A Soldier's Story of His Regiment (61st Georgia)
A Descendant’s Review
George W. Nichols had his U.S. Civil War memoir, A Soldier’s Story of His Regiment (61st Georgia), published at the end of the 19th century. Like many aspiring authors, his writing sucked, and he didn’t sell nearly as many copies as he dreamed of. It’s so badly-written I’d only read it if someone within my family or closest circle of friends wrote it.
Alas, I’m a direct descendant of George W. Nichols (note: ‘Nichols’ doesn’t appear in my full name, if you know someone with the name ‘Nichols’ that’s NOT me). My family has mentioned this book many times, so in 2016 I read it, and for this review I read it again. Since I read it, you don’t have to.
Why this book sucks
When I re-read it for this review, I discovered that I’d forgotten nearly everything. Even during this fresh re-read, the writing is so dull many details passed through my eyes without hitting my brain. Thus, I’m concerned I missed something essential.
This book is full of name drops. These names meant the world to him, but to me they’re just that—names. I never saw these people’s faces, nor heard their voices. Aside from famous people (such as General Robert E. Lee) and a few relatives, I only know what Nichols wrote down, and for most of these people, he only includes the scantest biographical detail.
He says, “I took down notes almost every day in all the campaigns of 1864, and also had other notes, or I could never have told how we raced with Sheridan’s cavalry, or rather mounted infantry, for one of his men told me that the most of his cavalry were men taken from the infantry and mounted for gallantry.” Notice how the topic weirdly changes mid-sentence. Why, why couldn’t he have split this into two sentences? Reading an entire book full of sentences like this is tiring.
This book reads like an edited set of notes. Much of it reads like, ‘this happened, then that happened, then this other thing happened.’ He never crafts it into a narrative with story arcs, as memoir writers in the 21st century are advised to do. In many places where a well-read 21st century person such as myself expects ‘show,’ he only gives me ‘tell.’ A conspicuous example of this is:
The killed in Company D were A. J. Nichols, Joshua Kirkland and Wesley Hodges. A. J. Nichols was a dear brother of the writer. Nichols and Hodges were both brave and noble young men. The company mourned their loss.
On the next page, he says:
The next morning we got up and made some coffee, which we drank, and ate a little of our cold rations. Our breakfast somewhat revived us. We then went to look on the battlefield. Three of the dead wore our company’s uniform, and we went to see who they were. The first one was my brother. I had been too sick the evening before to pay any attention, and did not know who was hurt. My finding my brother, with a minnieball shot through his heart, and he cold in death, was a terrible shock to me; but such is war.
That’s all he says about the death of his own brother in the entire book. When I heard a relative (another descendant of Nichols) talk about her own brother dying from a gunshot wound, she had much more to say about it. In that situation, I’m sure I’d have much more to say about it too. Maybe the experience was too traumatic for Nichols to write more, but many places throughout the memoir give only a brief summary where a more immersive description was called for.
Hearing relatives talk about interesting tidbits from the book is more satisfying than reading it. Sure, it’s more biased, but the biases add another layer to the narrative. As a child, I remember hearing about all the references to “Dutch” Union soldiers. Here’s every instance where Nichols uses the word “Dutch”:
When the Union army was passing through the old Sharpsburg battlefield one little Dutchman went by the hospital tents, where our hospital nurse (Alderman) was cooking for the sick and wounded. He asked Alderman for some of his bread. Alderman gave him some bread, and asked him where he was going. The Dutchman replied, “We dosh be going to hunt Shockson.” Alderman said the little Dutchman was gone about three hours and returned, wet all over and his hat and gun gone. He had been churning the Potomac river trying to get back. He called on Alderman again on his return, who asked him if he found Jackson. The Dutchman replied, “Vel, yas, and he dosh give us hell dish day.”
I could tell by their caps and their Dutch brogue that they were not Southerners.
We took some prisoners, and among them there were two generals. One of them, General Seymour, was a very tall man. I suppose he was six and one-half feet high and would have weighed ISO pounds. The other. General Shaler, was a regular cut-short Dutchman about five feet high, and would have weighed about 250 pounds. There was quite a contrast in them as they were marched out.
