Dancing with the Devil: An Odyssey of Americas Civil War

By David Edward Wall

In 1861, Two sections in America, the North and the South, are like Angels dancing
with the evil of slavery and are gamboling with the Demons of Death. This will be settled by a
contest of arms. What follows is the story of Edward Connery, his search for meaning to his life,
and the experiences and adventures he experiences during this odyssey. He will become a soldier
fighting Demon forces of slavery. He will find his love and come to realize the evils of slavery,
and the humanity of the slave class, while becoming a better, and more insightful man

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 30, 2019
• ISBN: 9781796054989

Book preview

Copyright © 2019 by David Edward Wall.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 09/28/2019

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Contents

Introduction

Chapter One

Chapter Two Take This Corporal with You!

Chapter Three There Is No Bad in This General’s Heart

Chapter Four Il Trovatore by Verdi

Chapter Five Sometimes Things Don’t Make No Sense

Chapter Six Josie’s Life Is Forever Changed

Chapter Seven William T. Sherman Delivers a Thank-You Speech to the Battery

Chapter Eight The Just You Wait Was Worth the Wait

Chapter Nine Destination Memphis

Chapter Ten A Long Ways from Home, a Long Ways from Home

Chapter Eleven Complaints?

Chapter Twelve Grant Will Not Be Outlasted

Chapter Thirteen There Are Tears Aplenty in Mississippi

Chapter Fourteen Connery, You Are Still Talking. Start Fighting

Chapter Fifteen Yankees Will Be Shooting Back

Chapter Sixteen They Could Also Have Paid to Touch My Head for Good Luck

Chapter Seventeen The Union Is Finished with the Rebels at Vicksburg, but . . .

Chapter Eighteen Edward Mounts His Horse and Is Gone at a Gallop

Chapter Nineteen Rumors and Truth Are Siblings

Chapter Twenty The Devil Is Preparing for a Macabre Dance with the Angels, and the Music Is Starting

Chapter Twenty-One My God, Man! You Did Have an Adventure!

Chapter Twenty-Two Miss, Why Would a Pretty Southern Girl . . .

Chapter Twenty-Three Her Hurt Is Double

Chapter Twenty-Four The Congressional Committee

Chapter Twenty-Five Edward’s Odyssey Is Complete

Chapter Twenty-Six Life Will Go On

Cast of Characters

References

In 1861, two sections in America, the North and the South, are like angels dancing with the evil of slavery and are gambling with the demons of death. This will be settled by a contest of arms. What follows is the story of Edward Connery, his search for meaning to his life, and the experiences and adventures he experiences during this odyssey. He will become a soldier fighting the demon forces of slavery. He will find his love and come to realize the evils of slavery and the humanity of the slave class while becoming a better and more insightful man.

Introduction

The unexpected consequences of the American Civil War are more unpleasant than the people of the two contestants had expected. Both the United States of America and the Confederate States of America are searching for leaders and strategies to end the bloodshed, which most people believe started at Fort Sumter.

Naming the conflict could be reason enough to start a conflagration. The War of the Rebellion suits the Union side fine. They wish to keep the Union whole, and the Confederates are in rebellion. The Confederate States feel that the War of Northern Aggression describes the struggle perfectly. They feel Abraham Lincoln wishes to free their slaves, and they wish for freedom from Northern dictates. When these motives for the war are offered, they are only sauce to the dish. The main course of this serving of war is slavery. Another feature that is added to the main ingredients to make the conflict easier to digest is states’ rights. But the institution of slavery is the primary reason for this serving of bloodshed and death.

The states of the South know the end of slavery is near if the country remains whole, and their motive and actions are to prevent that end. The states of the North wish to keep the country whole and have waited for an act of insurrection before interceding. They hope that act will never happen. Rebels firing on Fort Sumter is the event that releases sectional hatreds and jealousies and brings those emotions and conflict to the forefront.

