THE PAST
Our "War Between the States" officially began in 1861, but most of us in western Pennsylvania had been ignoring it for a decade or two before that - living in a bubble of our own creating. The War was about slavery - well, mostly - and Pennsylvania was not a "slave state." Probably most of us living in Clearfield County had never seen an actual slave. Probably the majority of us "opposed" slavery, in general terms, but with us not hearing much about it, it was easy to ignore. Few of us believed the claims from the South that their slaves were "happy as clams" - considering that some known atrocities were hard to overlook! - but what could we do about anything? Our "founding fathers" had wrestled - to no avail - with the problem, since our nation was created = although, since most of our founders were slave owners, there is some question about how hard they "wrestled. Anyway, right or wrong, slavery was "wrong," but not a big issue for us.
Perhaps I can be forgiven some of my lack of interest and awareness during the early 1850s, because I often was in the West, where there were no slaves, and very little information available about what was going on elsewhere in the world. Interestingly, I did hear quite a bit about slavery while in Oregon. It was not a slave area, and never destined to be, but many of the new arrivals came from the South. They couldn't bring their slaves with them, but they brought a lot of their ideas and prejudices. The Pacific states were never officially in the War, but there were many personal skirmishes among the new residents, mostly just verbal but occasionally more involved.
One thing that is frequently pointed to as a leading cause of the war was the runaway slaves law,. In their ongoing attempt to both abolish and encourage slavery, Congress in 1850 declared that everybody had to return runaway slaves to their masters, no matter where they had escaped to. Many in the North felt that made them parties to preserving slavery. They not only failed to enforce the law, many Northerners actively worked with the so-called "underground railroads" to help Negroes to escape north to Canada. (I didn't know it at the time, but one very active "railroad" ran north through the town of Clearfield, helped along by some of my neighbors!)
From 1856 through 1859, Annie and I managed to remain blissfully ignorant of what was going on it the outer world. I taught school and worked in the general store, and between us we managed to produce two fine boy children. We knew that Abe Lincoln was elected President in the 1860 election, but didn't know much about him, and had no idea what his election would mean for the nation. Already upset with the northern states' resistance to the runaway slave law, Southern leaders expected Lincoln to be even less sympathetic to slavery and to other "states’ rights" issues - the same issues that had existed and been ignored since the country's founding, In 1860, South Carolina declared that they longer considered themselves part of the United States. Ten more states eventually followed them out of the Union, where they consolidated themselves as the Confederate States of America.
Lawmakers remaining with the Union claimed the secession was unconstitutional, but what could be done about it? The only way the Southern states would return is if the North gave them what they wanted - slavery. The North wouldn't do that. Apparently, we were stalemated.
However, the rebels had a non-diplomatic way out of the impasse. They demanded that the Union Army turn over to the Confederacy their facilities at Charleston Harbor, and leave the area. The Army refused, and the rebels laid siege to Fort Sumpter, eventually capturing it in 1861. No war was every officially declared by either side, but suddenly it was full speed ahead. Men from all states rushed to join one or the other army. The intent of the rebels was clear - maintain their separation from the Union, and continue to have slavery. I think Northern motives were a little more obscure. Were we fighting to end slavery, or as Abe Lincoln expressed it, were we fighting to "preserve the Union?" Whatever, both sides fought with a viciousness that I think was different than most wars I have heard of. I thought wars were won by strategy; this one seemed only about killing - and the killing was not of foreigners or strangers, but of brothers, cousins, and former friends.
Like most other men, I enlisted in the Army - although, mine was a re-enlistment, with credit given for my service in the Mexican War (the entirety of my "service" being spent in a Mexican hospital bed!). A number of us formed our own Clearfield Company D, of the 14th Pennsylvania Militia. We fought in a number of skirmishes, the longest and most significant being a week in June 1862 that we spent near the Chickahominy River in Virginia. It was a horrible, bloody series of battles, with both sides losing heavily. but with the rebels eventually "winning" that particular confrontation. I remember how we had to lay for a full day among the corpses of the dead from both sides, while the enemy kept us pinned down with constant shelling. It was in that same series of battles - actually, while we were retreating to a more favorable location - that I was shot in the leg. It wasn't very serious - although I had a slight limp the rest of my life - but it was enough to make me unfit for duty, and I was mustered out. I took the job with the Provost Marshal, while the fighting continued for another three years.
PRESENT DAY
It is 1867, two years since the War ended. Annie and I are at home in Janesville, with two growing boys, and a daughter added just after I had enlisted. Except for my pension, we are through with the Army. After my near-assassination by Tom Adams and his band of deserters and resisters, I once again asked the Provost Marshal to send the Army to arrest them. My request was once again denied, so I resigned, and came home to stay.
(You may be interested to know that, shortly after I retired, a troop was sent to arrest the band. A dozen or so men were taken into custody, with no resistance. Adams, the leader, refused to be captured, killed one soldier while trying to make his escape, and was himself gunned down. There was no further trouble of that kind in the county. The Provost Marshal office was disbanded at the end of the War, there being no more need for it.)
After the War, I learned that my brother Andrew had been killed at Chickahominy, in the same series of battles in which I had received my wound and discharge. Brother Abe - the map-maker - I learned had fought throughout the War, finally going back to his life in Pittsburgh, unwounded and unscarred.
As for the War itself, it is said that over half a million men were killed in battle. An equal number were either seriously wounded, or disappeared and were never heard from, again. Deaths included, of course, the assassination of President Lincoln, just days before the South surrendered. The Southern states were forced back into the Union, into a "union" that had never existed, and was now even less likely, since the South had the additional grievance that we had destroyed their livelihood and economy, by abolishing slavery. I don't know what good can come to that kind of a realigned alliance!
The slaves were freed, but to an uncertain future. I'm sure that Lincoln had at least some plans for bringing them into society. For example, many thousands of acres of land had been confiscated from rebel land owners, and were to be given to Negro families to start their own farms. Andrew Johnson, President after Lincoln, and strongly sympathetic to the South, returned all those lands to the rebels, leaving the emancipated Negroes with nothing. Many found themselves forced to work for their former "owners," doing the same slave-labor they had presumably been freed from. Southerners continued to treat them as barely human, and did everything they could (in the name of "states' rights!") to deny them their freedom. The Federal government did little to intervene or help.
I fear our country has a long, hard road ahead us, before any peace or stability is reached.
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