Along came the second or reserve line and we had not thrown down our guns, so a little Dutch officer of one of the Maine regiments ran up to me and said: “You dosh throw town your cun.” He jerked it away from me. It was a very fine one and I had had it nearly two years, and had shot about eight hundred rounds at the Yankees with it. The officer saw that it was a fine gun and said: “Here, Yokup—here dosh be one d—d fine cun, an you dosh trow town your old von, and take the good von.” He then told us to go to the rear, but sent no guards with us. He asked us what brigade we belonged to. I told him Gordon’s old brigade. He halloed out to his men: “Gordon’s brigade is retreating; let us press it.” They all went ahead and left us prisoners standing there.
I made it very well, as I was an expert jumper, so did my guard, he being sober; but some of those little cutshort Dutchmen could not make it very well, with the amount of whisky they had taken on.
My family told me these “Dutch” Union soldiers were actually German immigrants, and we pay attention to these references because our branch is descended from an immigrant from Prussia who served in the Union army during the Civil War. I’m not sure what other branches of the Nichols’ family think of these references. My guess is that they don’t think about them.
Maybe it’s good for me to read a badly-written book once in a while. It reminds me to appreciate good writing. And in this case, the bad writing feels… unfiltered. Perhaps because it doesn’t shape the story into a form which makes for emotionally resonant reading, it’s more honest?
Was the Confederate Army a dystopian high school?
Even after reading this memoir, I don’t know why he enlisted in the Confederate army.
Nobody in his family of origin ever owned a slave, so he lacked a direct economic incentive to preserve slavery. He was from Georgia, but Georgia had some Unionists, so his location isn’t enough to answer the question.
However, I have a theory.
The way he drops names and references without introducing readers to who these people were feels like a high school yearbook. Flipping through my high school yearbooks triggers all kinds of memories. But a yearbook from a different high school would mean little. The back of the book is a roster of soldiers from the regiment, and Nichols asks readers to supply any information they have about his comrades. This isn’t unlike collecting information for a yearbook (or an alumni reunion book).
George was 19 years old when he joined the Confederate army. Yes, that’s older than high school age, but not by much.
He claims many people were the ‘best’ or ‘finest’ soldier/officer/woman/etc. He seems unaware of the contradiction of claiming multiple people are the ‘best’ or ‘finest.’ This is a mode of thinking I associate with adolescence and early adulthood. Likewise, he idolizes many of the people he features. He uses the word ‘idol’ four times in the book:
The noble lieutenant, John Brannen, of Company D, who was a perfect idol in our company and regiment.
Sergeant James C. Hodges was mortally wounded, his brains being shot out. He lived eleven days before death came to his relief. He was one of the best boys I ever saw, and an excellent school teacher. (He was my old professor.) He was almost an idol in his company and regiment, and the community in which he lived before the war, and with his pupils in school.
Our beloved General Gordon was often among the worshipers. He had become almost an idol in the brigade with officers and men, often leading in the prayer and exhortation service.
That noble Christian, Colonel Clement A. Evans, of the Thirty-first Georgia Regiment, who was almost an idol in the brigade, was promoted to the rank of Brigadier General and assigned to the command of Gordon’s old brigade.
As a teenager, I recall how easy it was for me to idolize anyone with admirable qualities. Many of my ‘idols’ were upperclassmen in high school. When I was in the 11th grade, realizing that a 9th grader idolized me weirded me out because I knew I wasn’t worthy of being anyone’s idol—and then it occurred to me that the students in higher grades who I’d idolized maybe felt the same way. Many teenagers also idolize celebrities, such as sports players, musicians, and actors.
I imagine that teenagers in 19th century rural Georgia mostly idolized people within their own communities, just as Nichols idolized his young schoolteacher James C. Hodges (at the time Hodges’ brains were shot out, he was only 23 years old). (After the war, Nichols married Hodges’ cousin, Jincy Parrish, and through her Hodges and I are genetically related). It was only natural for youths who enlisted to adopt officers and generals as new idols, and Nichols clearly idolized many within the Confederate Army. If older brothers told younger brothers about their celebrity officers and generals, their younger brothers might idolize them too. If local idols, such as a popular schoolteacher, enlisted in an army, the teenagers might be all the more star-struck—and itching to enlist as well.
My guess is that Nichols followed his idols into the Confederate Army.
The next level question is, why did the first wave of older brothers and local idols join the Confederate army? Maybe some local idols were slaveowners and thus had reason to fight the Union. I don’t know whether the family of Hodges-the-schoolteacher kept slaves, but his in-laws, the Parrish family, had a large plantation with many enslaved people. That might’ve been enough of a reason for Hodges to fight to preserve slavery.