The war is on at the first BANG from the first cannon shot by South Carolinians at Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861. It has also been said that the war had its beginnings in the Kansas Territory or had been started by John Brown at Harper’s Ferry. However, this first cannon shot means that men’s egos and honor are now at stake and signals there will be no turning back from total war. The victors of America’s Civil War will be the forces from the North of the Mason-Dixon Line, and they will be seen as the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse by the Confederacy. The unpleasantness of this defeat will remain with the South for many decades.

When the Civil War was thrust upon the states, President Lincoln called upon the governors of the loyal states, including Illinois’s Governor Richard Yates, to summon volunteers and state militia to serve for three months’ active duty to stem the rebellion. This action mustered the Illinois Plainfield Battery to duty, commanded by Capt. Edward McAllister. This battery of four twenty-four-pounder cannons is also known as McAllister’s Battery.

The boundary of Illinois dips to meet the states of Kentucky and Missouri and nearly encounters the Tennessee border at this location. On August 28, 1861, Edward traveled from Jolliet, Illinois, to Chicago to enlist in the Union Army, assert his patriotism, seek a purpose to his life, and maybe even encounter a great adventure. He joins the Plainfield Battery, now renamed the First Illinois Volunteer Light Artillery Battery D, which had acquired its new name because the battery is now on active war duty. The battery needed a name that more accurately reflected its new Federal allegiance. Those three months would become four years’ service.

People of America are now like Angels dancing with the Devil.

People, both North and South, are good, God-fearing societies, but they are dancing with the sin of slavery.

And there must one day be an end to this evil.

*****

Chapter One

All the flowers of all the tomorrows are in the seeds of today.

—Chinese Proverb

February 1862

There are occasions in life that will tend to cast a person for either good or evil. Edward Connery will face many such tests in his life. By becoming part of a Union Artillery Battery, he has begun the process of shaping his life.

*****

Ulysses S. Grant? Who is he? Edward Connery thought when he first learned his commanding general’s name. Now here he is, looking determined and confident as he passes by on his horse. His eyes catch Edward’s eyes and briefly fix upon him. Not realizing this is the general’s propensity of always being aware of his surroundings, Edward feels the look is just for him. He is somewhat intimidated by this attention.

His unit has disembarked at a landing four miles north of the fort and then marched through a swamp, laying a road to provide for the passage of his army of the Tennessee. President Lincoln has decided the Mississippi River must be cleared of rebels who are preventing the opening of the river to the Gulf of Mexico for commerce. Grant is the general who will do it.

Grant will one day play a large part in Edward’s life, and the general will interfere in Edward’s life on six more occasions, one of which he expected could result in his death. He will learn exactly who Ulysses is. Now Edward is carrying cut tree branches to corduroy the road this general’s army is traveling. Doing so will allow this army to approach and occupy the Confederate’s Fort Henry, allowing Union commerce on the nearby Tennessee River.

While gathering tree trunks and branches to build the road, his shoes fill with mud, his shirt and pants become wet and muddy. Another work team returning to retrieve logs for construction passes on his left side, and one of its laborers bumps him in passing, forcing him to stumble and splash more mud on himself. He loses his grip on the damp log he is carrying, and it falls from his hands. Edward moves as if to confront his antagonist, who has purposely bumped him. His notion is correct. The insolent soldier turns and demands, Get out of my way, shorty.

Oh boy, look out! There it is, a challenge that must be answered, and Edward’s temper has been called into action. The messiness of walking in the mud is suddenly not important to him. Private John Engle, a soldier near Edward’s five feet seven inches height and just as muddy and is carrying the back end of the log Private Connery has dropped, quickly moves to grab his shoulder and says, Edward, this will be trouble you don’t want! That is Nathan Isler, who is always looking for trouble! Your fight is with the secesh! That behavior will get you strung up by your thumbs!

