The Spirits of Bad Men Made Perfect by Constance Hall Jones;

Author:Constance Hall Jones; [Неизв.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780809337620
Publisher: Southern Illinois University Press

Part 5

MEANDERING TOWARD FREDERICKSBURG

SEPTEMBER 21–DECEMBER 14, 1862

The cliché of war—long days of tedium punctuated by moments of sheer terror—is shown in its truest sense throughout this portion of William Ellis Jones’s diary. As Lee struggled to rebuild his army, catching stragglers while allowing his veterans to rest and refuel, the men of the Crenshaw Battery received accolades from the Confederate command on their exemplary service, even as they languished in boredom under the shadow of mountains with winter storms bearing down upon them. Malnourished, often shoeless, with sleet falling on their heads, this tired army was called upon again in October to forgo the tease of a start on winter quarters and to march north and east to defend Fredericksburg.

Private W. H. Kitchens, a soldier with the 45th Georgia Regiment, Company F, recorded the grueling march in all its ugly detail: “Hundreds of soldiers barefooted; the snow and ice was three or four inches thick. You could track the men by their bloody feet, and I happened to be one of the barefoot boys.”1 Even Mother Nature seemed determined to punish both armies for what they wrought in the wake of their more than 235 mile march.

William Ellis Jones was not a superstitious young man, but many of his comrades were. The highly unusual appearance of the aurora borealis, which appeared in the southern skies when the guns fell silent following the Battle of Fredericksburg, was taken as an omen by some that the heavens were in an uproar over what had transpired on the ground.

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