In their efforts to romanticize the Confederacy, revisionists have sanitized history, whitewashing the suffering that precipitated the Civil War (namely slavery), and the suffering that resulted from the conflict. They embrace an idealized portrait of the South, and its past, that bears a closer resemblance to Gone with the Wind than it does to reality. Ignoring, among other things, the abject horrors endured by soldiers like my great-great-great-grandfather Seaborn. In honor of Confederate History Month, I would like to share his story.
Seaborn was the son of an impoverished planter from the Wiregrass Region of Georgia. His family settled there just prior to the Revolutionary War. Orphaned at a young age, he was bounced from one relation to another, before eventually settling in Burke County, where he helped operate his brother’s farm. There he met and married Lydia, the daughter of a local merchant. It was the summer of 1861, Seaborn was twenty, and Lydia was just seventeen. Eight weeks after their wedding, Seaborn enlisted in the 22nd Georgia Infantry Regt., C.S.A., assigned to the Army of Northern Virginia.
(The Army of Northern Virginia's winter quarters in Centreville, Virginia, 1861.)
During the months between his enlistment and his regiment’s first battle, Seaborn, like many men, waited impatiently for the “real war” to commence. He believed that “divine providence” would ensure a swift victory for the Confederacy, and soon he would return to Lydia. In actuality, Seaborn would spend only two-and-a-half months with Lydia during the first four years of their marriage.
Seaborn had his first taste of "real war" on May 31, 1862, fighting at the Battle of Seven Pines. Approximately 84,000 soldiers fought at Seven Pines. The battle proved inconclusive, but with casualties numbering over 13,000, including 1,770 deaths, it was the bloodiest battle yet waged, second only to the Battle of Shiloh.
(Dead bodies in the field after Second Bull Run, August 1862.)
That August, Seaborn's regiment fought at the Second Battle of Bull Run. Approximately 112,000 men took part in the battle. There were over 22,000 men killed and wounded, with over 1,300 deaths among the Confederate forces alone.
Our men on the left loaded and fired with the energy of madmen, and the 6th worked with equal desperation. This stopped the rush of the enemy and they halted and fired upon us their deadly musketry. During a few awful moments, I could see by the lurid light of the powder flashes, the whole of both lines. The two...were within fifty yards of each other pouring musketry into each other as fast as men could load and shoot.
~ Maj. Rufus R. Dawes, 6th Wisconsin, discussing the Second Battle of Bull Run.
Second Bull Run was a Confederate victory; the South's most decisive victory during the Northern Virginia campaign. It served to re-enforce Seaborn's belief that the war would be short. For his bravery under fire, Seaborn was promoted to the rank of sergeant on August 30.
Seaborn’s regiment spent the next three years fighting almost continuously. Their next major engagement was the Battle of Antietam, fought on what proved to be the single deadliest day in American history, September 17, 1862.
(The dead laying in the field after the Battle of Antietam.)
(The dead waiting to be buried, outside of Dunker Church, after Antietam.)
Approximately 93,000 men took part in the Battle of Antietam. The fighting was vicious; there were over than 23,000 casualties, including 3,654 deaths.
The "sunken road", a trench used by the Confederates as a defensive position, became a death trap when Union forces advanced. A sergeant in New York's 61st Infantry Regt. remarked, "We were shooting them like sheep in a pen. If a bullet missed the mark at first it was liable to strike the further bank, angle back, and take them secondarily." The Confederates' dead bodies were left in the trench, which served as a mass grave.
(Mass Grave, Confederate soldiers in Sunken Lane a.k.a. Bloody Lane after Antietam)
One good thing did result from the slaughter at Antietam. President Lincoln had been discussing the possibility of emancipating the slaves since July 1862. The Union's strategic victory at Antietam, repelling the Confederate invasion of Maryland, presented Lincoln with the perfect opportunity to issue a preliminary emancipation proclamation on September 22, 1862. The final proclamation was issued on January 1, 1863.
The Emancipation Proclamation freed only those slaves residing within the Confederacy. Slavery remained legal in certain Union states, like Kentucky and Delaware, until the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment in December 1865. Although not all slaves were immediately freed, thousands of slaves residing in Union-occupied Confederate territory were freed the same day the proclamation went into effect, New Year's Day 1863.
After January 1, 1863, every advance of federal troops expanded the domain of freedom. Moreover, the Proclamation announced the acceptance of black men into the Union Army and Navy, enabling the liberated to become liberators. By the end of the war, almost 200,000 black soldiers and sailors had fought for the Union and freedom.
