Dancing Priest

Author and Novelist Glynn Young

Glynn Young

“Irish American Civil War Songs” by Catherine Bateson

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My thoughts, lately, have been turning toward the green. Not environmental green, but Irish green.

A couple of years ago, my brother did one of those “Spit in a tube and mail it in” DNA tests. We’d always understood our heritage to be (in this order) English, Irish, French, and German. The results mostly corroborated that, except in the order: Irish (County Cork, Irish, in fact) led the blood pack, with 38 percent of our DNA. English (Midlands) was in second place at about 18 percent, followed by English (London) at about 10 percent. French (Alsace Lorraine) was there, to be sure, and so was German (Saxon). We even had a surprising 7 percent Scandinavian, which I suspect went back to the Vikings conquering England and Ireland. 

The Irish, as it turns out came from our father’s side of the family, through both of his parents. On his father’s side, it likely came sometime in the 18th and early 19th centuries, on his mother’s, mostly the 19th century.

The Irish had been emigrating to North America for a considerable period of time, likely as long as European emigration has existed. But it was in the 1840s that Irish emigration became a flood to America, following the Potato Famine. By the time of the Civil War, Irish immigrants accounted for 1.5 million of the total U.S. population (slave and free) of 31.5 million. The U.S. population had increased 35 percent from 1850 to 1860, and a considerable portion of that increase was due to immigration.

Some 200,000 Irishmen / Irish Americans fought in the Civil War. Most fought on the Union side, but about 20,000 signed on as Confederate soldiers. They brought with them their history, their political leanings, and their experiences with the famine and immigration. And they brought their songs.

Catherine Bateson, a lecturer in American history at the University of Kent in England, has documented the importance of Irish music, ballads, and songs in Irish American Civil War Songs: Identity, Loyalty, and Nationhood. I knew that music was important for both sides during the Civil War; it was used for marching, ceremonial activities, rest periods, and even for propaganda purposes with both soldiers and civilians. Thousands of songs and hymns were written and sung during the war years.

As Bateson makes clear, the Irish brought with them their longstanding love of ballads and music. They told stories with their songs and ballads, tales of victories and defeats. They expressed their political leanings (and desire for independence from Britain). And their music made its way into general overall American music, including to provide the music (and some of the lyrics) for “The Bonnie Blue Flag,” the Confederate anthem, and “The Fighting 69th,” the song of the famed Irish brigade from New York that provided the basis for so many other songs then and afterward.

Catherine Bateson

Bateson describes the background of Irish music and songs in mid-19thcentury America; how Irish American Civil War songs were produced; the ballads of the battlefield; how lyrics reinforced Irish cultural identity and Irish nationalism; how the songs and ballads expressed wartime politics; and how their music provided Irish Americans with identity and expressions of loyalty. Irish American music celebrated their military leaders, like Thomas Francis Meagher and Michael Corcoran, and their music provided solace after devastating defeats like the Battle of Chancellorsville in 1863. 

Bateson received her undergraduate degree in history from University College London and spent a year abroad studying at the University of Pennsylvania. She received an M.A. degree in American Studies from King’s College, London and her Ph.D. in history from the University of Edinburgh. She’s also an associate editor in the Irish in the American Civil War project and a former vice-chair of the Scottish Association for the Study of America. 

Irish American Civil War Songs provides a detailed study of some of the important music associated with the Civil War. It also opens a window into what some 200,000 soldiers sang during the war, and how their music provided very specific meanings. 

Top photograph: Soldiers of the Fighting 69th (Irish) Brigade. Michael Corcoran is standing at left, his hand on the gun carriage wheel. Thomas Francis Meagher is standing behind the gun. Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Tracing the Life of an Ancestor Isn’t Easy—or Always Accurate

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Oral history may not be particularly trustworthy.

My father was four years old when his paternal grandfather died, so any direct memories he would have had were likely dim. He told me the story, passed down by his father, that his grandfather Samuel Young had fought in the Civil War for the Confederacy, had found himself stranded somewhere in the east when the war ended in 1865, and made his way home primarily by walking. My father said “the Youngs were a family of shopkeepers,” and had lived and worked around Brookhaven in northern Pike Country, and they had owned no slaves. (Pike was a large county; during Reconstruction it was split into two counties, Pike and Lincoln.)

