"Yet the contest proceeds."

People have always struggled to understand why God allows bad things happen.

In this excerpt from The Man Who Saved the Union:  Ulysses Grant in War and Peace by H.W. Brands, ©2012, Abraham Lincoln tries to make sense of the world:

"The President was in deep distress," Attorney General Edward Bates recorded.  "He seemed wrung by the bitterest anguish--said he felt almost ready to hang himself."  Lincoln had never been religious, but now he began searching for guidance from above.  "The will of God prevails," he mused privately.  "In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God.  Both may be, one must be wrong.  God cannot be for and against the same thing at the same time.  In the present civil war it is quite possible that God's purpose is something different from the purpose of either party."  The ways of the Almighty were inscrutable.  "He could have either saved or destroyed the Union without a human contest.  Yet the contest began.  And having begun, He could give the final victory to either side any day.  Yet the contest proceeds."

California Joe

Excerpt from Civil War in Pictures by Fletcher Pratt, ©1955:

California Joe was first heard of by the public when the army was before Yorktown.  I spent an hour yesterday in his tent.  He is a character.  I was surprised by his age.  He is past fifty, but looks a score of years younger.  He stands as straight as an arrow, has an eye as keen as a hawk, nerves as steady as can be, and an endowment of hair and whiskers Reubens would have liked for patriarchal portrait.  He has spent years of his life shooting grizzly bears in the forests and fastnesses of California, and carries a telescopic rifle that in his hand will carry a long ways and with terrific accuracy.  For several days past he has occupied as a shooting-place a hole dug in the ground just big enough for himself.  His unerring rifle has made many a rebel bite the dust.  He says he likes the sport, and means to keep it up.

Things have changed a little since the mid-nineteenth century.  I had to look up the archaic meaning of “fastnesses” (it means “remote”), and the word “score” was apparently in much more common use then than now.  A modern reporter would never reference an artist, for fear of alienating his audience.

But the biggest difference is that a soldier today would never be allowed to say “I enjoy killing people.”

Shoulder to shoulder

Excerpt from Civil War in Pictures by Fletcher Pratt, © 1955:

Just as the artists invariably pictured a charge as a line of men advancing shoulder to shoulder and in perfect step across ground that was nearly always accidented and frequently spotted with trees or brush, so the reporters nearly always spoke of the same thing.  "Did you ever charge shoulder to shoulder?"  a veteran of the war was asked.  "No," was his reply; "God don't make men who could stand that."

Yet the public continued to believe the convention rather than the reality, and there are not a few soldier diaries from the Civil War which express surprise over the discovery that it wasn't true after all; that you advanced in a ragged line, taking advantage of every feature of the landscape and often pausing to fire.

Better Than None

Excerpted from Civil War in Pictures by Fletcher Pratt, ©1955:

Our soldiers believe in the literal interpretation of the dictum of the Wise Man that “there is a time to dance.”  But to put their faith into works is not the easiest thing in the world, owing to the lack of partners of the feminine persuasion.  However, by imagining a bearded and pantallooned fellow to be of “t’other kind,” they succeed in getting up what they call a “Stag Dance,” which is better than none.

This has been a really interesting little book that I found for $1.29 at a thrift store.  There was no way to reproduce a photograph in a newspaper at the time, so newspapers sent out sketch correspondents and reduced their drawings to woodcuts to print them in the paper.  Drawings like these are how most people got to "see" the Civil War unfold.

I'll be posting a few more over the next few weeks.