Happily Sometimes After by Andie Tucher

Author:Andie Tucher
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781613763469
Publisher: University of Massachusetts Press
Published: 2015-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Names in bold represent direct ancestors; names in italics have been introduced in a previous tree. Other names are included only if relevant. The exact connections to Billingsly Roberts are unclear.

CHAPTER 5

The Civil War, Real and Unreal

Honor

TWO STORIES ABOUT THE CIVIL WAR:

The first is a classic, often retold in the standard histories. About a year and a half after the beginning of the war, southern forces led by General Braxton Bragg and Major General Edmund Kirby Smith mounted a two-pronged invasion of Kentucky intended to win the deeply divided border state for the Confederacy. In mid-September 1862, two southern brigades moved to seize and destroy the long railroad bridge over the Green River at Munfordville, a vital but vulnerable link on the crucial Louisville & Nashville line. The bridge was defended by a Union garrison under the command of Colonel John T. Wilder, a thirty-two-year-old foundry owner from Indiana who brought far more enthusiasm than experience to his military appointment.

To the surprise of both sides, Wilder and his equally raw men briskly fought off the attack, killing or wounding more than seven hundred of the enemy, according to the colonel’s (over)estimate at the time, and taking just thirty-seven casualties of their own. Wilder was gracious in his unexpected victory, exchanging half a dozen notes with the defeated brigadier general James Chalmers to arrange the precise terms for the safe retrieval of the wounded on both sides and even lending shovels to the enemy troops so they could bury their dead. “Hoping that when we cross swords again,” the southerner wrote his northern foe as he prepared to withdraw his men, “I may be able to render you a similar service, I remain, very respectfully, James R. Chalmers.”1

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