Most of the Unionists in Georgia lived in Appalachia to the north, not in the southeastern coastal plains where Nichols was born and raised. Perhaps location is the answer to why youths from Bulloch County enlisted in the Confederate Army after all.
If the Confederate Army fostered a social environment like a high school, it was a dystopian one. Nichols says, “I was a mere boy, and was broken down before I matured into manhood, and I was too old to grow out of it.”
The book includes scenes like this:
We went on in line through a very thick, boggy branch where we found a great many dead and wounded yankees. Some of them were lying in the water. I was so thirsty from fever and a long march and run to the battle till my tongue was swollen. I stopped, dipped up and drank water which I knew had yankee blood in it. I am sure it was the best water to me that I ever drank. I have often thought it saved my life.
This is one of the passages which stayed with me after I first read the book. Since then, whenever I’ve read about other wars where desperate people drank from bloody water with floating corpses, I’ve thought back to this. Years later, Nichols experienced this:
Here in this death angle there were several acres of ground the worst strewn with dead men I saw during the war. I saw an oak tree, probably eighteen or twenty inches in diameter, that was very nearly cut down with canister shot and minnie balls, and the ground around it was covered with dead men, it being on the lowest ground the enemy had to advance over and where our batteries and small arms had a full sweep on them. Those who were not very badly mutilated were swollen as long- as they could swell. Their faces were nearly black and their mouths, nose, eyes, hair and the mutilated parts were full of maggots!
This is a horrible picture, but I know it is not overdrawn. What an awful scent! It just makes me feel bad to-day as I write about it. I know that hundreds, and probably thousands, died for the want of attention. There were many mothers deprived of kind, loving husbands; their children were made fatherless; their darling sons, whom they had nursed and dandled on their knees while babes, and watched carefully over them while children, and gave them good advice, praying to the great God to spare them to return to them in peace, lying on the cold ground in this horrible condition.
Oh! how I long to see the time come when the prophecy in Isaiah will come to pass, second chapter and fourth verse: “And He shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”
The horrors weren’t limited to the battlefields. Nichols shares this story:
Two fine-looking young men had a dispute about their cooking. One of them had a large butcherknife that he was cutting meat with. He stabbed it in the other’s breast to the handle, and left it sticking there. The young man in death’s agony said, “You have killed me.” He then took hold of the handle and, after several efforts, succeeded in getting it out, and threw it at the other and stuck it to the handle near his collarbone. He then replied, “Yes, and you have killed me.” They both looked faintly at each other for a moment, seemingly with deep regret, reeled and fell helpless to the ground. The doctors ran to them, but could do nothing for them. Both were dead in a few minutes. We were told that they were first cousins, reared near each other; had been great chums; had attended the same school, and that it was the first difficulty they had ever had. Such horrible news to go to their parents!
As a sickly young man, he also spent considerable time in hospitals. Some he praised for giving the best care possible to wounded soldiers, but then he describes this (warning: use of a word now considered racist):
When I arrived at Danville I found it quite different to what Richmond and Lynchburg were. It had about 1,003 inhabitants, the hospitals were new, and had one of the poorest doctors I ever saw. It seemed like every dose of medicine that he gave me would do me more harm than good. I could not get any milk, and the hospital diet was very poor. Beef, boiled about half done, baker’s bread and beef soup, made with flour, and often with flies in it, for they had negro cooks, and the white man in charge did not care. It was to eat that or nothing, and I generally took nothing rather than that soup. I would take the bread and beef and re-cook the beef by broiling it, which made it so it could be eaten. The doctor was a young man and had the worst kind of a case of “big-head.” He could curse like a demon, and I soon saw that I could not stay there and live. About this time the small-pox broke out there, and every case would be sent to the small-pox hospital, which was some distance from the town.
In order to survive, Nichols had to get guard duty, which would allow him to cook his own, more nutritious food. Then the doctor and the nurse threatened to report him as a deserter if he left for guard duty. Nichols begged a major for guard duty. At first, the major said he was too sick to be a guard. Then Nichols told him about his diarrhea and the horrible food at the hospital, and said if he didn’t get guard duty he’d never get well. Then he got guard duty and…
I got them and told the doctor and nurse that I was going on the guard. They both cursed me again. I felt gratified to have the pleasure of telling them what I thought of them.
