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Editor's Note: During the 2011-2012 Roundtable season, Roundtable Historian Dave Carrino opened each meeting with the 'History Briefs' below, each 'brief' providing a small glimpse into a less-explored corner of the story of the Civil War.

2011-2012 History Briefs
2010-2011 History Briefs
2009-2010 History Briefs
2008-2009 History Briefs
2007-2008 History Briefs

December…

Compassionate Confederate

"War is all hell." "War is cruelty and you cannot refine it." These words of William Tecumseh Sherman are familiar to everyone here. But sometimes even in the midst of hell, some small speck of heaven is present, an unexpected act of kindness for the enemy that runs counter to the primary objective of the perpetrator. One such incident that occurred at the battle of Gettysburg was the encounter between John B. Gordon and Francis Barlow. Surprising as it seems, that was not the only one.

James Jackson (Jack) Purman was a schoolteacher in Pennsylvania. In July 1862, he enlisted in the army and became first lieutenant in the 140th Pennsylvania Volunteers. About a year later on July 2, 1863, the 140th Pennsylvania was among the Union forces that fought in the Wheatfield at Gettysburg. Unable to withstand the Confederate assaults, the Union troops, including Purman and the 140th Pennsylvania, fell back. Almost 50 years later, Purman wrote, "After fighting for nearly two hours with the loss of all of our field officers and with 241 out of 340 of my regiment out of combat and surrounded by the enemy on three sides, we fell back in some disorder." As Purman and a sergeant of the regiment, James M. Pipes, were scrambling to safety, they heard a voice call out to them for help. It was a wounded comrade pleading to be carried off the field. Purman and the sergeant knew that that was not possible, but they moved the wounded soldier, John Buckley, to a nearby place of safety out of the line of fire. When Purman continued his flight from the Wheatfield, he heard Confederates yell at him to stop. Purman continued running toward his own line and was shot in the left leg just above the ankle. Purman later wrote, "Many have attempted to tell how it feels to be shot. At first there is no pain, smarting nor anguish. But that delusion soon passes, and the acute pain follows, and you know that a missile has passed through the tender flesh of your body."

Purman spent that night on the field among the many dead and wounded of both sides, in Purman's words, "a ghastly scene of cold, white upturned faces." As difficult as that night was, the following day was much worse with the hot sun and the minie balls that passed across the field. Sometime during the day, Purman was struck in his other leg. Since he was closer to the enemy's line, he called out to a Confederate soldier for water. Initially the soldier refused because he feared being shot by a Union sharpshooter. But after further pleading from Purman, the Confederate crawled to Purman and gave him a canteen. Purman then prevailed upon the Confederate to carry him to the Confederate line. Again Purman's request was initially refused when the Confederate said that, with all the minie balls whizzing by, both of them would be shot. However, Purman convinced the Confederate to crawl back to his line with Purman on his back. After they made it, the Confederate left Purman in the shade of a tree with a canteen.

Eventually the Confederates were driven back. That night Purman was transported on a stretcher to a Union field hospital where he spent the night. On the next day, July 4, his left leg was amputated. Purman later learned that the man he had moved to safety died on the field. But for his self-sacrificing heroism, Purman was awarded the Medal of Honor. Purman received one other reward for his act of heroism. When he was convalescing from his wounds, he met a nurse named Mary Witherow, who later became Mrs. Purman.

After the war, Purman sought to identify the Confederate who carried him to safety. When he was lying in the Wheatfield after receiving his first wound, Purman had the presence of mind to notice that the colors of the Confederate unit that charged past him bore the name 24th Georgia. He also noticed that the person who crawled to the Confederate line with him on his back was a lieutenant. With this information and some assistance from ex-Confederates, including Alexander Stephens, Purman was able to identify the person who saved him as Thomas P. Oliver. Purman and Oliver exchanged letters and finally met in Washington, D.C. in June 1907. Oliver died a year and a half later. Purman died in 1915, his life extended 52 years thanks to one of his enemies.

Anecdotes such as this and the Gordon-Barlow incident seem in some ways to be the height of incongruity. Here are two large bodies of men that are organized for the sole purpose of killing and maiming each other, and when one chapter of that endeavor has ended, some of the participants make an effort to heal the wounded adversaries whom they were trying to kill only moments before. In light of the overall goal of those involved in the conflict, this is completely irrational. But maybe this irrationality makes complete sense, because acts like these do not arise so much from careful reasoning, but from a common humanity. Maybe incidents like these are evidence of an indomitable compassion in human nature, even at times of utmost hostility. Maybe the lesson in this is that, despite the inhumanities that human beings too often inflict on other human beings, Homo sapiens is a species whose existence is worthy of being allowed to continue.