When his grandfather reached home near Brookhaven, Mississippi, my father said, he discovered the family was gone. Neighbors said the entire family had fled to East Texas to escape the devastation of war and Union control. He continued his trek across Louisiana and eventually found his family. At some point, the family returned to Mississippi. My father also told me, again passing down the family story from his father, that Samuel had been too young to enlist, and so became a messenger boy. 

The only possible reference I’ve been able to find in Confederate war records to a Samuel Franklin Young is a listing for S.F. Young – but it’s a man from a far northern country in Mississippi, whereas my ancestor would have been listed for Pike County, which was in southern Mississippi on the Louisiana line. 

That’s as much as I knew about my great-grandfather. It turns out that much of it is likely wrong.

The family listing in the 1850 census

The first question involves Samuel’s age. His tombstone in a cemetery near Alexandria, Louisiana, says he was born Jan. 22, 1845. The 1850 U.S. census lists his age as 7 years, 7 months, which would make his birth year 1843. The records in the family Bible, which I have, and which were written by Samuel himself, say his birth year was 1846. Another record says 1847.

All of those possible dates, except possibly the last one, are problematic for the “too young to enlist” in the war statement from my father. By 1863, the conscription age for the Confederate Army was 16.

Then I discovered this on one of the popular genealogy sites – another bit of family oral history from a grandson of Samuel through another descendant’s line. 

The grandson remembered his grandfather telling stories about his life. Samuel had been born on the Lake Plantation east of Johnston Station in Pike County. His father Franklin owned the plantation and 17 slaves (Franklin is listed as “farmer” on the 1850 census). His father was also involved in building the fill or rail bed for the Illinois Central Railroad from Johnston Station to Summit, Mississippi (the station and line were constructed in 1857).

Samuel, “as was the custom in the family,” was called James Samuel, Clarence Samuel, Samuel Franklin, and simply Samuel. 

Then there’s this: Samuel was drafted during the Civil War, but his father paid a substitute $500 and a horse and saddle to take his son’s place. Later, Samuel was drafted anyway, enlisted in the cavalry, and “fought the Indians west of the Mississippi River.” After the war, Franklin supposedly lost his plantation “to the carpetbaggers,” and the family settled elsewhere in Pike County and worked as sharecropper farmers. Samuel later went to work in a sawmill. 

Samuel’s tombstone

There are a lot of problems with those statements. It’s unlikely Samuel would have been called “James Samuel;” he had an older brother named James who died in 1860. His name is listed as “Samuel Franklin Young” in the Bible, and his signature (also in the Bible) is Samuel F. Young. I’m not sure where Clarence came from. And for the Civil War service “fighting the Indians,” Samuel’s other older brother Wylie served in the Confederate military and died in Texas in 1863.

I suspect either Samuel or his grandson combined some stories, or the grandson’s memory combined the stories. But most of this runs counter to my own father’s memory, or at least his recall of what he understood about his grandfather. And a reader recently pointed out that his great-grandfather had also been too young to enlist and served as a messenger boy for the Confederate post office.

And who knows what name Samuel served in the army under? His own? Clarence? James? And perhaps my father, and I by extension, misunderstood the meaning of “messenger boy” and assumed it was military. And here I thought I had all the facts.

What I know for certain about my great-grandfather: he was born in 1845 or 1846 in Johnston Station, Mississippi. He served somewhere in the Confederate Army. At his death in 1920, he was living with an unmarried daughter named Myrtle Young outside Alexandria, La., and he is buried in a cemetery there. He and his wife Octavia had nine children, seven of whom survived to adulthood. Octavia died in 1887, and Samuel never remarried.

It’s back to the records to see what other facts I can find or corroborate. 

Top photograph: Samuel and Octavia Young about 1880.