I told them that neither of them were fit for buzzard’s bait and that if the Confederate States were as destitute of gentlemen doctors and hospital nurses as that hospital was of a doctor and hospital nurse, it would be in a terrible condition.
I did not curse them like they did me; but I abused them for about five minutes, as badly as I knew how, to not curse. I then showed them my authority to go. They turned off apparently defeated, and remarked: “You must be pretty d—d sharp.”
The most disturbing passage is this:
I had an excellent rifle, one that shot very close, and I never took better aim at a bird or squirrel in my life than I took at those Yankee soldiers. And I never enjoyed a party in my younger days any better.
This stands out as the one place in the memoir where he expresses joy in inflicting violence. All other descriptions of violence describe them as horrors, which show that Nichols kept his respect for human life. That the Confederate Army, even if just this one time, led Nichols to believe that killing people was more fun than a party… oh my. This is a place where I feel the memoir may be more honest because it’s so unpolished. A professional editor would’ve pointed this out, and Nichols would’ve smoothed this over.
Following his idols into the Confederate Army led him to great trauma, and perhaps even cost him some of his inhibitions against violence.
The religious assumptions weird me out
Nichols takes evangelical Christianity for granted. He feels no need to explain why evangelical Christianity as opposed to any other religion or irreligion.
My parents come from different religious backgrounds, neither of which was evangelical Christianity. I grew up around people from a variety of religions. Seeing my ancestor so sincerely consider the goodness of his own religion to be so self-evident he doesn’t bother to argue in its favor jars me.
(If you’re wondering how the family religion changed in generations between me and Nichols, the short answer is that in a certain interdenominational marriage, evangelical Christianity lost).
The memoir includes a few stories like this:
I will tell the readers what I witnessed in the death of a little North Carolinian. He was just a mere boy and his name was Frick. He was very sick—had a high fever. His nurse seemed to be a very wicked man. Frick was very religious He raised up on his bed one day and got off on the floor on his feet; his nurse ran to him and I have never heard such talk, such admonition as he gave the nurse. He asked him to do better and to quit cursing and repent of his sins and to try to prepare to meet him in the glory world.
The nurse melted into a flood of tears. Frick began to shout and praise God, and wrung his hands. He died on his feet with his arms around the nurse’s neck, the nurse holding him in his arms. Frick died shouting and praising God in the strongest triumphs of a living faith I have ever seen, and with a pleasant smile on his face. The nurse tenderly laid him down on the bed, with a deep feeling of emotion, in a flood of tears, and said to the crowd—for all in the house that were able had gathered around them: “Boys, Frick is dead, and if he’s not gone to the glory world, none of us will ever get there.” I never heard that nurse use another profane word.
What strikes me as the most odd is how much Nichols’ religion revolved around avoiding profanity. He’s describing these horrible scenes of war, yet one of his greatest concerns is whether people use curse words? He always writes “d—d” instead of “damned,” which to me is such a mild word it doesn’t even feel profane.
I don’t swear like a sailor, but damn, the lyrics of some music I like would’ve shocked Nichols. Nichols also has a descendant who actually was a sailor and said the language he used in the US Navy was too profane to repeat in my presence.
How might Nichols’ life have been different if he’d taken the commandment against idolatry as seriously as the commandment against taking the Lord’s name in vain? If he’d refused to idolize his schoolteacher Hodges, or various Confederate generals? I doubt Nichol would’ve been a full Unionist, but he might’ve avoided enlisting in the Confederate Army. Since his father, Theophilus Nichols, opposed slavery, he might’ve gotten help to avoid conscription.
Soldiers who committed to following orders had minimal control over whether they lived or died. Nichols himself had come close to losing his life multiple times, such as when he asked a comrade to hold his gun while he fetched water and, fifteen minutes later, he returned to find that his comrade had been shot dead. When the 61st Georgia regiment came to Virginia, it had over a thousand men. Only forty-nine surrendered at Appotomox. The rest were deserters, prisoners of war, wounded, or dead. But though soldiers had little say over whether minnieballs broke through their hearts, they chose how much profanity they used. Perhaps it made sense to base their religion on something within their control.
Is this memoir Lost Cause propaganda?
So, this being a Confederate war memoir, you’re thinking ‘but what did he think about slavery?’ I’ve dropped some hints. I could continue dancing around the issue, but I won’t.
I’ll start by quoting every use of the word ‘slave’ and ‘slavery’ in the memoir (warning: words which are now considered racist).