Edward replies, I don’t like an insult not being answered. It is not right. He considers that face of the enemy thing, understanding it would be best for his interests to ignore Isler’s slight. He regains his now muddy end of the log and continues on, taking note of Nathan and strangely feeling better about not having a conflict. This change of attitude is new and surprising.

Much like Edward, Nate’s bullying nature also stems from a lack of a strong father figure in the home. His father was killed in one of the many conflicts that occurred between bordering Germanic tribes of Europe. Also absent was a caring mother who would see that he matured with a respectful attitude. On such seemingly unimportant events are people’s future shaped.

*****

Connery’s combative nature springs from his lack of a father figure upon whom he could have based his behavior. His father left the family when he was six years old, and his mother remarried when he was twelve. The day his father deserted the family, Edward followed him down the hallway, tears in his eyes, pleading, Daddy, please don’t go. His sorrows were more than a young man should have to bear; hell, they were more than anyone of any age should bear. He went to live with relatives, also in Manhattan, shortly after his mother’s death two years later.

The two boys were sent to live with relatives, where they were treated with disdain. Their guardians certainly did not need two more mouths to feed. He sold newspapers on the streets and defended himself and his profits when he had to. A sixteen-year-old orphan in 1850s New York City had better learn to defend himself, and Edward became a ready student. Backing down from any confrontation seemed to him to be beyond what he felt should be suffered. Because of his feeling he had to prove himself as equal to everyone else, he became quick to accept an insult. One day when having breakfast at the shelf where he took his meals, separate from his guardians’ table, he felt that a particularly vile comment had been directed at him. He pushed his stool back, stood, and announced, I am not going to take this treatment anymore! I deserve to be treated as though I am somebody! He then packed what few items he called his own and left, never looking back. His destination was Jolliet, Illinois, where his brother, Thomas, had gone two years earlier when he felt he must leave. Edward then worked as a hired hand on the farm with his brother and became fortunate enough to be hired permanently. They continued working on the farm for two years. When the Civil War descended upon the country, he joined an Illinois Artillery Battery. He felt it was time for him to expand his limits and help reunite his country.

*****

While building this road to his eagerly anticipated first battle, he hears booming cannons and an ominous quiet when the fort surrenders, silently signaling to Edward that he is too late to fight the traitors. After being blasted into submission by the navy’s ironclad gunboats, the fort has surrendered to the Navy.

Edward’s Battery camps in the ruined fort’s earthworks. Edward, full of emotion, was ready for real action and is disappointed at the rebels’ surrender. He had hoped for a chance to teach the rebels a lesson. He is part of the United States Army, and with its help, this would have been an easy lesson to convey.

After staying in the fort for two days, or camping as Edward refers to it, they march and haul cannons and wagons through the mud for ten miles to the next enemy stronghold, Fort Donelson, where it guards the Cumberland River as it flows into the heart of Tennessee. Edward hopes after arriving at the intended battle site he will get his chance to see the elephant, which is a colorful way of referring to seeing combat for the first time. When he does see the elephant, he will discover it is more unpleasant than he had anticipated.

General Grant takes this opportunity during an unexpected snowfall to visit the navy’s Captain Foote aboard one of his nearby ironclads, who have traversed down the Tennessee from Fort Henry. After traveling to the Ohio, the Captain then moves his little fleet to the nearby Cumberland River, north of Fort Donelson.

The commander of Edward’s Division, General McClernand, perceives this absence of General Grant as a chance to act independently of his restraint and attacks the Confederates in his front. This is at best a stalemate. Edward’s earlier thought of We will soon turn the tide of this war! was premature. His gun is brought forward, and he unhitches the horses’ harness from his gun and holds the animals a distance behind it. He questions a soldier who was also restraining another team of horses, Does holding the horses qualify as seeing the elephant?

His question is gruffly answered. If you’re on the battlefield, you’re fighten’.