~ The National Archives, Featured Documents, Emancipation Proclamation
(Freed slaves ca. 1865)
The next major engagement Seaborn fought in was the Battle of Fredericksburg in December 1862. The forces engaged totaled over 172,000. Casualties numbered nearly 18,000, with approximately one out of every ten men who took part in the battle having been either wounded, killed or captured.
The battle was a Confederate victory, and Lee was lauded in the Southern press, while Lincoln was derided in the North. The Governor of Pennsylvania, who had visited the battlefield, informed Lincoln that Fredericksburg “was not a battle, it was butchery."
Throughout the night of December 13, and the following day, Confederate soldiers could hear the cries and wailing of wounded Union troops, begging for assistance. One Confederate soldier, Richard Rowland Kirkland, did come to their aid, daring to carry canteens of water to them in broad daylight. Such shows of compassion for the enemy, however, were rare on both sides.
(Burying the dead after the Battle of Fredericksburg.)
After Fredericksburg came the Battle of Chancellorsville, waged April 30-May 6, 1863. Despite being outnumbered, Confederate forces managed to emerge victorious. It was arguably Lee’s most decisive victory, but it came at a terrible cost. Of the approximately 57,000 Confederate troops at Chancellorsville, over 10,000 were wounded, killed or captured, during the battle. Union casualties were higher, estimated at 14,000. The Union, however, had the manpower to absorb such losses. The Confederacy did not. Among the more than 3,000 dead was famed Confederate General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson. He was mortally wounded as the result of what would now be termed friendly fire.
The battlefield at Chancellorsville was an absolute nightmare. Many wounded men became trapped in the dense underbrush. At some point a fire began, and these men were burned alive.
Many dead bodies were scattered through the thick underbrush, and not a few wounded. These could not be brought out, but were left to their horrible fate. The dead and living thus burned in one awful funeral pile. Their bodies burned with a crackling…that resembled many pine knots; and the screams, the unearthly shrieks, made the night hideous.
~ From a letter submitted by a Confederate soldier and published in the Iredell Express, May 11, 1863. Quoted in Confederate Correspondent, by Jacob Nathaniel Raymer (2009)
(Wounded soldiers being tended under a tree after the Battle of Chancellorsville.)
Two months later Seaborn fought at the Battle of Gettysburg, waged July 1-3, 1863. The number of casualties was staggering, with an estimated 51,000 men having been either killed, wounded or captured.
Nearly 8,000 had been killed outright; these bodies, lying in the hot summer sun, needed to be buried quickly. Over 3,000 horse carcasses were burned in a series of piles south of town; townsfolk became violently ill from the stench...
[The Union's victory at the] Battle of Gettysburg has been the subject of controversy for years. Although not seen as overwhelmingly significant at the time, particularly since the war continued for almost two years, in retrospect it has often been cited as the "turning point", usually in combination with the fall of Vicksburg the following day.
~Battle of Gettysburg.
(The dead on the field after the Battle of Gettysburg.)
Seaborn was among those wounded at Gettysburg. Many wounded men survived battle only to succumb to disease. In fact, more men died of disease during the Civil War than were killed in battle. Seaborn overcame the odds and soon insisted on rejoining his regiment. He took part in several more battles before the war’s end; most notably, the bloody Battle of Cold Harbor (May 31-June 12, 1864) and the Assault on Petersburg (June 15-18, 1864).
(Casualties from the Battle of Cold Harbor being exhumed from their shallow, mass graves, and reburied almost one year after the battle, in 1865.)
Cold Harbor proved to be the last major Confederate victory of the war. The numbers are disputed, but the Union is believed to have suffered 10,000-13,000 casualties, with over 1,800 deaths. The Confederacy suffered between 2,500-4,500 casualties, and just 83 deaths. Though Confederate losses were relatively few, the slaughter must have been terrifying to witness. General Grant would later state it was the only attack he regretted ordering.
The two opposing armies faced each other for nine days of trench warfare, in some places only yards apart. Sharpshooters worked continuously, killing many. Union artillery bombarded the Confederates with a battery of eight Coehorn mortars; the Confederates responded by depressing the trail of a 24-pound howitzer and arcing shells over the Union positions...
The trenches were hot, dusty, and miserable, but conditions were worse between the lines, where thousands of wounded Federal soldiers suffered horribly without food, water, or medical assistance. Grant was reluctant to ask for a formal truce that would allow him to recover his wounded because that would be a signal he had lost the battle. He and Lee traded notes across the lines from June 5 to June 7 without coming to an agreement, and when Grant formally requested a two-hour cessation of hostilities, it was too late for most of the unfortunate wounded, who were now bloated corpses.