My father had never owned a slave and his house was spared, but Sherman took every horse he had and a great many other things.
(According to this website, local black people protected the house from Sherman’s army because they knew Theophilus Nichols adamantly opposed slavery).
Slavery had once been in the North as well as in the South. The North had sold its slaves to the South and had received pay for them. The South bought them in good faith. The negroes are all free and the whole nation is satisfied that such is the case. I, nor my parents never owned a slave and have never mistreated one.
They are now free, yet a great many are not faring as well as they did while in bondage. Yet they are better satisfied.
It is about like an old time darkey said to me a few years ago: “I do not fare near as well for something to eat as I did with old boss, but freedom is good for a dog; bind one down and he will holler.” We know this is true and we old soldiers know that we had rather have our freedom and live on half rations, like we often had to do during the war, than to be in prison and have the best that the world could afford, (not that our prisoners fared well) and our sympathies are always great for people in bondage.
Some years ago, I discussed the above passage with a historical researcher who specializes in the lives of enslaved people in the antebellum South. She told me it was common for freed people to have less to eat than when they’d still be enslaved, but that they still preferred freedom over slavery, just as Nichols said.
Here are references to slaves in the memoir which don’t include the word ‘slave’ (warning: words which are now considered racist):
Company D thought Lieutenant James Mincy was left with some of the rest of our wounded at Gettysburg, but he was rescued by Rube, his faithful negro servant.
When Rube found that his master was going to be left, he stole a horse and wagon and got his master in the wagon and followed in the rear of our wagon train. We were proud to see Lieutenant Mincy back and we were proud of Rube, who could have remained in Pennsylvania and have been free, but I believe that he hated the Yankees worse than we did.
Notice that Nichols didn’t automatically assume that Rube would be loyal to his ‘master.’ It occurred to him that Rube may have preferred freedom in Pennsylvania. This article discusses other reasons why some camp slaves who came in the Gettysburg campaign followed their ‘masters’ back to the Confederacy rather than run away to freedom in Pennsylvania.
Our feet were blistered and our toe-nails were bloodshot. Some were so mad till they gave vent to their feelings by cursing. Oh! such horrible oaths! It looked like some could curse “by note.” They cursed out the Union, the Yankees, “Abe” Lincoln, Jeff Davis, the Confederacy, and the whole negro race.
I won’t try to unpack that one.
The lieutenant took it and gave it to his negro cook and told him to cook it for his supper. The boys went on to their camps well pleased.
The negro cooked some and the lieutenant sat down to eat it. He cursed the negro and told him that he had poisoned it, for he had never eaten as strong mutton as that was. The lieutenant then cooked some himself, but it was no better.
That was in the context of a prank some soldiers played on their lieutenant.
The Yankees were well posted in and around Dr. Morton’s house and negro houses. There were about six of the negro houses and they were built of brick, and were about twelve feet wide and twenty feet long, with spaces of about four feet between each house.
They hired two old broken down horses and a wagon from an old citizen, with a negro driver, to carry them to Washington, Wilkes county, Georgia, a distance of forty-five miles, for which they paid him $700 in Confederate money.
Perhaps I’ve missed a couple references to slaves, but those quotes cover most of them. So, onward to analysis.
This review of the memoir by L. Bao Bui says:
The book lacks any acknowledgment of slavery as the fundamental cause of the war or the need to adapt to a postwar world in which slavery was abolished and African Americans were nominally full citizens and members of American society. Despite the passage of Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, ex-slaves lost nearly all the gains made possible by the effusive shedding of blood by Northern soldiers, both black and white. Nichols’s rewriting of recent history helped made Jim Crow possible in the postbellum decades. Racial equality, and even mention of the Civil War’s root causes or the South’s determination to uphold human bondage, fell by the wayside in the name of national reconciliation. Even as white veterans like Nichols came together to celebrate and commemorate their shared experience of war and their one undivided country, black Americans continued to remain, if not slaves, then second-class citizens living under a system of repression and terror.
That last sentence is historical truth. The rest is, in my opinion, unfair. Nichols never says “slavery was the fundamental cause of the war” but the way he addresses slavery in the conclusion implies that it was a cause of the war. As for how African Americans fared after the Civil War… this memoir is about Nichols’ personal experiences during the war. He wasn’t African American, and one of the few things he says about what happened after the war was what the former slave told him. He says even less about Sherman’s army marching through his hometown, even though both his parents and (most likely) his future wife Jincy Parrish had experienced that, because that had been outside his own firsthand experience.