The hot artillery shells set fire to bushes and trees, threatening to engulf wounded Union infantrymen who were attacking the graycoats. The rebels shout for the Yankees to retrieve their wounded, and they will not be fired on as they rescue their mates. The burning bushes and ground cover are in stark contrast with the recently falling snow, which is now blowing lightly against Edward’s face and hands.

The federals do not believe the rebels and do not move to the rescue. The Southern troops, seeing no effort to retrieve the imminent victims, scramble over their works and pull the wounded Union soldiers to captivity. The rescued Yankees are now prisoners of war. Edward sees the rescue and realizes the rebels have some good in them, even if they are traitors.

After McClernand’s Division is repulsed, the Confederates seize the opportunity to break out of their encirclement and push the Federals beyond their original line. Then Col. Nathan Forrest’s Confederate Cavalry overruns Battery D. Union Artillerist Corp. Nathan Isler, while executing his duty and realizing how close the rebels are, drops the sponge staff and leaves his post. His fear of the rebels’ sword blades is influencing his decision to abandon his post. The threat of a Southern saber or bayonet running a person through is a great motivator.

*****

Edward, troubled by a serious internal ailment for the last week, is holding the horses, ready to move his section’s guns when called for. He is also growing anxious about the rebels’ approach and tenses for flight. He sees Nathan drop the staff and leave his station with the gun; in other words, he has deserted. Connery knows something must be done to save his gun and its crew. Alerting others, he yells to no one in particular, Somebody take these reins! which he drops and painfully runs to the guns’ vacated station and seizes the abandoned ramrod staff.

Edward replicates what he has often performed during practice drills—wet sponge twice. Then when the powder and shot are placed down the barrel, he rams them home with the other end of the staff. His ears are covered with his hands just before the loud BANG. Despite his pain, he then helps roll the gun forward from its recoil position to its original location. Little time is lost in the exchange of crewmen, but disaster is always as near as Edward’s persistent pain. His battery mates are looking at him in surprise.

Two more shots are fired, when the captain recognizes the peril and gives the order to retreat. This removed the duty Edward felt to continue his charade of being well, and he performs his duty. His internal ailment is troubling, and his mind is measuring his ability to continue, and he collapses. His mind is not dictating his reactions; his body is. His internal pain, caused by days of drinking polluted river water and living in unsanitary conditions, has finally overtaken him.

Two of the section’s horses are killed, which makes the removal of its guns impossible. Of course, his own crew supposed Edward to be dead or badly wounded because only his back side is visible, and he is left behind with the remaining horses and guns. The rebels, also knowing he is out of the battle, gallop past him. He has the presence of mind to bury his face in the recent snow and play dead as if his life depends on it. There is no question; it does!

While Connery is feigning death, the feel of his wet clothing is irritating, and the smell of burned gunpowder floods his nose, keeping him alert. He has seen enough of the elephant this day to satisfy his appetite for combat, and he wants to be alive when this incident is over. Reuniting the nation will be painful and take longer than anyone thought would be necessary.

The rebels then ride on, looking for more Yankee cannon to capture and infantry to overrun. Nathan Bedford Forrest will become a scourge and a feared enemy of the Union during the remaining years of this war. The artillerists of Battery D are lucky to escape with their lives.

*****

Private Connery will be reunited with his battery mates with some difficulty after the secesh retire back into the fort when recalled by their inept commanders. They assume they will retake the cannons tomorrow, which is why they do not spike the enemy’s guns, rendering them useless. There will, however, be no more action for these guns by anyone today or tomorrow.

The next battlefield activity will be the surrender by the rebels and the desertion of the top two secessionist officers. The fault for this surrender falls to the officers who fled after passing command to the third officer in command, Gen. Simon Bolivar Buckner. He will fulfill his duty on assuming command and surrender himself and the troops to Gen. U. S. Grant.

*****

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in the stars, but in ourselves.