December…

All Her Hopes

The phrase "fratricidal war" has been used to describe the Civil War as a way of conveying how that war figuratively pitted brother against brother. In many cases it wasn't just figurative, but literal. However, not all brothers fought on opposite sides in the Civil War, and one such example are the Moungers. John and Thomas Mounger were members of the 9th Georgia Volunteer Infantry, which was part of the Army of Northern Virginia. The regiment's colonel was their father, also named John. On July 18, 1863, in the aftermath of the battle of Gettysburg, son John sent the following letter to his mother.

Dear Mother,

I wrote you a few days ago concerning the death of our dear father, he was killed on the 2nd of July about one hour by sun. He was buried in a family grave yard 1/2 mile below Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on the Chambers and Baltimore Turnpike. Capt. Sutlive had a good coffin made for him and we put him away as well as could be expected. I have the dimensions of his coffin so when we get a chance to move him we can get a box for him without any trouble. Pa died very easy Tom says, I was not with him when he died. I was detailed and sent off after cattle some three or four days before the fight. Tom took good care of dear dear Pa until he died, but he only lived a few minutes after he was shot, He was shot with a minie ball through the right breast and a grape shot from cannon through the bowels. Dear Mother we tried to carry him to Virginia before we buried him but it was impossible as the Yankeys were all around us and we could not get across the river without being captured, Dear Mother let us all try and meet him in Heaven, Tom & myself will try and be better boys. Tom kept the stars on his coat and a lock of his hair.

The person who wrote this heartfelt letter was not one of the celebrities of the Civil War. He was simply one of the multitude of soldiers who was doing in obscurity what he saw as his duty. Whenever I read that letter, I imagine John Mounger scrambling along with the Army of Northern Virginia on its retreat from Gettysburg, trying to find some time to gather his emotions about the loss of his father, and attempting to put those feelings into words in a letter to his mother.
The author of that letter survived his father by less than a year. He was killed in the battle of the Wilderness when he was shot in the head with a minie ball while directing the fire of his company. His brother Tom continued the charge and reached the Union line only to be shot in the neck and dying a few minutes later. The third brother, Terrell Mounger of the 14th Georgia, had been killed at Chancellorsville as he led a charge against a Union position.

No matter what opinion a person has of the Confederate cause, no one can dispute that the matriarch of the Mounger family did not deserve to suffer the loss of her husband and all her sons. Lucie Mounger lived the horrors of war in the devastating way that only a grieving wife and mother can. For her there were no homecomings, no joyous reunions. Life's twilight was not warmed by family, but was lived in the cold shadow of the daily realization that the war had consumed her loved ones. A note in a newspaper about the deaths of brothers John and Tom Mounger conveyed the human and personal cost of war in a clear and plaintive way. "The two latter are sons of Col. Mounger of the 9th who died at Gettysburg. Another son was killed at Chancellorsville, thus destroying the whole of this family, and leaving an aged lady to mourn over the death of all her hopes."

I am indebted to Neal Griffin, who manages a superb web site about the 9th Georgia Volunteer Infantry. Neal kindly provided valuable information about the fates of the Mounger brothers and the correct pronunciation of the Mounger surname. My sincere thanks to Neal for his generous assistance. - Dave Carrino

November…

General Slocum and General Slocum

Sometimes connections to the Civil War are convoluted and unexpected. For example, if I say "General Slocum," probably most of you will think of Union General Henry W. Slocum, a corps commander during the Civil War. But there is another General Slocum, and this one italicized her name because she was a passenger steamboat. The PS General Slocum was built in Brooklyn, New York in 1891 and was used for pleasure excursions in New York City. A group from St. Mark's Lutheran Church in the German district chartered the General Slocum for an excursion that took place on June 15, 1904. This excursion was an annual event for the parishioners and involved a trip up the East River to a picnic area. Because the event was on a weekday, most of the 1,400 passengers were women and children. A half hour into the trip, a fire broke out in the forward part of the ship, probably from a discarded cigarette or match that ignited a fire in a cabin used to store lamp oil. Because of the lamp oil and paint and other flammables that were being stored in a nearby locker, the fire spread very rapidly.

Once the captain and crew became aware of the fire, attempts were made to extinguish it. However, the boat's hoses had become rotted, and they broke apart when the crew tried to use them. The crew, which had never had a fire drill, found that the lifeboats were inextricably tied up; some survivors claimed that the lifeboats had been painted in place and could not be freed. Passengers discovered that the life preservers were rotted and fell apart. The life jackets were defective and dragged the people who wore them underwater rather than keeping them afloat. In spite of all these problems, the U.S. Steamboat Inspection Service had inspected the General Slocum five weeks prior to the disaster and certified the boat in good condition.

