Cara’s Blog

The ignorance of some of the individuals from the reading dumbfounded me. No wonder soldiers were widely feared when they came home and no wonder there was such an outbreak of violence in America after the Civil War. With 10,000,000 pills and 2,841,000 ounces of opiates given out liberally to wounded veterans how could this not happen? With large portion of the country readjusting to society and fighting the “soldiers disease” of heroin and morphine addiction I can imagine that there was a lot of chaos. By the time it was realized how serious these drugs were, it was too late. The damage had been done. Something else that shocked me was that families of confederate soldiers were not allowed to lay flowers on the graves of their dead. One man went as far as to say that it was desecration to do this because the confederates were rebels. That men and women had to hide flowers in their clothing to lie down is absurd.

While I do not identify with the hatred that was felt by many Southerners towards blacks, I think the North was to blame for a lot of the racial out lash. Based on the readings from To Appomattox and Beyond we know how much southern men valued their masculinity. They were pressured from all sides of society to preserve their manhood and this included the power of human ownership. As the south was rightfully stripped of this right they felt as if their manhood was “crushed.” Right away the same men that they had recently owned started to hold offices and essentially govern them. Furthermore, black troops were sent by the north to try to control order after the war’s end because white troops had no desire to. “Social Fraternities” like the KKK helped Southern men regain what manhood they believed they lost.

The similarities between all the wars we have studied so far are remarkable. As the war went on Sam Watkins grew sick of fighting. He saw horrific sights of the hanging of two teenage spies, “blood covered ground… [and] the groans of the wounded and dying” (169) in many battles, and the remains of men which he regretted to kill. Wages of War picks up almost where Co. Aytch leaves off. Yet again the nation is faced with the dilemma of what is to happen to the veterans who come home along with many more questions. What would happen to the freed blacks? If they were even to be freed, and what would happen to the South? The death of Abraham Lincoln complicated these questions more.

I wasn’t terribly surprised to read that Nathaniel Hawthorne though that “no war should be fought over [slavery]” and that it would “ultimately go away by itself.” However, it made me a little frustrated with human ignorance. To say that slavery would “ vanish like a dream” after its used has been fulfilled is foolish, heartless, and makes about as much sense as assuming, as the author points out, that the Axis Powers during WWII would just “vanish like a dream.”

The first thing that struck me about Co. Aytch was the colorful character whom told the story. As he introduces himself Sam Watkins tells the reader that his story was of the “little misconception of there being such a thing as a north and a south.” He was careful in the first chapter to refer to the Northerners and Southerners by the way their water courses ran. As the story went on Sam Watkins found that Patriotism was different upon enlisting as it was in the actual war. Men eagerly signed up for the War of 1812 only to find the blood shed and hardships to suck all the spirit of ’76 of out them. This was the case also with the main character in the novel Across Five Aprils. In this story a young man, Jethro Creighton joins the Union Army thinking that war will be fun and full of expressive patriotism. After seeing his brothers and his cousins die in battle Jethro has to grow up quickly and realizes that War was nothing like he imagined.

Many things surprised me in the Co. Aytch. In the two wars we’ve already studied we had learned that there were hardships. One could assume that the modern army would have learned from some of these mistakes. Men freezing due to lack of proper clothing, brutal punishments from within their own troops, and high rates of deserters seemed a little too familiar to me. Since this is a confederate soldiers memoir perhaps some of these accounts do not apply to the Union Army which was more organized and run by the President. The bravery of some men I found remarkable. Watkins recollects a time when one of his soldiers grabbed the reins of Union army’s horse and told him to surrender. The man pulled out his gun quickly and shot the confederate. Surely he must have known this could have happened yet he still remained loyal to his troops.

I could not believe the drastic difference between how the Revolutionary Soldier was viewed during the time of the war and at the turn of the century. The men who, twenty years ago, were thought of as scum, the dregs of society, were now being portrayed as heroic. Why the sudden change? It couldn’t possibly be that people of this later time were more simply more compassionate. I found a few reasons that it would be convenient to portray Veterans in such a light.

The first thing I noticed was that publications were being more through. John Marshall’s The Life of George Washington, and Mercy Otis Warren’s children’s history of the Revolution described the horrors and hardships of the winter at Valley Forge. Other publications such as Port Folio, Monthly Magazine and Literary Journal, and Military Monitor and American Register were very effective in changing public opinion with a hint of historical tweaking.