—Julius Caesar, William Shakespeare

*****

The fault in this surrender lies in Generals John B. Floyd and Gordon J. Pillow, who surrendered their responsibility. Overnight, the two deserting generals had lost what little courage they possessed and will not have another position of such responsibility again. Nathan will also be accused of deserting. He blames Edward for being charged with abandoning his duty. In Nathan Isler’s eyes, Private Connery’s return from death is unfortunate.

*****

Space is limited on the boats at the fort because they are busy transporting rebel prisoners to stockades in the North. However, a small vessel has been found to transport Edward and others with minor wounds to the U.S. Military Hospital at Mound City, Illinois, to recover. He thinks, If I survive this trip, I am probably too healthy to need a hospital. Nonetheless, he is sitting upright on the seats along each side of the riverboat on the way to Mound City. He is suffering from stomach cramps but does not complain when the pain becomes nearly intolerable.

He stayed at the hospital for two days, nearly the amount of time taken to get to the hospital. Feeling guilty about all the fuss over his health and feeling better, he asked for a release, which the doctors did not approve. Being certain his health allowed him to return to the front, he found another soldier from his battery scheduled to leave but did not want to return to combat.

Easy solution. He and another patient named George traded papers with the soldiers scheduled for release who did not wish to return and left in their place.

*****

The escapees are now traveling unarmed through a territory inhabited by secessionists, if not sworn Confederate soldiers. Wagon rides are reluctantly granted by Southern citizens. Provisions are grudgingly provided to the two soldiers by unwilling farmers from their chicken coops and gardens on their trip back to their unit. Grant, in his coming campaigns, will use this method to feed his army on long marches through enemy territory.

They travel to where their unit has been moved to, Savannah, Tennessee, which is fifty miles farther south than where they had left their unit. They are challenged by sentries. When unable to produce the correct identification papers, a sergeant of the guard is summoned. They are then conducted to the Cherry Mansion, Grant’s headquarters.

A captain, with a look of annoyance, opens the door in response to the guard’s repeated rapping. After an explanation is offered by the apprehending sergeant, General Grant is summoned while Edward and George fearfully wait. When the general appears, he looks just as Edward had remembered. He is a nondescript man of Edward’s five feet seven inches height and not appearing at all as Edward expected a commanding general to look. He does not have the trappings of an important general and does not appear as such to Edward except for the deference the attending officers give to him. His look of self-confidence and the firm grip of his lips on his cigar announces that he is about serious business. The general looks at Corporal Connery and, after removing the unlit cigar, asks, Why have you two deserted, soldier?

Edward is certainly intimidated to begin with, and the word deserted in the general’s self-assured manner is a fearful omen. Deserters are usually shot and forgotten about. In the most assuring voice he can manage, Edward, with fear being exposed, answers, General, we left the hospital to return to the front and fight, and we have the wrong orders because the doctors would not release us to return to our battery. So we traded orders with two men who did not wish to return. After seconds pass by, Edward suddenly remembers that he has neglected the most essential word and blurts out in a voice whose high sound surprises him, Sir.

Part of his impulse for the tardy sir was because of the fear that if he did not please the general, he may be struck dead on the spot for neglecting protocol, or he would be taken to a nearby tree and hung. Even worse, he may be seriously reproached by the general in words not to be heard by a mere mortal, leaving his manhood left as a pile of waste on the doorsill.

The late display of protocol brings a faint smile to the general’s face as he turns to the sentries and says, These are two good ol’ boys. You may take them to their unit, but see that they get there. Both of them are thankful as Grant disappears behind the large door. Relief is also good for George who did not have to speak with the general or look him in the eye. Both are grateful for Grant’s response.

*****

Pitts Tucker is an entrepreneur supplying hardware and hangovers from a tavern he owns and operates near the Mississippi border on the Tennessee River. The location is modestly named Pittsburg Landing. The landing is a no-frills-boat mooring whose surrounding acres contain modest cabins and sections of cultivated land, separated by large areas of woods and creeks. These small fields are accessed by a limited number of dirt roads, which are often muddy.

