Dancing Priest

Author and Novelist Glynn Young

memoir

“Service with the Sixth Wisconsin Volunteers” by Rufus Dawes

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Rufus Dawes (1838-1899) was a Union soldier and officer, a businessman, a congressman, n author, and the father of a man who won the Nobel Peace Prize and served as Vice President. He was descended from the man who warned of the coming of the British prior to Lexington and Concord.

He is also considered to have written one of the best, if not the best, memoirs of the Civil War, Service with the Sixth Wisconsin Volunteers.  

Dawes distinguished himself as a member and officer of the famed Iron Brigade during the Battle of Gettysburg and other Civil War engagements. Comprised of regiments from Wisconsin, Indiana, and Michigan, its numbers and composition kept changing because of casualties. It was one of the most feared of all Union troops; it often stood its ground when other brigades were in full retreat.

He meticulously provided accounts of battles, engagements, and camp life to his family, his wife (they married during the war), and friends. Most of the letters were kept, and he had ready access to his own first-hand accounts when he finally wrote and published his memoir in 1890. He and the Iron Brigade were involved in some of the most famous battles of the war in the Eastern Theater. In addition to Gettysburg, Dawes wrote of Second Bull Run, Antietam, Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville, among others. And he was there at the Battle of the Wilderness and nearby Spotsylvania Courthouse, writing meticulous accounts of what happened.

Rufus Dawes during the war

His descriptions of the battles put the reader right in the thick of the battle. He describes each as would a trained and highly observant military journalist or historian. He explains what went right and what went wrong. He is always crediting his troops for bravery and courage; this is not a man who focused attention on himself (as so many officers and generals tended to do).

Dawes also describes his work as presiding judge during court-martials. He doesn’t explain why he served in this capacity, but it was obviously because of his trained eye, his military reputation, and his strong sense of fairness. His judgments reflected facts and evidence, not emotions or personal feelings.

Service with the Sixth Wisconsin Volunteers is more than a memoir of the Civil War; it is a fascinating account of some of the most important battles of the Civil War, written by a man who was both a strong partisan but a fair and observant one.

Top photograph: a few members of the Iron Brigade. 

Belle Boyd: Cleopatra of the Secession

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Belle Boyd (1844-1900) was 16 when the Civil War began. A member of a prominent family in Martinsburg, Virginia (it became part of WestVirginia), she’d been in boarding school in Baltimore when the Southern states began to secede. She made he way back home, and when the war began, she promptly decided to do whatever she could to help the South win.

She became a spy.

Her hometown afforded more than ample opportunity; like doe so many other towns in contested areas, control of the town changed hands several times. She made no secret of her sympathies; she did make secret her listening in on Union plans and army movements. In one particularly amazing incident, she braved gun and cannon fire in rushing across a large field to bring news of Union army reserves to Gen. Stonewall Jackson.

Union authorities were not ignorant of Belle Boyd’s activities. No less a person than Edwin Stanton, Secretary of War, in President Lincoln’s cabinet, ordered her arrest. She was arrested six times and imprisoned twice. At one point, Pinkerton detectives were hired to track her down. She was finally able to make her way to safety in England before the war ended; to support herself, she became an actress. 

Belle Boyd

She almost immediately began writing her memoirs, for which was a ready market in both North and South. She had locked a Northern reporter in his room during one Union army evacuation, and he was captured by the Confederates. He knew exactly who bore responsibility, and when he returned to the North, he wrote stories, many grossly exaggerated, that turned Belle Boyd into a notorious spy and femme fatale, at least as far as Northern readers were concerned. Belle shrugged off his lurid stories; what else should you expect from a Northern newspaper, she said. In the South, she was regarded as a great heroine, and Stonewall Jackson himself commended her patriotism and activities.

Her memoir, published in 1866, sold quite well. Entitled Belle Boyd in Camp and Prison: Cleopatra of the Secession, it detailed her activities from the beginning, her Southern patriotism, her captures and imprisonments, and her “in your face” attitude, including waving a small Confederate flag on the train bearing her to prison in Washington, D.C. 

She writes with passion and intelligence. She may have been a teenager, but she was determined to do her part for the South. She gave little thought to her own safety, unless her treatment by Union authorities might reflect badly on them. She was typically jailed without any explanation or formal charges (although I’m sure she could have guessed), as habeas corpus had been suspended by executive order.

Boyd married three times; her second husband was a British citizen who had fought for the Union. She had a daughter from her first marriage and four children from her second. She died of a heart attack in Wisconsin and was buried there. 