The Pleasures of Reading a Physical Book

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I read a lot of e-books. Reviewing poetry for Tweetspeak Poetry means I’m read a lot of collections in pdf or e-book formats. Reviewing books on my Faith, Fiction, Friends blog means the same thing, although almost all of those books are e-books and specifically books found on Amazon Kindle.

I like my Amazon Kindle Fire (I also have the Kindle app on my laptop and phone). It saves considerable bookshelf space, for one thing. Many of the books I have there will be read once and not likely read again at some time in the future. While the prices of some Kindle books, particularly more academic ones, are eyebrow-raising, most Kindle book prices are reasonable and usually cheaper than the hardback or paperback.

Two recent books I read, however, reminded me of the pleasures of holding and reading a physical book. 

The Lost Tales of Sir Galahad, with stories by various authors, was recently published by The Rabbit Room. It’s a beautiful book, with a bright red embossed cover, creative stories, and wonderful illustrations by Ned Bustard. I’m trying to imagine it as an e-book, and I don’t think it would work as well.

The Bodleian Library recently published a new edition of “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,” the famous poem by Thomas Gray. It includes wonderful wood engravings by Agnes Miller Parker, first published in 1938. Her black-and-white illustrations remind me of the paintings by Thomas Hart Benton, full of motion and activities. It’s another book that wouldn’t work as well in an electronic format. (You can read my review of the book at Tweetspeak Poetry.)

There’s something about holding a physical book that brings additional pleasure to reading, probably not unlike holding a printed newspaper adds something to reading the news that an online version doesn’t have. It may be that, for non-fiction books, you can find something more quickly in the index, or that a physical text allows you to see a page as something more than only one screen. Or perhaps I’m just more comfortable with a physical text; it’s the one I’ve known since my mother was reading Grimm Fairy Tales aloud when I was two and three years old.

And that could be it – a physical text creates associations – with its place on a shelf, with people, with what was happening at the time – that an e-book or pdf doesn’t. And a physical text suggests a greater degree of permanence – it’s there even if your internet connection goes down or the battery on your Kindle goes out.

My five novels in the Dancing Priest series were first published on Amazon Kindle in e-book format, followed shortly thereafter by the paperback editions. A couple of months ago, my publisher told me that he’d been contacted by a firm that produced hardback versions, and those editions were also now available. I checked Amazon, and sure enough, there they were. 

I bought the first in the series, Dancing Priest, to see what the binding was like. There’s no dust cover or book jacket, but the cover is a sturdy laminated cardboard. It’s not a durable, say, as a hand-stitched leather, but it’s certainly more durable than a paperback. And, yes, I ended up buying all five hardbacks. At $34.99, they’re not inexpensive. But what can an author say?

I picked the last one in the series, Dancing Prince, and read the hardcover version. I can’t say there was anything remarkably different from the paperback, but I did find a slight, perhaps significant, difference. The book, and the story, felt more substantial.

I’ll continue to buy e-books; they’re provide a means to read good writing without breaking the budget. I’ll continue to buy hardbacks and paperbacks, particularly for books I want to keep, reread, and have ready access to because I know exactly where they are or the shelf.

Top photo by Jaredd Craig. Amazon Kindle photo by Freestocks. Both via Unsplash and used with permission.

William’s Faulkner’s Civil War

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If there is one writer who cast the largest shadow upon southern U.S. literature in the 20th century, it’s William Faulkner. He also cast one of the largest shadows over all American literature in the 20th century. At my university, few escaped the required courses in American literature without reading the short stories “Barn Burning” and/or “The Bear.” I’d read “Barn Burning in high school, but, taking English rather than American literature in college, I didn’t read Faulkner until years later. It was Flannery O’Connor who led me to Faulkner, and then I read nearly everything he wrote.

Michael Gorra has studied and taught Faulkner, Faulkner’s works, and literature for more than 40 years. The Mary Augusta Jordan Professor of English Language and Literature at Smith College, he’s also served as editor of the Norton Critical Editions of Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying and The Sound and the Fury. The man knows his Faulkner.

