The War Between The States Of Mind: Romantics Vs. Realists

The Confederate battle flag flies near
my Columbia, S.C., home. Do Civil
War romanticists live here?

Why does the Civil War ignite emotional explosives 150 years later?  I've come up with an answer. In times of trouble, Americans historically divide into two ideological camps. On one side of the feud: the romantics. When it comes to the Civil War, they’re intoxicated by principles, crusading and heroism, or at least their version of it. You’ll find these romantics dressed in period clothing at battle re-enactments, some impersonating heroes whose glory has shrunk to paragraphs in textbooks.

I know this type well. My late father, a Revolutionary War re-enactor, was one. I loved his view of life.

On the other side: the realists, beguiled by pragmatism, compromise and anti-heroism, or at least their version of it.  I know this type, too.  I’m the quintessential realist.  My father and I carried on lively discussions about religion, history and politics around the dinner table. Dad humored me, despite his objections written plainly on his face. We ate dessert with more understanding and higher regard for each other’s views.

Romancing the war: Re-enactors
face off in the Civil War "battle" I
attended at Tunnel Hill, Ga.

Just as our forefathers clashed when they hammered out the Constitution, today’s ideological armies continue our War Between The States of Mind that the Constitution, the epitome of compromise, made possible.  I’m grateful my Dad compromised and granted his "hard-headed" daughter free agency on life's important matters. 

From my book-in-progress, Dear Father I Am Sorry To Tell You, about the Civil War and its legacy:

My father, Ed, 2nd from left, and
   his "Revolutionary" comrades, 1972.
Photo, The Dunn (N.C.) Dispatch

In time, our backyard warehouse became too crowded for Dad's broken, boyhood bicycle.  Dad parked it outside, where it kept company with a woodpile, a two-toned Desoto with foot-high tail fins and a 1961 baby-blue Chrysler. In this winged chariot, Dad traveled the Southeast as a salesman for a ladies coat and suit firm out of Kansas City. That job ended in heartache and another heart attack. Old oil stoves, an iron grain scale, thirty years worth of magazines and barrels of sorghum salvaged from his life as a wholesale grocer huddled under the warehouse eaves until after my father died. 

The pumpkin-colored bicycle became Exhibit A in Dad’s series of life lessons:  Damn fools are everywhere. You’re not safe even on the sidewalk. Never go barefoot. Park under a streetlight. Exercise. Eat every kind of food, in moderation. Vote for the least-dangerous son-of-a-bitch.  Lock the doors and check ‘em twice.  Pick the ends off  bananas. Don’t fall for no kook.

I asked Dad how I’d know a kook if I met one.

Experiencing "war."

“You’ll know,” he said. I would laugh.

“Tell me what you mean by a kook or I might fall for one.”

“You’ll know.”                                         

I suspected Dad’s definition of kook included Yankees, along with the usual suspects:  Communists, “pointy-headed intellectuals,” drunks, bureaucrats, “Hollywood nuts,” atheists, “money monkeys,” liberals and journalists.  I failed to pry specifics from him.  I went about life a free agent, subject to signing on with a kook.

Years after my father died at age fifty-nine, I married a Jersey boy.  He was real smart, but as far as I could tell, he wasn’t a pointy-headed intellectual, and being a journalist, he for sure wasn’t a money monkey, or Hollywood nut. 

The standoff between romantics, who by nature assume their own infallibility, and realists, whose views must evolve to keep their sanity, goes way back in my family, as I suspect it does in most tribes.  When North Carolina joined the Confederacy in 1861, my ancestral cousin, Lyndon Magee Welborn, a young romantic, quickly signed up to fight, despite his father Joseph’s realistic objections to secession and war.  And, more proof of his romantic nature, Lyndon apparently volunteered after big brother Elijah broke up his courtship. (See March 2011 blog in Archives.)


Why did Elijah break up Lyndon’s courtship?  Did Lyndon fall for a kook? 


As proof that the still Civil War rends our nation into either the romantic or realists camps, check out these contemporary labels for the war:

Spectators at Tunnel Hill

The Unpleasantness: How romantic can a Charleston tour guide get?

War of Northern Aggression: How romantic can neo-Confederates get?

War of Southern Rebellion: Pro-Union writers’ realism on steroids

War For Southern Independence/War of Secession: Romantic conformation theorizing that states’ rights rule. Forever.

War For The Union: Uber abolitionists’ romantic excuse to fight 

America’s Second Revolution: Eternal fave of historians in the realism camp

And consider the two most common names:

The reality of the American Civil War.
Photo, Library of Congress.