~ Battle of Cold Harbor.
(The bodies of a dead Union soldier and a dead Confederate, lying side by side, where they were killed, after the Siege of Petersburg.)
Seaborn’s regiment was present at Appomattox Court House when Lee surrendered. He was pardoned and returned home to Georgia, where he resumed the life of a farmer. He died in the mid-1920s, at the age of eighty-three, having outlived most of his comrades. His daughter recalled that decades later, there were still nights when Seaborn awoke screaming in a cold sweat, haunted by visions of the war.
His wife, Lydia, had faced horrors of her own during the war. In the autumn of 1864, Fort Lawton, a POW camp, was erected just miles from her family’s farm. It was built to help ease overcrowding at Andersonville Prison.
Built by a force of 300 prisoners and 500 slaves, the camp was a log stockade, with guard towers on the walls, and a ditch dug within the walls for a deadline... The first prisoners began arriving in October 1864. By November, 10,299 [prisoners] were held here. On November 25, 1864, the camp was abandoned in advance of Sherman's "March to the Sea"...
The camp was not much better than Andersonville, and more than 700 prisoners died of disease, exposure, and malnutrition in the brief time it was open. When the Left Wing [of Sherman's Army] entered the prison, they were enraged at the conditions they found there, including a long, freshly filled pit with a board that read, "650 Buried Here."
"Camp Lawton: The Confederacy's Largest Prison," Richard Edling and Bruce Schulze (2009)
(Survivor of Andersonville Prison.)
(Camp Lawton, depicted in Harper's Weekly, Jan. 7, 1865 issue.)
Disease not only killed men within the prison, it spread among the population beyond its walls, killing members of Lydia’s family. Not long afterwards, Sherman's army marched through Millen, Lydia's home, torching parts of the town, looting farms, and in some cases, physically assaulting their residents both white and black.
To make matters worse, although they had lived in Burke County for more than thirty years, as transplanted Yankees, Lydia’s parents became targets for harassment within the community. Threats of physical violence, even murder, were made against them. They remained a target during Reconstruction, scorned as carpetbaggers. On one occasion a small mob of men, Ku Klux Klan members, threatened to torch their farm and her father’s store. They were prevented from doing so by neighbors who pointed out that Lydia’s husband and brother both served in the CSA.
(Ku Klux Klan member from Tennessee during the Reconstruction era.)
The Civil War should be remembered, but it should never be glorified. The number of casualties incurred by Americans during the Civil War is larger than the number of American lives lost during World War I and World War II combined. Over 625,000 Americans - North and South – perished in the conflict. Of those who survived, several hundred thousand were left ravaged by disease, injuries, and mental illness. Some recovered - others became lifelong invalids. Widows, orphans, families left destitute, the failure of the North to defend the rights of African Americans in the South during and after Reconstruction, and the residual bitterness which continues to poison this nation - that is the Civil War's legacy.
And yet there are Americans (self-proclaimed patriots, no less!) who long to reenact this national tragedy. War may well have been the only means by which slavery could be brought to an end in this country. What would a second civil war accomplish? How could anyone who loves this country wish to replicate the carnage of America's bloodiest conflict? Why would anyone who claims to be a patriot wish to secede from their nation?
I didn't delve into the subject of slavery, or the legality and/or morality of secession, because these subjects have been discussed at length elsewhere, by individuals far more knowledgeable than me. My only goal in writing this is to dispel the myth that war is - or ever was - a glorious thing. It isn't now, and it wasn't 140 years ago.
I confess without shame that I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. Even success the most brilliant, is over dead and mangled bodies, the anguish and lamentations of distant families, appealing to me for missing sons, husbands, and fathers…It is only those who have not heard a shot, nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded and lacerated (friend or foe) that cry aloud for more blood, more vengeance, more desolation…
~ Gen. William T. Sherman to James E. Yeatman, brother-in-law of Confederate General Lucius Polk, May 1865.
You don’t know the horrible aspects of war. I’ve been through two wars and I know. I’ve seen cities and homes in ashes. I’ve seen thousands of men lying on the ground, their dead faces looking up at the skies. I tell you, war is Hell!
~ Gen. William T. Sherman addressing the graduating class of Michigan Military Academy, June 1879, as quoted in the Battle Creek Enquirer and News.
I would advise any American who wishes to secede to contemplate that hell, and to learn from the mistakes of the Confederacy. How many of their sons and daughters are they willing to sacrifice for another Lost Cause?
Update: Wow! I made the Rec List. I didn't expect that. I know it's cliche, but honestly, publishing this on a Sunday morning I would have been happy if just a dozen people read it. Thanks!