The ship's captain, William Van Schaick, contributed to the disaster by not grounding the boat quickly. Instead he continued into headwinds and thereby fanned the blaze. Eventually the General Slocum sank in shallow water. By that time over a thousand passengers had died. To put the disaster in perspective, the percentage of those on board the General Slocum who died is similar to that for the Titanic. After the disaster, a Federal grand jury indicted seven people: the boat's captain, two inspectors, and four officials of the company that owned the General Slocum, including the president. Captain Van Schaick was the only one convicted. The company paid a small fine.

The youngest survivor of the General Slocum was Adele Liebenow, who was 18 months old at the time. Shortly after the disaster, her parents, both of whom survived the disaster, changed their daughter's name to Adella. About a year after the disaster, Adella pulled the cord that unveiled a monument to the 61 unidentified dead. Adella, who became Adella Wotherspoon by marriage, lived to 100 and died less than six months before the 100th anniversary of the disaster.

Fans of James Joyce might have recognized the date of the disaster as the day before Bloomsday, June 16, 1904. In fact, the General Slocum disaster is mentioned in the book Ulysses. "Terrible affair that General Slocum explosion. Terrible, terrible! A thousand casualties. And heartrending scenes. Men trampling down women and children. Most brutal thing. What do they say was the cause? Spontaneous combustion: most scandalous revelation. Not a single lifeboat would float and the firehose all burst. What I can't understand is how the inspectors ever allowed a boat like that."

In addition to the name of the steamboat, there is another connection between the General Slocum disaster and the Civil War. The person who was mayor of New York City at the time of the disaster was George B. McClellan Jr. By some accounts, Mayor McClellan performed decisively and with distinction during the disaster and in its aftermath. Evidently he inherited this capacity from his mother.

I think there is also a connection between the General Slocum disaster and our times. Too often nowadays we become exasperated or even infuriated about dysfunctional and negligent government agencies or about irresponsible and uncaring companies or about injustices in the judicial system. But one lesson from the General Slocum disaster is that these are not new phenomena, and that realization is both reassuring and troubling.

September…

Forgotten Giants

Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis. Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee. William Tecumseh Sherman and Stonewall Jackson. Everyone in this room knows the contributions of these men to the Civil War. But that war, like all wars, included contributions of numerous people whose names are not known to history. A Union soldier who fought at Gettysburg said it best. "Generals and Admirals win high renown for the military achievements of their men, but personal deeds of heroism by simple privates or subalterns are rarely recorded." Sometimes we focus so much on the well known figures of the Civil War that we fail to adequately acknowledge the heroic deeds of those whose names we do not know.

In his book, Mr. Lincoln's Army, Bruce Catton has a marvelous passage which conveys the awesome contributions of numerous men whose names are not well known to history. It is one of those passages that, after you read it, you may not remember the exact words, but you never forget that you read it.

It may be that life is not man's most precious possession, after all. Certainly men can be induced to give it away very freely at times, and the terms hardly seem to make sense unless there is something about the whole business that we don't understand. Lives are spent for very insignificant things which benefit the dead not at all-a few rods of ground in a cornfield, for instance, or temporary ownership of a little hill or piece of windy pasture; and now and then they are simply wasted outright, with nobody gaining anything at all. And we talk glibly about the accidents of battle and the mistakes of generalship.

Whenever I read a passage as good as that one, I imagine the author completing it, putting down his pen, leaning back from his desk, and saying to himself with a deep feeling of satisfaction, "Now that's good." That passage from Bruce Catton's book is really good in how beautifully it conveys that even the smallest accomplishments in battle are bought through legions of men making the ultimate sacrifice and never knowing if the objective was attained. That short passage also conveys just how insignificant battlefield gains seem in light of the costs. All of us, who enjoy studying and analyzing Civil War battles, should keep that passage in mind whenever we look at a map of a battle and look at the small rectangles depicted on the map moving against an enemy position. Those arrows on the map were put there at great price, what Lincoln called "the last full measure." Almost all of the men who paid that price are given little individual recognition in history for doing so.

We justly preserve the memory of Lincoln and Davis, Grant and Lee, and Sherman and Stonewall. These men and what they accomplished are well known to all of us, and there is no denying that every one of these men had a major impact on the Civil War. But there is also no denying that everything they accomplished resulted from "personal deeds of heroism by simple privates and subalterns," and those deeds and those men are largely unknown to those, like us, who benefited from them.

2010-2011 HISTORY BRIEFS>>