a southern family perspective - civil war | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
psst! | summer 2018 21
to hurting, feet propped on fire
logs for a measure of warmth, so
tired and cold they could scarcely
hold pen in hand, words emanating
from a rare place, one where few
have dared to go, one from which
many nevermore returned. I read
those letters some one hundred
and forty-four years after the war
and I became inexorably attached
to these men. My forefathers. I
reckoned for myself why T.G. went
to war at the age of forty-six when
the maximum requirement age was
forty-one. Jonathan, nineteen, and
Albert Henry, seventeen, would
have to go, and he could not let
them go alone. The way I see it, he
gave three times. Once for himself,
once for the Confederacy, and once
for his sons. He was a real hero, this
Mississippian.
For the space of five years,
Mississippi and ten other southern
states were a country with a flag,
a president, and with fearless men
who, as Jefferson Davis said, just
wanted to be left alone, but who,
when pressed to the wall, became
willing to fight defensively for their
Confederate States, for their flag,
and for their homes.
I’ve read the letters over and
over, and I see those men through
eyes of faith, but I’ve thought about
how it will be when I see them face
to face for the first time, and if it be
in clouds of glory or by way of the
grave, I will know them. They will
know me. And any way you view
it, that’s a wonderful declaration of
truth.
For now we see through a glass,
darkly; but then face to face: now
I know in part; but then shall I
know even as also I am known
(I Corinthians 13:12).
New Day Dawning
Rachel Payne climbed to the
heights in 1860, the year before Ben
died, the year before the War, only
to descend into somber and devilhaunted
planes at the loss of a child
followed by the sound of the bugle
that would call her men far and
away, two of them never to return.
She, like thousands of southern
wives and mothers, had lapsed
into the hideous valley of darkness
with its ebbing tides and drooping
gourds and untimely sunsets
bringing yet more unbearable grief
and pain.
Before it all happened, she had
benevolently allowed the days to
slip by, the past and its pleasures.
She had drunk from the golden
bowl; her glorious prize, Thomas
Payne and her six boys.
And then as the pendulum
swung to and fro, she had walked
the flinty path of suffering and
loss, the years stained by blood and
watered with tears.
It was not until she dared to
trifle with the past in a compelling
effort to know the reasons why,
to seek answers that might suffice
to comfort and cajole her into
understanding that the War years
and those that followed had not all
been in vain. She remembered the
train had rumbled out of the depot
of the Bluff City, Memphis, and for
three days of insufferable jerking
and jolting, three days of watching
the moon rise and the sun set over
the South, the days ending with
splendid frescoes painted on the
mists that hung sparsely before her
view, that train dipping and gliding
eastward into parts unknown
and, at the end of the third day,
thundered across the Hudson River
into full view of the Gilded City.
Into Union country. But the war
was over. Out of the darkness with
its excessive sorrow, there was a
new moon rising, and life once
again had meaning and promise.
The fresh memories were haunting,
beautiful, troubling, soothing.
Could it be that this new moon
rising had awakened her senses
once again? She never dreamed
such could happen to her, never
imagined that through the ashes of
war love would arise with healing
and to conquer.
What beauty, the dawning of a
new day! |||
From the Prologues The Mississippi Boys
and Rachel After Darkness copyright ©
2008
by Jane Bennett Gaddy, Ph.D.
Trinity, Florida
janegaddywrites@gmail.com
www.asthydays.blogspot.com
/www.asthydays.blogspot.com
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