Her memoir, published in two volumes, is considered by many to be “highly fictionalized.” It is a rather breathless account, and it’s easy to see how she might have described some experiences and even invented others to put herself in a daring and positive light. But it is a highly entertaining account; Belle Boyd knew how to capture attention.

“Recollections of a Confederate Staff Officer” by G. Moxley Sorrell

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This memoir of the Civil War, Recollections of a Confederate Staff Officer by G. Moxley Sorrell (1838-1901), was a genuine pleasure to read. Published some 35 years after the war ended, it is not a typical military memoir. Sorrel himself says as much at the beginning; he leaves the discussion of most military strategy and tactics to others. But he occupied a significant position. For much of the war, he was the chief of staff for Brigadier General James Longstreet.

G. Mosley Sorrell

He was part of numerous battles in the eastern theater of the war: both battles of Bull Run (Manassas), Seven Pines, Sharpsburg (Antietam), Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, Chickamauga, the eastern Tennessee campaign, the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and Petersburg. A considerable amount of his work was administrative and operational, but he did have horses shot from underneath him and was wounded himself. 

It’s Sorrell’s style of writing that’s so engaging. He’s almost courtly. He’s always gracious, even when he’s critical (he didn’t think much of Union General George McClellan). It’s a personal style associated with the manners of the Old South; I can recall relatives from my own and my wife’s family who manifested a similar demeanor. Sorrell fully manifests it.

Recollections of a Confederate Staff Officer may be short on the Civil War’s strategy and tactics, but Sorrell had a perceptive eye toward the personalities of the conflict and what played an increasingly important role – the shortage of soldiers for the Confederate army. 

Some Related Readings

Commanding the Regiment: William Sperry’s Creative Cannoneering – Edward Alexander at Emerging Civil War.

Righting the Longstreet Record at Gettysburg: Six Matters of Controversy and Confusion by Cory Pfarr – Booknotes at Civil War Books and Authors.

From Manassas to Appomattox: Memoirs of the Civil War in America by James Longstreet.

“Four Years with Morgan and Forrest” by Col. Thomas F. Berry

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John Hunt Morgan (1825-1864) was a Confederate general whose operations seemed more guerilla-like than military. He’s known for attacking the supply lies of Union General William Rosecrans and famous for a raid into Indiana and Ohio that took hundreds of prisoners, before ending in Morgan’s capture and imprisonment (he did manage to escape prison and return to the war). 

Nathan Bedford Forrest (1821-1877) was a Confederate general who was the most feared cavalry commander on either side during the Civil War. He disrupted Ulysses Grant’s operations at Vicksburg, he broke out of Union encirclements, and he participated in the Battle of Chickamauga. He was also involved in what came to be known as the Massacre at Fort Pillow, where Black soldiers in Union uniforms were systematically killed.

Colonel Thomas F. Berry (1832-1917) rode with both Morgan and Forrest. In 1914, he published his memoir of the Civil War and shortly after, Four Years with Morgan and Forrest. Given the reputations of both Confederate commanders, it’s easy to see why he waited nearly 50 years after the end of the war. He kept a diary throughout the war, and the diary became the basis for the memoir.

The memoir surprises in two ways. 

First, Berry feels no remorse or regret for anything he or his commanders did during the war; the reader has the impression that Berry would it all over again if he had to and wouldn’t change a thing.  

Second is what Berry describes. Jack Ryan, Jack Reacher, and James Bond move over. You look like pikers compared to the real-life adventures of Thomas Berry. The memoir is full or raids, attacks, battles, and deaths (a lot of deaths), and even includes a tragic love story.

Berry was captured 13 times. He escaped all 13 times, including from the prison on Rock Island in the Quad Cities area of Iowa and Illinois – in the dead of winter, and by traveling on a chunk of ice. He was shot a total of 26 times, surviving all wounds. One bullet was so lodged that the surgeon refused to operate, so Berry, with the help of a nurse, operating on himself and removed the bullet. He was stitched himself up afterward. (He does thank the nurse for her assistance.)

His story doesn’t end with the end of the Civil War. Berry went on to fight in Mexico for the next two years, during the short-lived reign of the Emperor Maximilian.

It’s an amazing and often shocking story. You wonder if Berry invented some parts, like performing surgery on himself. But he describes it in such a matter of fact, non-sensational way that you tend to accept the account at face value. He doesn’t seem to exaggerate; he simply follows what he wrote in his diary.

What a story he tells!