It's been an entire year since this series was begun.
Because "Public Occurrences" is non-interactive, i.e. with no comments sections, readers have to email. The effect of that over eight years has been to create readers who are contributors. That has greatly improved "Publocc." It has also been a source of happiness for me personally. I have "met" a lot of people and they have become friends.
Last year at just about this time I received two emails of the kind described, pretty much back to back, I think one the day after the other. Some readers may remember the song "We Rise With Our Dreams," last profiled here on December 11, 2009. One of the emails I received concerned that song and it resulted in an email kind of interview with the singer, John Jarvis.
Then I received another email. It concerned the Battle of Fredericksburg. It provided links to a trove of documents that had just been put online. And I began to write what I envisioned to be a roman a clef on the battle. I only got three posts into it before other matters, principally China, occupied me. I have had Fredericksburg on my mental "to-do" list for a year and have not publicly thanked the reader, for reasons relating to the structure of the series as I envisioned it. However, it's been a year.
It was just about now, at this time of day, on December 13, 1862 that General Andrew A. Humphreys led his fatal charge across that barren field. It was the last charge the Union armies were to make in the battle. Some of Humphreys' men survived the rain of balls in the field and began to ascend the rise toward Marye's Heights.
I would like to extend belated, apologetic thanks to reader Steve Shipe for forwarding the link to the documents that he did last year. And I remember the one condition that Steve put on my public thanks to him, to credit the transcribers at usg.archives who did the work to make this information available online. Thank you.
I
In the summer of that year the man heeded the president's call for a second wave of volunteers to save the country from the rebellion. His was the 133rd regiment-sized* group of men from his state to volunteer.
The man left his farm and his wife and child. The parting of husband and wife may have been sorrowful, or it may not have been. Many of her gender have a fondness in the loins for men in uniform and she must have for she later gave birth to a boy who could not possibly have been fathered by the man and who was probably the issue of one of the many other young men coming and going and marching and looking heroic and virile that summer.
The man, Nathan Bracken, mustered in on August 15 as part of Company F.** And almost immediately he was bucking authority.
On August 23 he (and fifty-eight others) signed a letter addressed to their Company's Second Lieutenant assuring him that they did not “bear any disrespectful feeling,”
“But knowing your incapability of discharging the duties required of you…we [declare] our unanimous wish that you will resign your office, so as to enable us to place a competent person to teach us the duties which we [have].”
The Second Lieutenant stayed. And Nathan didn’t give up.
Three days later he and some of the men sent a second petition, this time to the Colonel of the regiment who, they wrote, they knew “to be a gentlemanly officer who will deal justice to the privates under your command.”
The privates, stating their willingness “to serve our country, and die in its behalf if such requirements will be asked of us,” prayed the Colonel remove the offending Lieutenant because, “...before we enter upon the field of battle, we want to be efficient in the knowledge of drill…in the manual of arms,” which efficiency does indeed seem reasonable to expect if privates are to serve their country, and to avoid, if possible, dying in its behalf. The privates, “Hoping to hear from you soon,” closed their letter to the Colonel.
The privates’ hopes to hear from their Colonel soon were met, for three days after hearing from him they sent a third petition, on August 26. The men were then encamped in Washington, D.C. For many ever since, and perhaps then, the proximity to power of residence, however briefly and whether encampment or residence is the technical term for it, in the capital of the New Republic has proved an intoxicating experience. Perhaps thus fortified the privates bypassed several intervening links in the chain of command and directed their third petition to their state’s Governor. Writing that they were “compelled much against our will, to trouble the highest authority that a soldier [ed note: they had been "soldiers" for eleven days.] can appeal to,” the soldiers got right to the point:
“We have a Second Lieutenant, whom we are anxious to see removed.”
“We wish to have officers who are able to instruct us in the present drill, but our Second Lieutenant cannot do this.” Intuitively grasping the strategy, essential to success of all privates appealing to highest authorities, that it is wise to always propose a solution to a stated problem, the petitioners proposed that Lt. Francis Flannagin be replaced (by petitioners’ election, not highest authority’s selection) with “a man who is thoroughly acquainted in the knowledge of drill.”
“Such a one,” they proposed helpfully, “is to be found serving as a private in our company, Richard M. Jones.”
Although petitioners’ own vetting of Private Jones was good enough for them they indirectly acknowledged the uncommon Leap in rank that they were proposing and pointed out that Jones had been “commissioned, by your honor, in April 1861, as a Lieutenant” and “served with credit to the regiment and himself, for three months.”
It must be said that this summary of Private Jones’ resume surely proved unhelpful to petitioners’ cause for it alerted Highest Authority Curtin that he had once before appointed Jones a Lieutenant, in which position Such-A-One lasted only three months, and whose subsequent fall down several rungs to private went unexplained by petitioners.
At this point the innate forensic and literary abilities of the men appear to have been exhausted; they were, after all, only farm boys for the most part. Alternatively it could be that it was not proximity to power that proved intoxicating. The soldiers could have attempted to augment nature’s gifts with essence of rye or like substance and as they neared completion of their third formal letter in nine days the affects of the latter became deleterious to the former. However it was, after this point the cogency of the appeal worsened beyond reason:
“His [Jones’] business affairs m (sic) from enlisting in the three years service but when he found a (sic) country in actual need of all able body (sic) men, he, unhesitatingly came forth…”
Highest Authority could have been forgiven if he had put the letter aside and opened some other mail at this juncture for it seems doubtful that the press of business should have kept Richard from enlisting earlier in a contest that threatened the existence of the country in which he was doing that business; or that Richard had ever possessed the skills—or any skills whatsoever—to succeed in commerce seeing as how they had not prevented him from falling from Lieutenant to Private in three months time; or for doubting whether Richard, and his champions, were “able mind men” whatever the condition of their bodies. The unhappy sentence above concludes with the men repeating themselves, that it is their great, good fortune that their deliverer from inefficiency in the knowledge of drill in the manual of arms--just such a one--“is now to be found in our midst.”
Lieutenant Flannigan stayed. Richard remained a private. And Nathan Bracken became a Sergeant (elected, not selected). Together they and the other members of Company F of the 133rd Regiment Volunteers continued their march south, to war.
*1,000 men.
**100 men.
to be continued.
