Sunday, December 23, 2012

Three WBTS Christmas Stories


The North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission
“Christmas in Wartime -- 1861-1865”


Black Santa's Save Christmas in 1864

"It was a grim hour for all of the South when William Tecumseh Sherman (was) marching relentlessly through Georgia...(and) A young mother has caught much of the pathos of the hour in several brief entries in her diary. Dolly Sumner Lunt, from Maine, married a planter who lived near Covington, Georgia. Three years before the start of the war her husband died, and as Mrs. Thomas Burge, Dolly continued on the estate with her daughter "Sadai" Sarah. The Burges were still there when Sherman's men passed, and many of the plantation Negroes, afraid of the soldiers, slipped into the house to be with their mistress.

On Christmas Eve, Mrs. Burge described her preparations for a bleak meal, her attempts to provide the plainest of presents for her remaining servants. "Now how changed!" she wrote, "No confectionery, cakes or pies can I have. We are all sad...Christmas Eve, which has ever been gaily celebrated here, which has witnessed the popping of firecrackers and the hanging up of stockings, is an occasion now of sadness and gloom." Worse, she had nothing to put in her Sadai's stocking, "which hangs so inviting for Santa Claus."

On Christmas night Mrs. Burge penned a sorrowful afternote: "Sadai jumped out of bed very early this morning to feel in her stocking. She could not believe but that there would be something in it. Finding nothing, she crept back into bed, pulled the cover over her face, and I soon heard her sobbing." A moment later the young Negroes had run in: "Christmas gift, Mist'ess! Christmas gift, Mist'ess!"  Mrs. Burge drew the over her own face and wept beside her daughter.

The next year, Christmas came more happily to the Burge plantation. On December 24 (1865) the mother gave thanks to God for His goodness "in preserving my life and so much of my property." And on Christmas Day she added: 

"Sadai woke very early and crept out of bed to her stocking. Seeing it well-filled, she soon had a light and eight little Negroes around her, gazing upon the treasures. Everything opened that could be divided was shared with them. "Tis the last Christmas, probably, that we shall be together, freedmen! Now you will, I trust, have your own homes and be joyful under your own vine and fig tree."

(The Southern Christmas Book, Harnett T. Kane, David McKay Company, 1958, pp. 205-206)

Christmas After Fredericksburg, 1862

“After the battle of Fredericksburg [December 11-15, 1862] the fine weather, clear, cold and bracing, which we had been having, changed into a real Virginia winter with a good deal of the Northern thrown in. It snowed, froze, thawed and rained by turns, with here and there bright days. All military operations were brought to a close, and both armies went into winter quarters. The latter part of December was fearful; a long rain followed the battle , then a hard, bitter freeze came.  So intense was the cold that the men did nothing but cower over the fire piled high with wood night and day….the earth was frozen as hard as granite; the streams were solid: Ice King held all nature in a relentless grasp.

The Christmas of 1862 was cheerless indeed; the weather was frightful, and a heavy snowstorm covered everything a foot deep. Each soldier attempted to get a dinner in honor of the day, and those to whom boxes had been sent succeeded to a most respectable degree, but those unfortunates whose homes were outside the lines had nothing whatever delectable partaking of the nature of Christmas. Well! It would have puzzled [anyone] to furnish a holiday dinner out of a pound of fat pork, six crackers, and a quarter of a pound of dried apples. We all had apple dumplings that day, which with sorghum molasses were not to be despised.

Some of the men became decidedly hilarious, and then again some did not; not because they had joined the temperance society nor because they were opposed to the use of intoxicating liquors, but because not a soul invited them to step up and partake. One mess in the Seventeenth [Regiment] did not get so much as a smell during the whole of the holidays; and a dry, dismal old time it proved.

We read in the Richmond papers of the thousands and thousands of boxes that had been passed en route to the army, sent by the ladies of Richmond and other cities, but few found their way to us. The greater part of them were for the troops from the far South who were too distant from their homes to receive anything from their own families. The Virginians were supposed to have been cared for by their own relatives and friends; but some of them were not, as we all know.”

(The Christmas After Fredericksburg, Civil War Christmas Album, Philip Van Doren, editor, Hawthorne Books, 1961, page 23)


Christmas Letter to Lee’s Daughter

Coosawatchie, South Carolina, December 25, 1861

“My Dear Daughter,

Having distributed such poor Christmas gifts as I had to those around me, I have been looking for something for you. Trifles even are hard to get in these war times, and you must not therefore expect more. I have sent you what I thought most useful in your separation from me and hope it will be of some service.

Though stigmatized as “vile dross,” it has never been a drug with me. That you may never want for it, restrict your wants to your necessities. Yet how little it will purchase! But see how God provides for our pleasure in every way. To compensate for such “trash,” I send you some sweet violets that I gathered for you this morning while covered with dense white frost, whose crystals glittered in the bright sun like diamonds, and formed a brooch of great beauty and sweetness which could not be fabricated by the expenditure of a world of money.

May God guard and preserve you for me, my dear daughter! Among the calamities of war, the hardest to bear, perhaps, is the separation of families and friends. Yet all must be endured to accomplish our independence and maintain our self-government. In my absence from you I have thought of you very often and regretted I could do nothing for your comfort. Your old home, if not destroyed by our enemies, has been so desecrated that I cannot bear to think of it. I should have preferred it to have been wiped from the earth, its beautiful hill sunk, and its sacred trees buried rather than to have been degraded by the presence of those who revel in the ill they do for their own selfish purposes.

I pray for a better spirit and that the hearts of our enemies may be changed. In your homeless condition I hope you make yourself contented and useful. Occupy yourself in aiding those more helpless than yourself. Think always of your father.   R.E. Lee.” 

(And to One of His Daughters, Civil War Christmas Album, Philip Van Doren, editor, Hawthorne Books, 1961, page 19)

1 comment:

  1. Very touching, thank you.

    Merry Christmas,

    Tino

    ReplyDelete