Lt. Spalding in Civil War Louisiana by Michael D. Pierson

Author:Michael D. Pierson [Pierson, Michael D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, United States, Civil War Period (1850-1877)
ISBN: 9780807164419
Google: kLgcDAAAQBAJ
Publisher: LSU Press
Published: 2016-11-02T00:24:04+00:00

6

FACING DEATH

Spalding and the Unfunny Joke

Yesterday I was sitting in my room, thinking over the mutability of all things human, and making myself as miserable as the Army Regulations allow.

—Stephen Spalding

Stephen Spalding sounds compellingly honest about himself when he writes that “there is nothing that reminds one of home more forcibly, than the sight of a black hearse bearing the remains of half a dozen poor fellows to their long homes,” his arresting term for graves.1 Despite having been in and out of the army for over a year and a half, Spalding had just begun to confront the reality of a military death when he sat down to write to James Peck. Serving in the Seventh New York State Militia had been painless, and the Eighth Vermont had been fortunate as well. But the summer of 1862 began to take a toll. Facing death made Spalding homesick, as he admitted, which contributed to “the 1st real fit of the blues since I enlisted.”2 He turned to humor to fight his homesickness and depression, but in the process made himself sound terribly callous, as we will see.

Certainly Spalding had reasons to feel down. The summer heat of Louisiana affected most of the Vermont men. Hailing from the Canadian border, Spalding complained “first and foremost” about “the excessive heat.” Drilling annoyed men in decent weather but was worse in the heat. Spalding described the problem as obvious: “One with a very limited observation can see that the climate is seriously affecting the health of the troops in this Dep’t. The men are lazy. Officers D[itt]o.” Lazy, wilting soldiers became Spalding’s problem with the departure, in rapid succession, of two of his fellow company officers. Capt. Charles B. Child left when he took over as provost marshal of Algiers on June 10, and Lt. F. D. Butterfield moved to the signal service on June 27, 1862.3 Left in sole command of Company B, Spalding now had to make men do things. His letter’s next sentences show him having to coerce soldiers into doing their jobs. He wrote that the heat-induced indifference required him to do “a good deal of talking and punishing to get them to do anything. A don’t care a damn for nothing kind of a feeling seemes [sic] to exist immensely in every patriots’s bosom.” This was partially a joke, like so much else in Spalding’s letter. Patriots—real ones—would triumph over such adversity. But Spalding knew better than to expect patriotism from his soldiers, at least after eight months of service. The miserable Gulf Coast heat and humidity drained spirits and left soldiers not caring “a damn for nothing.”

Other matters combined to make the situation worse. Mosquitoes plagued the Union soldiers. Humor again, masking frustration: mosquitoes, Spalding wrote, were “very thick and keep a man constantly employed in brushing them away from his face and ears. After dark any evening you can with a single wave of the hand strike to the earth millions.” Mosquitoes tormented other Vermonters as well.

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