What Nichols never mentions is that the family of his wife (whom he married after the war) had kept many slaves. My family told me that Parrishes had the highest pedigree of all our ancestors, and that if you went back enough generations we’re descended from English royalty. What they didn’t tell me was that the Parrishes owned a big plantation—I found that out through internet searches. Jincy may have influenced how her husband addressed slavery in this memoir, perhaps preventing him from denouncing slavery as stridently as his father, Theophilus, had.
I don’t know why Jincy Parrish ‘married down.’ Not only were the Nichols and Parrish families different in wealth, the Parrishes were Anglo, and the Nichols’ were Scots-Irish (for those unfamiliar with 19th century American ethnic politics, Scots-Irish were lower status than Anglos). To put in cruder terms, why did the Southern belle marry the redneck? Perhaps it was as simple as her falling in love with Nichols. I suspect it had something to do with General Sherman’s army destroying her family’s plantation and emancipating the slaves, while Theophilus Nichols got to keep his house. Considering how many young men died in the war, she may not have had many bachelors to choose from.
Some people (including L. Bao Bui) label this memoir as a celebration of the Lost Cause. That’s not how I see it.
According to the Encyclopedia Virginia:
The Lost Cause interpretation of the Civil War typically includes the following six assertions:
1. Secession, not slavery, caused the Civil War.
2. African Americans were “faithful slaves,” loyal to their masters and the Confederate cause and unprepared for the responsibilities of freedom.
3. The Confederacy was defeated militarily only because of the Union’s overwhelming advantages in men and resources.
4. Confederate soldiers were heroic and saintly.
5. The most heroic and saintly of all Confederates, perhaps of all Americans, was Robert E. Lee.
6. Southern women were loyal to the Confederate cause and sanctified by the sacrifice of their loved ones.
First, he never claims that secession caused the Civil War. Heck, he never says what caused the Civil War at all. The closest he comes to even hinting it may have been about secession is this quote, “They had been put into our lines by the Union authorities because they were true Southerners and advocated Southern rights.” That’s thinner than the quotes which imply the war was about slavery. May I remind you that at the beginning of the war he was a teenager who had spent his entire life in a rural area, and thus may not have had the best grasp of the political currents running through the nation?
Second, yes, he says that Rube was faithful to his master in the Gettysburg campaign, and on the surface that seems to have been true, but he didn’t take that for granted, and he likened the circumstances of “people in bondage” to that of prisoners of war—inappropriate as that comparison may be, someone who believed African Americans were totally faithful to their ‘masters’ wouldn’t say that. He says that African Americans are better off free than enslaved.
Third, yes, Nichols mentions the Union had an advantage in men and resources, and that contributed to their victory, which is historically accurate, but he also respected the military prowess of many Union officers and soldiers, and pointed out instances when Confederate officers screwed up, such as this:
It was reported to us privates that General Gordon planned and executed this move on the Yankees. If [General] Early had moved all we had captured back to Fisher’s Hill it would have been one of the grandest successes of the war; but he did not, and it proved to be one of the greatest disasters.
Fourth, I think this review has enough quotes which show that Nichols didn’t believe all Confederate soldiers were heroic and saintly. He believed many fought bravely, which is historical fact, and he deplored both Union and Confederate commanders who ordered soldiers to “burn non-combatant’s houses and their contents and turn innocent women and children out with nothing to eat, no bed but the cold ground and no shelter but the skies of heaven.”
Fifth, okay, yes, Nichols was a huge Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson fanboy. He also claimed many other Confederate officers were ‘the best.’ Touché.
Sixth, yes, he has much praise for the Southern women who took good care of wounded soldiers (including Union soldiers) and saved many lives. Or as he puts it:
I can say this for the good women of Virginia : There are no better women on this globe. They seemed like angels of mercy, and I am sure all they like of being white winged angels is death, and I feel sure that death will have no sting, and that the grave, with them, will have no victory; for Christ will come after them and call them up higher and seat them near to Him in the paradise of the great God of Heaven. It fills my heart full of praise to God for raising up such good women. I fully believe that such women are the salt of the earth and the light of the world. But these good women are not all in Richmond and the vicinity; but are scattered all over the State, and indeed, all over these, our still United States.
However, praising women for taking good care of the sick isn’t quite the same as praising them for loyalty to the Confederate cause.
