| Information sur la photo |
Copyright: Jim Pinkham (jpinkham)
![Gold Star Critiquer/Gold Note Writer [C: 153 W: 1 N: 232]](http://i1.treklens.com/misc/g-n-g.gif) (1123) |
| Genre: Gens |
| Média: Couleur |
| Date de prise de vue: 2007-06-13 |
| Catégories: Portrait |
| Appareil photographique: HP Photosmart 945 |
| Exposition: f/3.7, 1/900 secondes |
| More Photo Info: [view] |
| Versions: version originale |
| Date de soumission: 2007-06-18 22:43 |
| Vue: 349 |
| Points: 4 |
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| [Ligne directrice - Note] Note du photographe |
Last week, I had the chance to see a very skillful actor recreating the life of a Union soldier from the War Between the States. His was a compelling story -- here's how I wrote it:
*****
Cpl. James Anderson, Company A, 5th Wisconsin Volunteers regiment, stepped right out of the 1860s and onto the porch of Wrightstown’s Mueller-Wright House on Wednesday, more than a little impressing the dozen residents gathered on the adjoining lawn.
“Order! Arms!” the re-enactor snapped, coming to attention with his rifle properly in place. “Anybody likes a good story. Allow me to take you to a time long, long ago but not so very far away.”
And then Anderson did just that, starting with his parents’ emigration from famine- and opportunity-starved Scotland in the 1850s to his volunteering with a passel of other Manitowoc boys for the volunteer regiment that heeded Abraham Lincoln’s call to arms at the outset of the Civil War.
Like a good many Yankee and Reb boys, these locals tramped off to war singing and adventuring. On the Northern side, the Union forces figured to dispatch the opposition within three months’ time — and Lincoln got the 75,000 volunteers he sought within 24 hours of asking for them.
Wedding dress given up for silk flag
Manitowoc gave its troops a moving farewell, sending an emissary to Chicago to procure the colors in silk for an especially patriotic flag. When the woman came back with bolts of blue and red, but reported the white was sold out, an engaged young lady from town donated her white silk wedding dress to be cut up for the flag’s completion.
It was, and the cherished symbol sailed down Lake Michigan to Milwaukee with the local contingent, on to Camp Randall in Madison for training, and then to Washington, D.C.
Wisconsin soldiers arrived hastily there after the thrashing of Union forces at Bull Run brought a premature end to drills in Madison and sent the regiment hustling southward to join the Army of the Potomac in defense of the capital.
During Anderson’s first year in Washington, the army constructed 75 forts ringing the District of Columbia, making Washington the world’s best-defended capital at the time.
Last of the old wars, first of the new
It proved the calm before the maelstrom, Anderson said. The Civil War unfolded as the last of the old wars, begun with the classic European notion of dignified combat in organized ranks, and ended as the first of the new, with trench warfare and even some guerrilla skirmishes.
The war saw the advent of land mines and Gatling guns, of submarines and repeating rifles.
Anderson discussed his training, showing his 1861 Springfield “rifle musket,” a new-fangled, black-powder-filled, muzzle-loading rod of death so totally eclipsing the previous arms technology that “the weapons became 10 times more deadly at 10 times the distance,” he said.
Recruits had to master the nine-step, somewhat perilous reloading ritual and confine that process to a crisp 20 seconds.
“This looked like an adventure and like it was going to be a lot of fun,” he said. “Fact is, it was like leading sheep off to the slaughter.”
Surviving an era of epic losses
The corporal reviewed the grim and terrible statistics of that war: 650,000 casualties — more than all of America’s other war losses combined, he said. At Antietam, 24,000 casualties were sustained, the bloodiest single day in United States history. Some 7,000 Union troops perished at Cold Harbor in a mere 19 minutes.
In all of this Anderson and his Wisconsin comrades fought with valor and distinction. Anderson survived 27 major battles of the war, escaping twice from a prisoner of war fate and almost certain death. Wisconsin sent 97,000 soldiers in 52 regiments off to fight for the Union — nearly one of every eight citizens.
Among other perils, Anderson caught a rifle ball in his leg and became separated from his retreating regiment along with three other wounded fellows, keeping out of rebel hands only through the good offices of a confiscated donkey cart. Another day, a bullet grazed his skull and he was left for dead, only to wake up on the abandoned field of battle.
Anderson saw his boyhood friends die:
“At the Battle of Williamsburg, I lost five of the boys I grew up with, and it was worse than I thought my heart could bear.” At Williamsburg, too, the regiment lost the special silken flag with which Manitowoc had sent them off to war.
Lack of college savings didn’t stop him
He sent most of his $13 monthly war pay home, hoping to help with medication for his ailing mother and to bank the rest for college after the war.
But the treatment of Anderson’s mother consumed all of the funds, and he mustered out with no money in the bank, and was one of only 20 of the 105 men who left Manitowoc with him to return.
“I thought I was going to be gone for 90 days,” he said. “I was gone for a little more than 3½ years, but I survived.”
Anderson made it to Lawrence College in Appleton on a scholarship, completed his education (after a one-year, mid-course hiatus serving as principal of a De Pere elementary school to earn funds for his return), and passed the bar.
Next, Anderson hung his lawyer’s shingle in Manitowoc and thrived on hard work, strict morals, and a fluency in five languages gained through instruction from fellow soldiers in his melting pot regiment. They taught each other their respective tongues as a way to pass the idle, weary hours between battles.
Eventually, Anderson was named to the bench and served as a Manitowoc judge for 14 years. Anderson also became president of the Manitowoc chapter of the Grand Army of the Republic, the veteran’s organization for Union soldiers.
Return of the silken flag
In a curious twist, judicial commitments kept Anderson from representing the G.A.R. at the nation’s centennial celebration in Philadelphia in 1876. But he named a designate who did go, only to find Manitowoc’s unique silken flag with a Philadelphia regiment.
The flag came back home, gracing civic events for the next four decades, and eventually finding a permanent home at the city historical society, where it resides today. Anderson formally gave the flag to the city in 1927, shortly before his death at age 86.
Anderson’s role was deftly played by Christopher Goetz of Lakewood, Wis., who has filled the part for many years on the Chautauqua circuit for the Wisconsin Humanities Council. His appearance in Wrightstown was funded by a grant from the council, underwritten with state and federal funds.
“I don’t care to condone war in any way or in any form,” Goetz said at the end of the evening. “But there is one thing that is much more horrible than war, and that is: not to be free.”
Goetz: ‘We owe them a great deal’
The last Civil War veteran died in 1959, and Goetz said he believed none of our forebears from that great conflict would expect to linger heavily in our memories, but they would want us to reflect on them from time to time.
“We owe them a great deal,” Goetz said.
Goetz used Anderson’s Civil War diaries and letters home to family to craft his authentic part. |
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