I was pondering having to cross six
counties to drive about 50 miles; the political mapping of Virginia is very
strange, no doubt redistricted constantly to benefit those in perennial and
absolute power.
So many men and young boys on both sides
of the conflict had lost their lives or were maimed for the wishes of a few who
never set foot in battles far away, stretching across fields, woods, farms,
homes, churches, and swamps.
Fields of hay and wooded areas were
the theater of this battle that soaked the ground with the blood of innocent
men, soldiers convinced and paid rather poorly to fight a war in the interest
of the wealthy who owned slaves and whose economic interests depended on maintaining
the status quo.
The other side believed in freeing the
Africans enslaved on the Democrat-owned plantations that maintained their
wealth. It appears simple, but history is never simple, the complex twists and
turns must be studied carefully by each generation to bring the ugly truth to
light. Hiding or erasing the inconvenient truth does more injustice to
historical accuracy when new generations ignore reality and repeat the painful
history.
The Battle of Brandy Station was the
largest cavalry battle fought in North America and the first battle of the Gettysburg
campaign. According to historians, from the total number of soldiers involved
(20,000), 17,000 belonged to the “mounted branch.” At the end of the battle on
June 9, 1863, neither side won, and casualties numbered 866 for the Union and
575 for the Confederates. However, the Confederate cavalry’s overwhelming superiority
was gone.
According to the museum archives, “The Civil War brought fundamental changes to the United States. It brought economic prosperity to the North and ruin to the South. With millions of men at war, women took on new roles and forever changed the social fabric of the country.”
Riots occurred in the South due to
wartime food shortages – in 1863 hundreds of women attacked stores in Richmond.
They demanded “bread or blood.” New York City had its own riots against the
army draft.
Women’s organizations sent food and
clothing to the Union army, one such being the Soldiers Aid Society of Springfield,
Illinois. Women from the South were in the fields everywhere, ad hoc nurses if you
will, helping the sick, the wounded, loading grain, driving the “reapers,” etc.
Wherever the armies campaigned and camped, the locals became refugees. With no government help or safety net, many families lost all property and personal effects, becoming destitute.
Northerners organized “sanitary fairs”
to raise tens of millions of dollars to help the Union Army. Southern women had
their own fund raisers to help Confederate soldiers but on a much smaller scale.
The Civil War created a “national interest in philanthropy.”
At the time, Brandy Station was located on the Orange and Alexandria Railroad, now James Madison Highway, a key supplier to the Army of the Potomac and a passenger depot. Today a blue sign reminds us of where Brandy Station used to be during the Army of the Potomac’s 1863-1864 winter campaign on the slopes of Gregg’s Approach, the Fleetwood Hill, and St. James Church. Today the area is nothing but large fields of hay with wooded areas interspersed.
Brandy Station was the railroad stop where the supplies and people were loaded and unloaded, where soldiers could have had their pictures taken for $1.50, bought tobacco and canned peaches/fruit, the most frequently purchased, and other desired items. Soldiers wrote that they could buy “oysters, fresh fish,” and other items which “tempt the pocketbook of the soldier . . .” Another soldier wrote, “It was a very busy place from morning till night loads of army wagons were coming and going . . . waiting for their time to load.”
The Civil War killed so many fighters on both sides. For every soldier who died in battle, two soldiers died of disease. Dr. Alfred J. Bollet wrote that “more than half the men of a regiment were incapacitated by sickness. . .” because the huge camps were breeding grounds for disease.
Tens of thousands of farm boys living in close quarters, twelve to a tent, sleeping like sardines, were exposed to childhood diseases, not to mention lack of sewage disposal, infrequent bathing, and poor nutrition. The hard tack was hard as a rock and often filled with worms. Those who survived were really specimens of the survival of the fittest category.
Soldiers cooked their rations together in “messes,” facing “death by the frying pan.” To supplement the salted beef, beans, and hard tack, the soldiers foraged in the neighborhood. The museum archives remarked that “the Civil War introduced armies to coffee.”
General Robert E. Lee wrote in 1862, “The
recruits that have joined us . . . are afflicted with measles, camp fever, etc.
. . . so that instead of being an advantage to us, they are an element of
weakness, a burden.” Camp fever was epidemic typhus caused by body louse.
The weather was harsh in winter and
extremely hot in summer, especially dressed in the wool uniforms, chosen for
their durability. The linen was scratchy, got wet rather quickly, and stayed
wet under the wool.
The soldiers’ diet of bread, dried beef
and beans was served and eaten in unsanitary conditions. Soldiers often
rejected the dried vegetables offered that could have provided them with needed
vitamins.
One of the reasons that there were so
many amputees at the end of the Civil War was the invention of a new bullet,
the French Minie ball. Three out of four surgeries performed were amputations.
At the end of the Civil War, almost half a million soldiers were disabled. As a
result, in February 1865, orthopedic hospitals were established in the South.
In the State of Mississippi, one-third
of the soldiers were killed or crippled in battle. In 1866 one-fifth of the
state’s revenue was spent on artificial limbs for amputees. The government paid
part of the cost to have soldiers fitted with artificial limbs, hands, arms,
legs, and cosmetic appliances.
Surgeons had to improvise to save
lives on the battlefield - one such example came from Dr. Samuel Cabot
(1815-1885) who learned from his teacher in Paris, Dr. Geurin, how to perform a
tracheotomy on a soldier who had been shot in the neck; Cabot used a tracheotomy
tube fashioned from wire removed from a champagne bottle. The wounded soldier
was able to breathe again and lived.
The invention of a new bullet caused
94 percent of the Civil War injuries. It was not the ignorance of the doctors
that caused so many Civil War amputations, soldiers were gravely wounded by the
new bullet invented in 1847 by the French ordinance officer named Claude-Étienne Minié. The
soldiers called his bullet the “Minie ball.” The muzzle-loading rifled muskets
were used in the Crimean War and in the American Civil War.
During the Revolutionary War and the
War of 1812, soldiers used smooth bored muskets which fired a round ball of
lead that broke the skin and fractured any bone it hit. Before the Civil War, a
new musket was invented with a rifled barrel with spiral groves cut inside
which gave the bullet full velocity and more accuracy. This bullet was cone-shaped
and had a hallow grooved base. Minie balls were still slow enough to remain
inside the body. Upon hitting bone, the top of the cone flattened out and
splintered bones, causing massive damage around the bone.
According to museum archives, “seven
out of ten injured soldiers were wounded in the arm or leg; two out of ten in
the body; and one out of ten in the head or neck.” The surgeons were not “butchers”
or “sawbones” as they were called by the wounded soldiers, they chose
amputations to save lives because the Minie balls’ damage caused a dramatic
increase in infections and sepsis.
The Graffiti House, built in 1858 on
property owned by James Barbour, faced the Orange and Alexandria Railroad
tracks, and was used during the Civil War as a hospital by the Confederacy, and
by both the Union and Confederacy for “undetermined administrative purposes.”
It also served as Major General Prince’s division headquarters during the Union
Winter Encampment of 1863-1864.
Confederate and Union soldiers drew pictures
and autographed the plaster walls in charcoal. Covered with layers of paint and
wallpaper, the drawings were covered and discovered in 1993 when the owner
renovated the building.
Preserving history is very important.
If we don’t know where we came from, we no longer know who we are, and we
become a nation without a compass, adrift and drowning in a sea of corruption,
immorality, lawlessness, and injustice.
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