William Faulkner as a young man

And to know Faulkner, you have to know the Civil War. The war, its aftermath, the “Lost Cause,” and the memory of the war – even by those who didn’t experience it – is a major theme, perhaps the major theme, in the history and literature of the South. Gorra knows his Civil War, too, and he’s a Connecticut-born Yankee who teaches at a Yankee university in Massachusetts.

Gorra’s The Saddest Words: William Faulkner’s Civil War is a remarkable work of literary criticism. It’s about the themes of the war in Faulkner’s writings, but to understand those themes, you have to grasp the story of the war and its significant details. Gorra does that, but he does more. He’s read the letters and memoirs of people who fought and lived the war. He’s studied the major battles, especially the ones that play even a small role in Faulkner’s novels and stories. He’s walked the terrain of the war, and he’s studied how the war was fought in Faulkner’s home state of Mississippi. 

All of this permeates Faulkner’s novels and short stories. Sometimes it’s an overt influence; sometimes, it’s very subtle. Reading Faulkner years after university might have been the best thing that happened to me in understanding his works, because I recognized how much he was talking about had permeated my own family.

Michael Gorra

Literary criticism is often tedious and difficult. Gorra’s work on Faulkner here is anything but that. His writing is accessible, and he tells Civil War stories that amplify and expand upon what Faulkner did. He makes the writer understandable in a way few critics can. And he doesn’t shy away from the controversial aspects of Faulkner’s works, and there are plenty of controversial aspects.

Gorra’s published works include Portrait of a Novel: Henry James and the Making of An American Masterpiece (2012), a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Biography; The Bells in Their Silence: Travels through Germany (2004); After Empire: Scott, Naipaul, Rushdie (1997); and The English Novel at Mid-Century (1990). He’s also served as editor for volumes of stories by Joseph Conrad and Henry James for Penguin.  His awards and recognitions include a Guggenheim fellowship, two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, including a Public Scholar Award, and a National Book Critics Circle award for his work as a reviewer.

The Saddest Words tells a wonderful story of how one of the most important American writers used family history, family stories, and historical events to create what became some of the most significant literary works of the 20thcentury. The Civil War sits at the center of it all, much like it continues to sit at the center of American life.

What My History Books Left Out

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In early November, we visited friends and family in the New Orleans area. On a sunny Sunday afternoon, we found ourselves with some of our oldest friends wandering the French Quarter. For a break, we stopped at the small café operated by the Historic New Orleans Collection, a museum that is all about the history of the city. In the shop (all museums everywhere have shops), our friend pointed me toward a book called Afro-Creole Poetry by Clint Bruce.

The work is a collection of 79 poems that were published between 1862 and 1870 in two newspapers in New Orleans – L’Union and La Tribune Nouvelle-Orleans. As the names employ, they were published in French: La Tribune also had an English edition. L’Union began publication a few months after the city fell to the ships of Union Admiral David Farragut. The paper lasted about two years, and it was almost immediately replaced by La Tribune.

Louis Charles Roudanez, a founder of both newspapers

Many newspapers published poetry in the 19th century; a few continued doing that in the early years of the 20th century before the practice died out. These two French newspapers were unusual and unique for the Civil War and Reconstruction periods. They were owned, operated, and almost entirely written by Blacks. Specifically, the newspapers were owned and written by Free Blacks.

Clint Bruce, who assembled this collection of Afro-Creole poetry (with the poems displayed in both French and English), provides considerable background about the publishers and writers. They came from an elite class of Blacks in the city. Many of the families had been there for generations; many came as refuges of the revolution in Haiti or from French-speaking families expelled from Cuba by the Spanish governor after Napoleon invaded Spain in Europe. While vastly outnumbered by enslaved Blacks in Louisiana, their small numbers belied their influence. When the Union occupied the city in 1862, this group of Free Blacks rose to almost immediate prominence, and their members played a significant role in Reconstruction in both the city and the state.