War Between The States: Fashionable in the post-war South,  the name romantically justifies the war’s causes and consequences to fit a historical comfort zone.  Although the curmudgeon writer in me thinks it should be The War Among The States, since 36 states battled, I get it. A line in the sand split Americans into two economic, cultural and to some extent religious sides. The states sank into unresolved hostilities rooted in Colonial America. This dangerous “you’re-either-for-us-or-against-us” mentality dogs America to this day. 

Scene at a Civil War hospital.
Photo, Library of Congress.

The Civil War: The oldest, most common name used by Abe Lincoln, Generals Grant and Lee, Jefferson Davis, academics, mass media, reference books and the National Park Service. Since the dictionary defines civil war as “a war between opposing groups of citizens of the same country" this moniker seems the most realistic and least caustic.

I’m convinced any label but “Civil War” reflects a revisionist view of history that often manifests as crusading intolerance and refusal to politically compromise. But there is no purity of mind.  My father could rattle off Civil War facts, but what he loved was the heroism of the warrior who beat the odds and stood up for principle. His mindset reflected the romance of the underdog American patriot and later the Confederate. It's an American thing. I get it.

War's harsh reality marched into
Charleston, S.C., cradle of the rebellion,
150 years ago. Photo, Library of Congress.

When my father died, his fellow Revolutionary soldiers gave him a military funeral complete with drums, bugle and presentation of the colors to my mother. On that clear October day, I remember thinking, “Dad would have loved this.” A romantic end for a true romantic.

Maybe when all is said and done, it’s not what happened in the Civil War but how you feel about what happened.  But if we're to learn from history, we must replace conflict and contrariness with consideration and compromise. 


So says the realist. 

SOURCES:  Isaacson, Walter, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life. Simon & Schuster, 2003. "Naming The American Civil War," Wikipedia. Barry, John M., "God, Government and Roger Williams' Big Idea." Smithsonian magazine. January 2012.


* Unless otherwise noted, all photos were taken by B.J. Welborn and are copyrighted.

A Prison Of A Different Kind: Robert's Story Continued

Reality becomes a prison for those who can’t get out of it.

         — Joyce Cary, Anglo-Irish novelist

A monument at Andersonville National
Historic Site in rural Georgia depicts
the suffering Civil War POWs faced.
Photo, Eastern National Park and
Monument Association.

Gruesome statistics only hint at the shocking suffering and hellish deaths prisoners of war endured during the American Civil War. Nearly 30,000 men among the 194,000 imprisoned Federals and 26,000 soldiers of the 215,000 captured Confederates died by war’s end.  It's estimated that 56,000 men perished in prison camps, usually hastily built and open to the elements.

At Camp Douglas in Chicago, nearly 18 Confederate warriors succumbed to hunger, deprivation and disease each day. In rural Georgia’s infamous Andersonville Prison, about 100 Union soldiers died daily by 1864, nearly 13,000 total. Prison conditions North and South were equally horrendous, as documented in letters, dairies and photos. 

I can understand a soldier’s preference for heroic death on the battlefield over the possibility of tormented death in prison.  

My ancestor, Robert McFarland Welborn, bewildered, wistful and sick, gave an interesting if somewhat mundane glimpse of life at a Confederate prison in northeastern North Carolina in a letter to his father. Robert,  recently drafted at age 17 into the N.C. Junior Reserves, wrote from Camp Weldon, where his unit was stationed, in the summer of 1864:

Aug the 5th 1864

My Dear Father

I take the opportunity this morning to write you a few lines to let you know that I am well and harty and i hope thes few lines will find you well      

…

            They have got two of our boys in the guard house here and have had them ther a month    

            there was a yankee broke out of the guard house and the guard shot two balls through him and killed him dead on the spot

            there was two boys got into a dispute and they got to fighting and one of them stabed the other in the shulder but did not hurt him overly bad    

…

This period photo
captures the horrors
of Civil War prisoners
at Andersonville
prison camp. Photo,
Library of Congress.

           

The routine — and common —  opening line of Robert’s report on everyday soldiering life belies his true circumstances at Camp Weldon, where he had little to eat and suffered an illness that soon would hospitalize him. But Robert continues his business-as-usual tone in describing the violence and death in the prison yard.  Had Robert already experienced so much of war’s hardness that he had become hardened?  Or were these musings the simple observations of an overwhelmed farm boy.  Or both?