What I didn’t find in this memoir was Nichols claiming women were sanctified by the sacrifice of their loved ones. On the contrary, when his comrades died, he often spoke of the grief it’d bring their mothers, wives, and daughters.
Nichols includes a poem by William Alderman about the death of his nephew, James C. Hodges, yes the same one who was Nichols’ schoolteacher and the cousin of Jincy Parrish, and yes, William Alderman was also Jincy’s uncle. Here are a couple stanzas:
To see young men torn up with bombs,
And knowing they are some mother’s sons.
How would it make a mother feel
To see her son dead on the field?
In battles fought, and wars of old,
As I have read, and oft been told,
But never viewed such awful scenes,
Until this awful war has been.
The full poem reads like an antiwar poem, not a sanctification of mothers’ sacrifices.
That, ultimately, is why this memoir doesn’t feel like Lost Cause propaganda to me. For all that Nichols idolized his comrades and commanders, he also documents many senselessly horrible things which happened, and overall regards the war as a great tragedy. He says, “I know that if the Northern and Southern people could have known what the consequences would be, there would have been no war. Neither side could have been induced to have entered into such a struggle—such a sacrifice of human life and such a cost of treasures.” I can’t imagine this book making anyone excited to go to war. It’s much more likely to persuade people to not join an army.
Once in a while on the internet, I encounter descendants of Confederate soldiers who buy into the whole Lost Cause thing. They say things like, ‘If these liberals keep on infringing on my freedoms, I’ll follow the example of my ancestors and don gray to fight back.’ Though I’ve never said this, what I think is that if they truly want to honor their ancestors, they should consider the trauma and whether their ancestors would’ve wanted a repeat of the Civil War. In the case of my ancestor Nichols, the answer is an unambiguous ‘no.’
The oral history I’ve gotten about my ancestor the-Prussian-immigrant-in-the-Union-Army is more jingoistic. To him, apparently, the Civil War wasn’t a great national tragedy, it was a great opportunity to prove his loyalty to his new homeland and fight evil slaveowners.
Did this memoir contribute to entrenching Jim Crow? It’s plausible to me that Nichols intended to counter overly romantic nostalgia for the Confederacy by reporting the horrors, and that this memoir may have weakened the pro-Jim-Crow narrative.
He says in the preface, “I have read a great many histories of the war, but have never read one that was correct” and that he wrote this memoir so future generations would know the truth. What were the histories he read which he deemed incorrect? He doesn’t say, but earlier he says, “I have never seen a history like this one. All that I ever read tells what officers did. This gives its readers faint idea of what officers and private soldiers did.” That implies that he intended to counter history books which left out the lower decks.
But what do I know, I’m no historian. Perhaps the histories he reacted against all gave nuanced discussions of how slavery caused the Civil War and African Americans need to adapt to life as full citizens.
Should you write a memoir for posterity?
If you expect to have living descendants over a century from now, I highly recommend writing a memoir.
Even before I read this book, I knew more about George Nichols than all of my other ancestors born in the 19th century combined. My family talks much more about him than other ancestors from that era.
It’s good for the descendants. A book like this strengthens family bonds for generations. I’ve had contact with distant relatives I probably wouldn’t have known existed if it weren’t for this book. When I hear of Confucian-influenced cultures where large groups of people trace their lineages to a single prominent patriarch, often someone with impressive scholarly achievements, this is the closest analogue I find in my own life.
I wish some of my other 19th-century ancestors had written memoirs for posterity. What was it like for my Prussian-immigrant-in-the-Union-army ancestor? What was it like for Jincy Parrish when Sherman’s army almost certainly destroyed her home? What was it like for my other ancestresses who lived through the U.S. Civil War? My ancestors who weren’t in North America and had nothing to do with the U.S. Civil War? How did they experience other major historical events of the 19th century?
It helps if you were present at an event like the Battle of Gettysburg, but that’s not a requirement. You can write about how your life changed (or didn’t change) in 2020. Writing well also helps, but as Nichols proves, your descendants might read your memoir even if the prose is trash.
What if you expect AI singularity to happen in the next century? Or advances in AI which don’t count as a ‘singularity’ but still reshape society? All the more reason to write a memoir. Since this memoir is public domain, I’m sure it’s in the training data of all the major language-processing AIs. I don’t know how super-advanced AIs would work, let alone post-singularity AIs, but the odds of preserving your personal story are much higher if you write it down.