Christmas during the War of Northern Aggression By Wes Teel So often when a person is far, far away from home ones thoughts turn to home and family. Such was always the case during the war. This was true on both sides, yet, with its diminishing resources and subject to the conquering Federal armies, it seems that Christmas was morepoignant and sad in the South. For example, in December 1861 Confederates were in good spirits due to victories and as yet the Northern blockade had not began to have its devastating effect. Sally Putnam noted in her memories, Richmond During the War, that wives, sweethearts and mothers send food packages to their soldier boys and knitted socks. At home children were told not to expect too much from Santa that year.In Richmond the family of Jefferson Davis had a new baby, William. Their children were told that despite all the troubles Santa would still comebecause, He could run the blockade and traveled over a route that no Lincolnite has dominion and no Yankee ships could sail. Many toys for boys were wooden guns and rifles. True to the times girls received homemade dolls. Of course, a gift of fruit and candy always warmed their hearts. At Fort Pulaski, Georgia, Confederate soldiers were defending a developing Union siege. Private John Hart of the Irish Jasper Greens wrote home, Fine day here. Plenty of fighting and whiskey drinking. Lincoln spent Christmas 1861 in a cabinet meeting and later celebrated with his wife and three sons, Willie, Tad and Robert. By February eleven year old Willie would be dead of typhoid. Gen. Lee had an unhappy day in Coosawhatchie, South Carolina writing to his wife not to lament but to remember happier times before their home, Arlington, had fallen into Federal hands. Stonewall Jackson took a leave of absence to be with his family in Winchester, Virginia. Grant spent the day in Cairo, Illinois where he had just been appointed commander of the District of Cairo. And Gen. Longstreet was with his family in Richmond. It would be the last Christmas he had with three of his children who would die of scarlet fever in January. The following year, 1862, found President Davis in Jackson, Mississippi where he had traveled to deliver a speech on the wickedness of the north. He had made several speeches on the way and it had exhausted him. Mrs. Julia Grant was staying in a private home in Holly Springs, Mississippi. On Dec. 20 troops from Gen. Van Dorns Confederate forces had found Mrs. Grant there and promptly and arrested her. Their superiors soon found out about it and ordered her immediate release. She traveled to Oxford, Mississippi to spend Christmas with Gen. Grant where he had his headquarters there. By 1864 the last Confederate Christmas would be celebrated. The stockings were not hung as there was nothing to put in them. The family feast had been reduced to mere subsistence level. Gone were the lives of any gallant southern fighting men. And a pervasive sadness was heavy in the land as most knew in their hearts that the south could not bear to hang on much longer. The Davis family refused to take their carriage to church. They walked. And a special provision for the Christmas tree devoted to the orphans of Richmond and located in the basement of St. Pauls church. Most soldiers could not come home for Christmas. Letters were late and many a dim campfire greeted the onset of the holidays. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote his pacifist poem, Christmas Bells on Christmas Day 1864 at the news of his son Lieutenant Charles Appleton Longfellow having suffered severe wounds in November during the Mine Run Campaign. The poem was set to the tune Waltham by John Baptiste Calkin sometime after 1872 and has since been received into the established library of Christmas carols. The carol does not include two stanzas from the original poem that focused on the war. Peace on Earth, a North Carolina soldier wrote in his diary on Christmas Day 1864, adding a pointed question, good will to men? Another diarist wrote, Christmas once again; but oh! how changed from that of former times, when our beloved land was not draped in mourning. The night ended with a starvation party, where there were norefreshments, at a neighboring house. The rooms lighted aswell as practicable, someone willing to play dance music on thepiano and plenty of young men and girls comprised the entertainment. Sam Wellers soiry, consisting of boiled mutton and capers would have been a royal feast in the Confederacy. The officers who rode into town with their long cavalry boots pulled well up over their knees, but splashed up to their waists, put up their horses and rushed to the places where their dress uniform suits had been left for safekeeping. They very soon emerged, however, in full toggery and entered into the pleasures of their dance with the bright-eyed girls, who many of them were fragile as fairies, but worked like peasants for their home and country. On Dec. 22, 1864, as the Civil War entered its final months, Union Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman sent a message to President Lincoln notifying him that he had captured the city of Savannah, Ga., thereby completing his 300-mile “March to the Sea” that had begun in Atlanta on Nov. 16. Sherman’s message was published in the Dec. 26 edition of The New York Times. It read, “I beg to present you as a Christmas gift, the city of Savannah, with one hundred and fifty heavy guns and plenty of ammunition, and also about twenty-five thousand bales of cotton.” In the devastated south it would be several years before the brightness of the Christmas season returned.
Posted on: Fri, 12 Dec 2014 04:42:55 +0000
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