More of Robert’s letter, hand-written on a notepad, lacking punctuation and full of misspellings:

we are formed into a regment      Armistead* is our colonel      Broadfoot is lieu col       Lineberry captain … and if the war lasts and they  don’t get us kilt you may have my hat           

One side of the letter my ancestral
      cousin, Robert McFarland Welborn, 17,
     wrote to his father Joseph in 1864.
   For full letter, go to LETTERS page.

the doctor says he will send me  to camp holms (Holmes in Raleigh, N.C.) befor long  to be examined again      he says I am not any count in service and i think he is about haf right

i am going to try to get off every day but i think it will be a hard chore        if i get to go to Camp Holms i think i will get off or signed to light duty but i do not want to go to hospital duty for it is as hard as regular ….. but they get to sleep in the house and get better rations than what we get

i was at the election yesterday and at Weldon got word was that  Govner Vance** got most of the vote that was given

i bring my letter to a close      write as soon and tell me the news and tell me how corn looking  and whether you got your (illegible word) out or not     

             tell all the boys….. that was 17 when I left home (they) had better come       Oh if they knowed when they was best off

             no more at present but another day

                                                                                                     your son R M Welborn

Between the pedestrian lines of everyday news, Robert lamented the sorry reality of his soldiering life, a life he apparently dreamed of escaping ("I'm going to try to get off") but couldn’t, at least then.  While researching my Civil War book-in-progress, Dear Father I Am Sorry To Tell You, I'v uncovered three military documents that hint Robert’s situation in fact did later change.

Copy of Robert M.
Welborn's application
for pension in 1918. For more
on Robert, see previous blogs.

Document 1: Robert’s handwritten resignation, dated May 18, 1864; Document 2, dated July 13, 1864, confirming Robert was “transferred to hospital;” and, Document 3, dated Aug. 10, 1864, alleging Robert had “deserted.” 

Desertion usually meant being absent without leave for more than 30 days. I don’t know if Robert actually deserted the Confederate ranks, as did thousands toward war’s end, when defeat seemed inevitable and families at home suffered enormously.  Deserters especially spiked among men from the area of North Carolina that Robert called home, the substantially pro-Union, anti-secession Randolph County, N.C. (See previous blogs.)

Haphazard record-keeping could explain the change from “Absent, transferred to hospital,” to “Deserted Camp Weldon Aug. 10th”.  What I know for sure is that on July 18, 1918, more than 50 years later, North Carolina granted Robert his request for a soldier’s pension.

Robert stated in his pension application that he is the owner of a house and lot assessed at  $500.00 but that he can’t make a living or support himself as there is not sufficient land for farming.    

I’m left wondering if the boy soldier, who personified the ordinary guy caught in the extraordinary human disaster of the Civil War, ever really escaped his prison.

###

* Col. Frank S. Armistead, a West Pointer and brother of Gen. Lewis A. Armistead, who died at Gettysburg; Lt. Co. Charles W. Broadfoot; and, Capt. W.S. Lineberry

** Zebulon Vance, a Confederate colonel, was reelected as North Carolina’s 43^rd governor in 1864.

SOURCES: The American Heritage New History of the Civil War, Barnes and Noble, New York. 1996. Jorgensen, Kathryn.  “Historian Persists In Efforts To Correct Record, Honor Deceased”, Civil War News. December 2010. Online at http://www.civilwarnews.com/archive/articles/2010/dec/correctrecord-121002.html; Cadia Barbee Welborn Papers, Southern Historical Collection, UNC at Chapel Hill; Bollinger, J. Mark, and Landrum, Brneda G., “The Story of Andersonville Prison and American Prisoners of War,” Andersonville National Historic Site. 1987. Marin, Rick, “The Infamous Stockade,” Newsweek. March 4, 1996. North Carolina State Archives.

Unraveling The Story Of A Soldier With An Attitude, And Young

Following a convoluted paper trail, I’ve learned more about one ancestral Confederate cousin than I know about most of my living blood relatives. From various Civil War military documents I know, among other things, that Private Robert McFarland Welborn:

- Stood 5 feet 10 inches and had dark hair and blue eyes;

- Mustered into the 1st Regiment, Co. F, of the N.C. Junior Reserves on May 30, 1864;

One side of the original letter that my ancestor, Robert
McFarland Welborn, wrote to his father Joseph
in late summer 1864 from Halifax County, N.C. A
family member punched the holes in the letter, written
in pencil on a folded sheet of paper. For entire letter,
go to LETTERS page. 