His establishment serves the small local population in this section of Tennessee and nearby Corinth, Mississippi, twenty miles south of Savannah. Small shipments are received and sent from Pitts Tavern, which also performs its most important functions, quenching thirsts and providing occasional hangovers. Pitts has heard the news of a U.S. Army in his neighborhood, commanded by Gen. U. S. Grant, who has recently been returned to command of his army.

Pitts shows his indifference to the leadership of the Yankee Army during these early months of the war by voicing his opinion that the Union Army is in disarray. He announces, The whole damn United States Army doesn’t even know who is in charge anymore. I doubt that they will win another fight before they figure it out and will have to give up. Why must they try to change our way of life in Tennessee? They should just get the hell out of here!

His partisan comment is alluding to General Grant’s demotion after his recent victory at Fort Donelson. He is subsequently replaced by General Smith, himself to soon be replaced by that same General Grant. Pitts has every right to be confused. Ulysses S. Grant is baffled about his place in his superior’s eyes. The simple answer to the question, why did the winning general get demoted, rests with General Halleck’s dissatisfaction with Grant and Halleck’s dishonesty toward him.

His jealousy of Ulysses for being the one getting the public attention for capturing the forts is weighing on him. General Halleck wants General Grant out of his army and is doing his best to bring about this objective, all the while falsely confiding to Grant his support for him. The president hearing of the situation questions Halleck about the details that, with an injury to Gen. C. F. Smith, allows the reinstatement of Grant to command. The situation is as Pitts Tucker had said, Damn, United States Army doesn’t even know who is in charge anymore.

Pres. Abraham Lincoln had encouraged General Halleck, the Commander of the Union Department of the Missouri, to reconsider Grant’s demotion and keep the general who had recently won an important Union victory. Rank and results will trump all, and the president is obeyed. The result is that General Grant is returned to his rightful position. Pitts Tucker is right about one thing. Until this rebel capitulation, the war was going badly for the Union, and this failure mystifies those on the Union side.

Pitts is, by this time, pleased with the possibility of an army living nearly on the doorstep of his tavern. What could be better for business than thousands of thirsty young men nearby and the army’s construction crews and laborers called pioneers by the army, all needing lubrication (everyone needs a drink now and then) and hardware? What a challenge, both good and bad, could result. His suspicion is that good will prevails for now, and money will flow into his tavern as sunshine through an open window. This body of the Union troops is here to attack the rebels. Southerners do not think of themselves as rebels; they think they are patriots who happen to be seceding and are loyal to their new country. Just as the original Americans had revolted in 1776, this rebel army is part of a revolt and is gathering at Corinth to protect the Confederate’s railroad crossing of the North-South and East-West railroad supply lines. The proprietor is concerned that his customers from nearby villages and hamlets or frequent river travelers might be inconvenienced by the presence of these intruders into Tennessee.

Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman’s Division of this army had been upstream from Savannah at Pittsburgh Landing about four weeks previously when they chased off a few Confederate scouts. After seeing the site, he thought, This will be a good position to gather a force to expel the Confederates from Corinth.

*****

All the flowers of tomorrow are in the seeds of today.

—Chinese Proverb

On an early day in 1862, the wind is gently blowing across a field bordering the Tennessee River ten miles downriver of Pittsburg Landing and will deposit the seed of a daisy flower. A kernel of which is part of the leftovers of a hawk feasting on the bloom’s core, which lands nearby in the moist earth, seed and sustenance—the ingredients of life.

That seed will become a flower in full bloom on March 24, when it will proudly be presenting itself and waiting for a beautiful young Southern Belle whose brown hair has been lightened by exposure to the sun. She values the flower’s beauty as she gathers it from the earth, separating the flower from the root. She finds its beauty irresistible and wants it to be hers. This pretty flower will set in motion events that will echo in people’s lives for many years to come. As a result, events touching lives will be turned loose from Vicksburg, Mississippi, to