I should have written this 23 years
ago. I’m not sure why I didn’t. Maybe it was too sad; maybe it was too
intimate. It was, indeed, heartbreaking, and it did,
indeed, touch me at my core. It’s time,
because it is now relevant. Many who
read this will say, “Huh? Relevant to
what?” Others will nod, and say,
“Yep.” I accept that, but even so, it’s
still time.
In April of 1990, I took part in the 125th anniversary reenactment of the battles of Sayler’s Creek and Cumberland Church, and the surrender of Lee’s army at Appomattox, Va.. What follows is an excerpt from my memoir of that event.
The next morning [after the Battle of Sayler’s Creek] we
broke camp and drove to the staging area for the surrender ceremony. Again, we were the second of three
battalions, drawn up in a little draw, facing a road that ran up to the McLean
house, to our left. We were told, “Do
NOT march in step,” and it was repeated several times. I assume it was to prevent showing anyone
that we still had any pride or spirit left, though both Chamberlain’s and
Gordon’s memoirs speak of the precision of the Confederate drill that
morning. The melancholy from the previous
night was with us still, but different.
I can’t describe it. There was
sadness, but a bit of rebelliousness, too.
It wasn’t an overt, or outward rebelliousness, but rather the sullen,
“Damned if I will,” that a slave might mutter as he spits on the ground as his
master walks away.
The first battalion was to our
right. They were given he command to
face right, then march by files left twice, so they marched by us from right to
left, their colors waving gently. Were
they marching in step? Oh, my
goodness! That army never marched so well! Not a sergeant called cadence, but that
thunder of their heels on the gravel at precisely 110 steps per minute rolled
up the draw ahead of them. I believe
you’d have had to shoot those boys to keep them from marching in step. As we watched them pass by, we saw a world of
mixed emotions in their faces. Many
wept, many more were about to, and some had masks of repressed emotions that
were known only to God at that moment.
We had an overwhelming sense that we were watching the ghosts of
brothers march past us into legend.
Then it was our turn. Right, FACE!
By files left, MARCH! By files
left, MARCH! And we were taking our turn
up that road. The Third Battalion
watched us go, and my heart tells me they saw the same expressions, and heard
the same perfect cadence of our steps as the Grand old First Battalion had
shown. Moving now, there was precious
little time to reflect. I know my face
was drawn into a terrible scowl as I fought to suppress the tears and the
shouts of rage. We topped the rise, and
there was the First Battalion, faced front, about 15 feet from the Yankee
infantry. The Yanks stood as if they
were carved of stone. Nothing moved but
their flags. Battalion, HALT! FRONT!
Right, DRESS! As I moved along
the ranks of my company, perfecting their alignment, I saw other first
sergeants doing the same, and I knew none of
us would be caught with the tiniest imperfection on that day.
Then it came. That order we’d all
known would come, but somehow, never really believed would. Fix, BAYONETS! Rifles moved left and hands moved in numb
memory. Bayonets clinked onto muzzles
and locking rings clicked, then rifles moved back to the right. At this moment, I happened to look into the
face of a Yankee first sergeant across the way.
He was an old fart, like me, and his expression was one of – well, I’ll
be damned – sadness! The private next to
him, however, showed a flicker of fear as we fixed bayonets. The Yankee rifles were naked, and at that
distance, we could have had every one of ‘em before they could have
reacted. They knew it, and we knew it,
but honor in the form of the spirits that swarmed around us kept our passions
in check.
Stack, ARMS! The movements that had baffled us years ago,
but had been learned through practice on hundreds of fields and roads moved the
rifles forward and mated them into neat stacks of four rifles each, bayonets
upward. As I write this, the emotions
that filled me return like hammers, and I don’t know how I can express
them. I must, though, because it is
time.
I watched the stacks forming, and
when it was my turn, I handed Annie to the corporal at the head of the front
rank, and watched him lean her carefully against the stack. There.
I’d done it. I’d handed my rifle
over to the enemy, and stood before him feeling naked and helpless. And defeated.
Hell, even castrated. In that moment, I understood all of the rhetoric
that has swirled and blasted our society about the right to keep and bear arms,
and the real meaning of the 2nd Amendment. I was
here, in my place in the rear rank, and Annie was there, three feet from
me. I wasn’t allowed to touch her, to
snap her to the order, to shoulder her, and most of all, not allowed to move
her to my left side and pour a charge down her throat, to then ram a gray ball
down on top of the charge, pivot to my right, swing her before me, put a cap on
her cone and prepare to fire in the defense of my home, my family, my would-be
nation, indeed, of my very dreams. She
was taken from me, and had some Yankee stepped up, grabbed her from the stack,
and swung her against a tree, my sense of loss could not have been greater.
The order came to remove our belts
and cartridge boxes and hang them over the bayonets. Then our colors were carefully rolled around
their staffs and the staffs laid across the stacks, like fence rails. Several companies found their iron grips on
their emotions break at this point. They
ripped their colors off the poles and, with harsh strokes of bowie knives, cut
them into scraps, each man taking one as a talisman that almost none would ever
understand. The battalion commander was
given the canton of a Stainless Banner.
I’ll bet anything in this world he still has it, and woe to the man who
disrespects it.
Right, FACE! We faced right and doubled, almost floating
away because of the lack of weight. My right
arm literally cramped from the absence of Annie. Many other men experienced the same
thing. We were marched a short distance
to a corral, ringed with wire fence and Yankee infantry. We spread our ponchos and blankets in the wet
grass and sat down in silence. After a
while, quiet conversation started up, and after that the irrepressible spirit
of the men asserted itself and someone started singing. A few gathered twigs and boiled coffee. I ate half the hardtack cracker that had been
given me the day before. But we sat,
thinking, and I know there was not a man but felt the helplessness of sitting
there, penned up like bloody sheep, in the presence of our enemies. For the rest of our lives, we would never be
entirely free of the realization that we lived and walked about only at the
pleasure of the government. Since that
moment, I have never been entirely free of the nagging thought that, had the
ceremony been real, my life would have been held in trust – not really mine –
and the government would have owned the paper on it. It was then and is now a feeling so revolting
and humiliating that I pray none of my countrymen, Northerner or Southerner,
ever feels it.
Jeff Cooper is quoted as saying that
when you pick up a rifle, you are transformed from a subject into a
citizen. The profundity of that
statement was lost on me before I sat in that corral and watched Yankees walk
past our arms and look at Annie and the others, and there wasn’t a damned thing
in the world I could do about it. A
well-armed person, man or woman, is a force to be reckoned with, and may not be
abused without a price paid. An unarmed
person lives only at the discretion and good will of those who have guns. Some will say this could never happen here,
but that is not the point. The point is
that an unarmed person lives only at the pleasure and good will of those who
have guns, and this fact cannot be repudiated.
Fools may deny it, tyrants-in-waiting may ridicule it, but it is as
solid and irrefutable as any stone – even any gravestone.
For myself, I will be a citizen.
END OF PART III OF MY PERSONAL
MEMOIR
Deo Vindici,
Rebsarge
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