- Had passed his 17th birthday by just 25 days when the Confederacy drafted him;  

- Left his father’s Randolph County farm in May 1864 for duty at Camp Holmes near Raleigh;

- Served in east-central N.C.’s Camp Weldon, home of Wayside Hospital #9 and a prison.

And from a letter home, I know Robert:

- Suffered an illness in the summer of 1864 that sidelined him from service;

- Had attitude.

Of course Robert had attitude. He was the youngest of widower Joseph Welborn’s 10 children and was only five months old when his mother Parthena died. I think it's possible, under the controversial "birth order" theory that youngest siblings learn exceptional competition skills to get attention and resources, Robert probably was a scrapper.

Here's what teenager Robert wrote to his father from Camp Weldon:

Aug the 5^th 1864

My Dear Father

. . . if the war lasts and they don’t get us kilt you may have my hat       if we ever go into battle with them it will not last long       i heard several of the boys say they would kill (them) as quick as they wuld a sheep-killing dog and I would not stand back much . . .

Robert’s bring-it-on attitude likely made up for many losses. In 1863, his older brother, Lyndon — the protagonist of my book-in-progress, Dear Father I Am Sorry To Tell You —  died in battle while defending Richmond, the Confederate capital. Then the Confederacy drafted two other reluctant brothers, even as father Joseph objected to secession and the war.

North Carolina map shows location
of the town of Weldon in Halifax County,
 home to a Confederate fort, a prison
 and a hospital during the Civil War.

Robert probably realized that by late 1864, the Confederacy was running out of steam and just about everything else it would take to win. Federal forces were scoring key victories in the Western Theater, things were souring in the Eastern Theater, and Sherman was about to tighten a noose around the South after taking Atlanta.

But just how much could Robert see of the war’s big picture from his outpost in a Halifax County, N.C., near the border with Virginia, where battles raged?  Was his youthful bravado an effort to survive by believing something was possible despite evidence to the contrary? Seems to me that sentiment fortified Confederate fighters right up to the end.

In his book, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Dr. Stephen Covey asserts that to be successful, a person must begin something with the final outcome in mind. We must visualize what we can’t yet see, then follow our mental vision with physical creation. With an optimistic outlook, a person maximizes his ability to get through adversity.

So it was with Confederate warriors still hanging in the fight to the end, I imagine. So it was with Robert, despite illness, debt, hunger and homesickness. More from his letter, written in pencil on a folded sheet of paper, full misspellings and lacking punctuation:

 View today of the Civil War cemetery
near the site of Camp Weldon in
northeastern North Carolina. Photo,
N.C. Division United Daughters
of the Confederacy, Chapter 22.

. . . i have got my resicnation (resignation) and I do not hav any thing to do        our doctor relived (relieved) me from duty    i have not done any duty sinse I resinad (resigned)

the doctor says he will send me to camp holms (Camp Holmes in Raleigh, N.C.) befor long to be examined again      he says i am not any count in service and i think he is about haf right

we get one pint of corn meal and it is not sifted and hardly ground      the grains is cracked       we often find whole grains      we git some kind of a houn (hound*) meat a day     i am in debt $17 and know hopes of drawing any money to pay it  

             i would like to be at home to eat beans and rosten ears (roasted ears of corn)      i am going to try to get off every day but i think it will be a hard chore

                

                                                                                         your son R M Welborn

Despite personal hardship and the Confederacy's long-shot chance of victory, it seems Robert still imagined giving the Yanks a whoopen'.  Maybe a spoonful of optimism helped him survive the war.

Robert applied for a soldier's pension in July 1918 and died seven years later on Aug. 16, 1925, at age 76. He was buried in the family cemetery in Randolph County, N.C., near his father Joseph and his fallen older brother, Lyndon.

###

* NOTE: I take Robert's reference to "houn meat" to mean the meat of deer or other animals tracked down by bloodhounds as food for the soldiers. The Confederacy also used bloodhounds to help guard prisoners.  If you can enlighten me about Robert's reference to "houn meat," please go to the COMMENTS page and post a message.

SOURCES:  North Carolina State Archives; Weymouth T. Jordan, Jr. and Louis H. Manarin,"North Carolina Troops, 1861-1865, A Roster," 1985; U.S. Census;  Cadia Barbee Welborn Papers, Southern Historical Collection, UNC at Chapel Hill; Welborn family genealogical documents

COMING SOON:  Private Robert McFarland Welborn's account of an incident at Camp Weldon prison. See PREVIEWS page.