The Colors of Courage by Creighton Margaret S

Author:Creighton, Margaret S. [KIRKUS]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hachette Book Group (Perseus)
Published: 2011-12-27T06:00:00+00:00

CIVILIAN SACRIFICE:

SHADES OF CHANCELLORSVILLE

It is likely that most of the borough residents who endured or supported Gettysburg’s massive events in 1863 did not expect public acknowledgment of their work. But it is also likely that they did not expect to be criticized for it. Barely had battlefield blood been washed away, however, before Gettysburg civilians faced a barrage of condemnation for the way they had handled themselves in the crisis. They were told they were mercenary; that they were unpatriotic; that they were unchivalrous. The reasons for such harsh attacks on civilians who had been so obviously traumatized are many, but it is evident in the language of some of the attackers that Gettysburg was considered a hotbed of “Dutchness,” a center of German selfishness and ignorance. Two months earlier, German-American soldiers had felt the cold disdain of the Anglo-American public. Now immigrant civilians, and those who were lumped in with immigrant civilians, felt it too.

The press weighed in on civilian comportment and delivered its first unflattering judgments by the second week of July. New York papers led the charge, with comments that Gettysburg inhabitants had been stingy and petty. Lorenzo Crounse, of the New York Times, asserted that the people of Gettysburg had served in the battle with “craven-hearted meanness,” and that they were decidedly “unpatriotic.” His accusations, which he repeated again and again, were “fully substantiated”: The borough’s residents had hurriedly produced claims on the army, and hesitated in giving over goods. They had demanded money for rails that were used for campfires. They had charged exorbitant prices for bread and milk. Crounse’s indictment was reprinted widely in national newspapers and echoed by other angry witnesses. One man alleged that Gettysburg people were “some of the most intensely mean persons . . . that the world produces.” He recalled one resident, for instance, who demanded compensation because four bricks had been knocked off his chimney during an artillery barrage. A surgeon on the field likewise asserted that he was not given bread or crackers until the baker had assurances that he would be paid. An artillery officer with the Union army reported that residents with complaints came to him “in shoals.”35

Gettysburg attackers did not level accusations of stinginess and disloyalty in any arbitrary way. They connected the borough’s failings to misguided politics and to ethnic descent. The New York Times suggested that uncharitable borough residents had been ambivalent about President Lincoln (he had, in fact, won the borough vote, but barely) and pointed out that Adams County bordered “Copperhead” York County, allegedly full of Southern sympathizers. More emphatically, critics charged that Gettysburg’s avarice was tied to its German-American population, “known” for its disloyalty and cowardice. It was certainly no accident that Lorenzo Crounse, the reporter who let loose the reports about Gettysburg’s “miserliness,” was one of the men who had publicly accused German Americans of “unsoldierly” behavior at Chancellorsville.36

Not only did reporters contribute to negative sentiment, but medical personnel also published comments about Gettysburg’s Germans. One hospital worker described local farmers as “evil beasts.

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