It Left a Mark

An old photograph on flickr has been recognized as Phineas Gage, the man who survived having a tamping iron shot through his head:

http://www.switched.com/2010/01/25/lost-photo-of-medical-marvel-phineas-gage-found-on-flickr/?icid=mainhtmlws-main-wdl7link6http%3A%2F%2Fwww.switched.com%2F2010%2F01%2F25%2Flost-photo-of-medical-marvel-phineas-gage-found-on-flickr%2F

"It's Just a Cap Wound"

"May 19th, 1864, Thursday

Dear Father,

I had the front part of my Cap shot off by a Minie Ball, It knocked it off of my head and made me feel a little strange about the top knot. I would like to send my Cap home if I could get the chance. ... Your Son Daniel Chisholm"

"Thursday, January 19, 1865: Corporal Daniel Chisholm returned to us today, he was badly wounded on the shin June 16th 1864....On the evening of May 5th, 1864 in the first engagement that we participated in at the battle of the Wilderness, he had the front part of his cap pierced by a Minie Ball--tearing the whole front part of it out, passing through his hair above his forehead. It was a narrow escape for had it of been one half inch lower he would have been killed. While in the Hospital at City Point one of the Christian Commission seen his cap and told him he would attend to forwarding it home for him to his father, as it would be a great curiosity and show how near he had come to being killed. He did so and now it hangs in his room at his home."

-- Sergeant Samuel Clear

From The Civil War Notebook of Daniel Chisholm (Orion Books, 1989)

Churchill He Ain't

Stephen Harper, the dazzlingly eloquent PM of Canada, explains his modest country's modest goals in Afghanistan:

"We are not ever going to ever defeat the insurgency. Afghanistan has probably had -- [based on] my reading of history -- an insurgency forever of some kind ... We have to have an Afghan government that is capable of managing that insurgency and improving its own governance."

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/04/22/canada.afghanistan/index.html

"Down prejudice, and patriot for shame!"

One of my favorite Civil War images: a fanciful newspaper woodcut of U.S. Colored Troops fighting rebels and their bloodhounds.

In 1863 a small book was published in New York. Palmetto Pictures featured the collected poems of Volney Hickox, a 27-year old Union Army staff officer in the occupied south. It's dedicated "To My Class, '57, at Yale, This Year Assembling" and he probably intended to impress his college buddies (a six-year reunion sounds a bit unusual to me, especially during wartime, but Ivy Leaguers are often a world apart).

Volney was my great-great-great grandfather George's cousin, although the two probably never met; Volney's father had left upstate New York (where Volney was born in 1835) for up-and-coming Illinois. As a lawyer in Springfield, Volney came to know Abraham Lincoln, who wrote a letter recommending him for graduate studies at Yale. Volney's poetic efforts failed to make a big splash, but he did go on to have journalistic adventures in New Orleans and Mexico.

A statement on emancipation and Confederate sympathizers from Palmetto Pictures:

Next heard that watchword spoken from the heart
Of contest--"Arm the blacks"--an echo start
Quick at whose sound, the country leaps to aid,
Brigade exceeding everywhere brigade.
Nay, still the negro's right to equal place
Obstructed as of an inferior race
Thwarted and cheated in his humblest claims,
In vain to talk to him of higher aims
For thirty days, lo here, the armed patrol
With drums parade a culprit with this scroll--
Read.--"This man has been mean enough to
steal
A negro's pittance"--notable appeal!
Down prejudice, and patriot for shame!
Is freedom Justice or an empty name?
Again--a ship from Ancient Augustine,
With parasitic spitfires, full of spleen,
Distilled from army rations, venomed drones,
You give them bread, get serpents, fishes stones.
"Send them across the lines" and cut them off--
What feed at our expense at whome they scoff!
The rotten reeking animalculae
And vermined vinegar of slavery!
Yes, let the President, with smooth salaam,
Present its own Vallandigham,
The "Copperhead" to mate the "rattle snake,"
Together destined for the burning lake.
The ghastly prodigies of double dearth
Wreathing the lamp and writhing on the
hearth--
Scotch them and out upon the maudlin tear
Would drip upon a double Traitor's bier!
God grant it be impossible this strife
Can cease till Slavery yields its life.

Hickox here comes out strongly in favor of abolition and deporting enemy sympathizers like Clement Vallandigham. I can imagine the reaction of his uncle Virgil if he ever got a chance to read his nephew's book. Virgil Hickox was a prominent Illinois Democrat and is mentioned in the Official Records as being involved in pro-Confederate groups during the Civil War. In May of 1861, on his deathbed, the renowned Democratic leader Stephen A. Douglas wrote the last letter he ever composed to Hickox, calling on "every friend of constitutional liberty to rally to the aid of our common country." The letter was published after Douglas' death--against the advice of Hickox.

I wonder if Volney had his troublesome uncle in mind when he composed his angry lines. Now, I will be the first to admit that I have a difficult time separating the "wheat from the chaff" when it comes to poetry, but I think the portion quoted above offers a fascinating look at an idealistic young officer. (I particularly like the emphasis on "steal.") "Ancient Augustine" is a reference to St. Augustine, Florida. I suspect that rhyming "salaam" with "Vallandigham" was probably the greatest literary accomplishment in the life of Volney Hickox.

The Great Red Way

From International Historic Films Catalog 19-C:

"EAST SIDE STORY"

This delirious documentary unveils a part of film history until now unknown in the west: Communist musicals. Featuring hearty peasants and workers singing and dancing their way through fields and factories, these Hollywood-style musicals interpret American escapism in socialist terms...making East Side Story a one-of-a-kind "That's Entertainment, Comrade!"