too close.
It has been five days since the battle was joined; four days since Cemetery Hill, and three since the great Southern charge against the Union’s center that some are calling “Pickett’s Charge,” so named for the general who led it—and they are still finding wounded men on the many fields and in the woods and buildings all around Gettysburg. Poor hurt men incapable of escaping the heat of day, dying for want of a sip of cool water to quench their thirst, exhausted from crying out for help, or unconscious from the pain of it all.
*****
The sun fully set and our charges removed to the church, we joined Doctor Anderson in an ambulance for the short ride to Cemetery Hill. As we approached, we saw men with lanterns moving over the north face and the top of the hill. With the weak ethereal light of the lanterns casting ghostly dancing shadows as the men moved about the hill and examined the many bodies there for some flicker of life, it looked like a picture out of some hideous nightmare.
We dismounted near the gate of the cemetery. They had tents set up, and in the light of lanterns, we saw litters of wounded men lying out in the open air for as far as could be seen in the weak light.
And the stench of death! It was even stronger there!
Doctor Anderson brought us inside a large tent set up as an operating room with several tables for conducting procedures, each held a wounded man with orderlies or surgeons tending to them. I felt sick to my stomach and wanted to fall down and weep for what these poor men had been going through, but I steeled myself and called upon the Lord to give me the strength to endure what I knew I would be facing. And I needed every ounce of help He would give me.
Doctor Anderson assigned Doctor J to one of the tables. An orderly and I assisted. This went on through the night. As soon as one man was attended to, his wound treated, his arm or leg amputated, they carried him off and brought in another, one long stream of broken men, one after another.
With the coming of dawn, Doctor Anderson brought us coffee and suggested we rest for a while. I took my coffee to go outside and get away from the blood and gore to hopefully enjoy the sunrise. Doctor Anderson followed me. “Miss Rachel, I would suggest you remain inside,” he cautioned.
I ignored his warning. “I must see the sun!” But when I stepped outside, and my eyes adjusted to the light of the early dawn, I dropped my coffee! What was hidden by darkness during our arrival was now fully visible.
Death! It was everywhere! I looked to the north and saw the bodies of men clad in blue and gray, some stacked upon each other, some sprawled across broken gun carriages, some with their bodies twisted into positions God never intended them to ever assume, and still others only a part of a man with missing arms, legs, heads, and sometimes missing a whole half of his body, his entrails spilled out on the ground.
I fainted! Doctor Anderson caught me as I went down.
*****
He literally took me by the arm and escorted me from the tent and instructed an orderly to take me home. I was too exhausted to resist.
Once back at the house, the mess in which we had left it days before was still there to greet me: dried blood on the floor, the table, and even the walls. Bloody bandages and sodden bedding had been left by the wounded. The house stank nearly as bad as Cemetery Hill. Tired as I was, I set about cleaning it up by first throwing open the windows to air the place out. I then set about scrubbing floors, disposing of the refuse left by the wounded, and changing our bedding.
I don’t know how long it took, but I got the house clean enough I could tolerate it (my standards of cleanliness were, by then, greatly reduced from what they had been before the battle). After getting a good fire going in the stove, I fried our last two eggs and very nearly inhaled them. I then boiled water, made myself a cup of tea and poured myself a steaming hot bath. With my cup of tea in hand, I slipped into the tub and sank into pure heaven on earth. That bath felt better than any I had ever experienced in my entire life. I soaked until the water was tepid then washed with soap from head to toe—three times to be sure I was completely clean! I put on a clean nightgown, fell into a freshly made bed, and was fast asleep the moment my head hit the pillow.
*****
Filed under An Eternity of Four Years, Catahoula Books, Civil War, Excerpts
Catahoula Chronicles 
