a southern family perspective - civil war | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
Reflections
of The Olde South
By Jane Bennett Gaddy, Ph.D.
The Mississippi Boys
Most of us will admit
we spend our days
connecting with a
generation that moves at breakneck
speed—the sound of shuffling
feet, the deafening clamor of
people running to and fro—living,
moving, and having their being
mostly in egotistical preoccupation.
Shelley wrote in The Triumph of
Life … all hastening onward, yet
none seemed to know whither he
went, or whence he came. The
spiritual culture we grew up in
shifts beneath our feet and we’re
left to tolerate an unkind world,
wondering how we will exist,
20 psst! | summer 2018
much less make a meaningful
contribution.
Years ago, I began to journal. I
wrote on everything. Note pads,
lined paper, paper without lines,
Bible margins, journal books. There
came a day after my visit to the old
plantation house where I grew up
and where memories came back
in waves that I returned to those
journals, believing my life’s page
was just about covered and I was
writing on the margins. I spent
fourteen years with the journals
and my memories from the old
plantation to get House Not Made
With Hands, and letting it go was
like saying good-bye to an old
friend. I dared to believe this was
my meaningful contribution and
kindred spirits out there would
take the journey with me.
After all was said and done, I
couldn’t bid farewell to certain
characters in my story, so I opened
a new one from a chapter so deeprooted
in my history that I had
to peer through a glass darkly to
get images of those about whom
I wanted to write. Their heroics
consumed me, and I wrote,
realizing my page was not full at all.
Though historical fiction, its
dynamic has touched us all in ways
I never thought possible, for we
each have an investment here. Our
forefathers—yours, mine, Blue and
Gray—left DNA on battlefields all
over the South. Their blood was
freely poured out—from Shiloh to
Fredericksburg to Chancellorsville
to Antietam to Gettysburg.
In the Fall of 1984, I stood
looking out over the Wheatfield.
A mist of rain fell across my face
and the Pennsylvania Battlefield.
This was hallowed ground. My
great-great grandfather, Thomas
Goode (T.G.) Clark, and his sons,
Jonathan and Albert Henry, spent
invaluable time here. Just three
days. My grandmother, Vallie
Georgia Clark Smith, told me parts
of the story many years ago. She
knew far more than she revealed
to me but there would come a day
when I would learn more of the
story, for those Mississippi Boys
wrote letters home to my greatgreat
grandmother, Margery Brown
Rogers Clark (Rachel Payne in my
stories). The original letters are
archived in the Special Collections
Department at the J. B. Williams
Library, University of Mississippi
in Oxford. Appropriately, for they
were Rebels of the most splendid
sort. Confederate soldiers who gave
all—for the South.
They sat by lonely campfires in
the mountains of Kentucky, where
they took artillery training, chilled
Our forefathers—yours, mine,
Blue and Gray—left DNA on