Another observation I made was that the “spirit of ‘76” seemed to become a popular way to almost force nationalism. When Americans found themselves in another armed conflict, it needed some way of getting men to enlist. Stories of the revolutionary soldiers bravery and patriotism were successful at getting young men to join stand up and fight. Eventually the numbers dwindled as the soldiers found that war is not so glorious. To me the “spirit of ‘76” was almost a way to make people feel obligated to go along with patriotism. They knew from the revolution that they very well may turn out to be homeless, penniless, cripples, however, to contemplate joining for these reasons would be unpatriotic. Through the examples of popular texts, these people would be heavily criticized.

If there is one thing that the reading makes clear it is the blatant social division and finical troubles that occurred after the Revolutionary War. Men like George Washington and Henry Knox tried to honor veterans. Copious amounts of land were suggested in the Ohio territory for them. Little to my surprise congress denied this proposal claiming that Americans would care less about the financial solidity of the country. I don’t’ think that Americans were necessarily indifferent to the finances of the newly formed United States since it determined whether or not a lot of them were ever going to see any money for their efforts in battle. Never the less, in an effort to honor some of the veterans Henry Knox started the Society of Cincinnati.

Some men, however, weren’t concerned with the swords they received through this society. Veterans who had gone back to their farms were facing larger problems. It seems to me that Congress was almost embarrassed by the Cincinnati men into recognizing their soldiers. However, to fund such an endeavor they would need to collect taxes. This makes perfect sense except for the fact that most of these farmers had no money in which to pay them. Their land was being taken away from them because of this. I was reminded of the novel The Grapes of Wrath. The Joads’ circumstances were based on a drought but the outcome was similar. They lost their land because they could not pay their outstanding loans. When the family went to find work they found that there was none to be found. Surely farmers of the post Revolutionary War era felt the same hopelessness. How could they re pay their debts when they were being thrown in jail? They couldn’t find another occupation because this was all they knew. Society outcast people like the Joads similar to how society was split between farmers like Shay and men of higher social class. Both met angry opposition when all these people were trying to do was live with the dignity and honor they deserved.

Wages of War is in concurrence to the hardships that Private Joseph Martin described. Martin complained only getting barely enough food to survive and having to wear insufficient clothing in the dead of winter. While I believed Private Martin, I could not grasp the extent of the army’s deficiencies. Severo and Millford stated that in the winter of 1778 the men at Valley Forge devoured 2,225,000 pounds of beef, and 2,297,000 of flour. Most of these men were not properly clothed. Unfortunetly, for the 11,000 men who complained of hunger and cold, only 8,500 lived till spring. Such a horrible treatment of the soldiers could have cost us the war. It’s remarkable to me that Americans were still able to pull off a victory against Great Britain.

The pay or lack of pay to the continental soldiers did not come as a huge surprise to me. With a new born country already in debt, how could the government expect to pay their loyal men? What did surprise me is that congress passed the halfpay agreement even though they knew they didn’t even have the money for it. I thought we were fighting against this kind of treatment from the government. One writer from the “Boston Gazette” asked :” How are our worthy patriots treated? Men who risked their lives and property, in the cause of freedom..?” I would ask a similar question.

The excerpts from the Diary of Private Joseph Plumb Martin were both fascinating and beneficial to read. What stuck me first about Joseph Martin’s story was the lack of care that was given to the soldiers. One of the first passages I read stated that “In the cold month of November, [they were] without provisions, without clothing, [and without] a scrap of either shoes or stockings.” I can not imagine being expected to fight for someone who didn’t even provide me with basic necessities. Even more inexcusable, in my opinion, was that the army promised the men that they would have “one pound of good and wholesome fresh or salt beef… a pound of good flour, soft or hard bread, a gill of rum, brandy, or whiskey per day, some little soap, candies” and more. Martin said that they were lucky to get Vinegar on Thanksgiving. This reminded me of a movie I watched in European history about World War 1 called “All Quiet on the Western Front.” ( information on the movie)When the men in this movie joined the army they were promised at least two meals a day and not a week into their combat the men were forced to eat wood shavings for nutrition.
Another passage that struck me was how divided the men were amongst each other. Private Martin’s regiment were made of up men from New England and Pennsylvania. He described his experiences with them saying “I’d rather be fighting with a tribe of Indians than with those Southerners… [they] can’t hardly speak English… They call me that ‘damn Yankee.’ That’s about the nicest thing they [said].” I could tell how much he disliked his fellow soldiers by the way his style of writing changed. All the other passages seemed more formally written, even when he was writing about the fears he faced on a daily basis. If I didn’t know better I would have thought that it were a different man who wrote the passage about the colonists.