Before I read Afro-Creole Poetry, I was largely ignorant of any of this. I was born and raised in New Orleans. I took a year of required state history in middle school. We studied the Civil War and Reconstruction in high school and college. I attended LSU, which had at the time some of the top Civil War historians in the country. My junior year in college, I took a semester of Louisiana history. What I came out of all that with was a very different picture of Reconstruction in Louisiana and almost complete ignorance of Free Blacks.

I tend to look suspiciously at, and discount, efforts to rewrite American history to suit current political narratives. There’s a lot of that going on. But I have to ask myself why this group pf people, and all they accomplished, had disappeared from the history I studied in school. The answer I’ve come up with, mostly through other reading, is that Civil War historians for a long time focused on the major players, like Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson, Davis, and generals on both sides, and on a barebones account of Reconstruction that focused primarily on how it ended with the election of 1876 and the deal cut to make Rutherford Hayes the president. I think this is less a case of “systemic racism” and more a case of “this is how history was studied and understood.” What I never knew was that Reconstruction didn’t begin in 1865 with the defeat of the Confederacy, but in 1862 with the capture of my hometown.

Yesterday, I posted a review at Tweetspeak Poetry of Afro-Creole Poetry that focuses on the poems with a little of the background. But the book and what it represents needed a larger interpretation, a larger understanding. And it’s a reminder to me not to be so quick to judge all reinterpretations of historical events, especially those that are particularly close to home.

“Hymns of the Republic” by S.C. Gwynne

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During the last year of the Civil War, roughly April 1864-April 1865, everything changed. And “everything” includes more than the collapse of the Confederacy and the surrenders of the Confederate armies. At the beginning of that year, the eventual outcome was not a foregone conclusion. How the waging of the war itself changed made the outcome inevitable.

Popular historian, author, and journalists S.C. Gwynne explains what changed in Hymns of the Republic: The Story of the Final Year of the American Civil War. This is popular history at its best, with an account filled with anecdotes, written in a broad sweep og events, and written so well that the book sweeps the reader up and places him right in the middle of the narrative.

Gwynne doesn’t attempt a day-by-day diary of the last year. Instead, he’s selected key events and personalities, and then he elaborates upon his subjects. We read about Ulysses S. Grant’s arrival in Washington to receive his commission as head of the Union armies – and his hasty departure. We stand with Robert E. Lee as he watches the arrival of the Union armies across the Rapidan River. We experience the Battle of the Wilderness in all its horror. We read about why shovels were so important, and how Clara Barton fundamentally changed battlefield medicine forever. We ride with Confederate Commander John Mosby and his Rangers, borderline terrorists who operated as comfortably behind Union lines as in front of them. 

The central characters of the book are Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman. Neither Union general would have been marked to become military success stories, and Gwynne explains how they did it. 

Grant changed how the war was fought, adopting a “keep pounding them and throwing men at them until they relent” approach. It eventually worked, but the cost in human life and suffering – on the Union side as much or more than the Confederate – was staggering. 

S. C. Gwynne

Sherman was one of the first more modern generals who advocated total war. It wasn’t enough to defeat an army; you had to destroy that army’s ability to function, and that meant destroying the crops that fed the army, the cotton that helped pay for its weapons, and the civilian morale that kept up support for the army. While his march across Georgia was vilified as a heinous crime by Southerners, it wasn’t as bad as they made it out to be, and least in most places. What did live up to the vilification was the looting and destruction by Sherman’s army of Columbia, South Carolina’s capital.

On both sides, and it was likely more marked on the Union side, the last year of the war became a war of revenge and retribution, paving the way for Radical Reconstruction, especially after President Lincoln’s assassination.

Gwynne is the author of Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History, Rebel Yell; The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson, and The Perfect Pass: American Genius and the Reinvention of Football. His journalism work has been published in Time, Texas Monthly, The New York Times, Harper’s, and The Wall Street Journal. He lives in Austin, Texas.

Hymns of the Republic is a stirring, marvelous work, explaining how a war that had already cost so much became even more vicious, more ruthless, and more punitive.

Top illustration: The burning of Columbia, South Carolina, on Feb. 17, 1865, as depicted in Harper’s Weekly.