How to resolve AdBlock issue? WILTON — Last Sunday, Aug. 18, Grant Cottage held its latest Porch Talk event, this one focused on the inter-familial conflict that the Civil War caused. Diana O’Brien presented the event.
After an acoustic guitar song, O’Brien started by reviewing some of the statistics about the war, such as how there were more American deaths in the Civil War than all other post-Independence American wars combined, with modern estimates being around 750,000 total. Scaled to the current American population, if the same Civil War happened today, the toll would be around 6.2 million dead.
Another statistic she cited is that in total, the Union had about 2 million soldiers, including approximately 180,000 African Americans, while the Confederacy had between 750,000 and 1 million.
She also mentioned that one of the lasting effects of the war was a change in terminology. Before the Civil War, people referred to America as “these united states,” while afterward it became the more modern “the united states.”
“I found numerous stories about how the war pulled families apart,” O’Brien said. “From Southern boys that opted to fight for the north and even Northern men, but not as many, who opted to join the Confederate army. Most of these conflicts took place among families that lived on the border states.”
Later, she continued, “many fathers, particularly from the border states, which were incidentally slave-owning states during the war, urged their sons not to join the Confederates. The sons still went ahead and defied their fathers and signed up with the Confederates anyway... As retribution, some fathers refused to write to their sons during war or send them care packages. Of the sons who survived the conflict, some were welcomed back by their families, but others were cut off from family gatherings, baptisms, even cut out of wills.”
The majority of the talk was devoted to three anecdotes from the war, each from a different family with ties to both sides. They were the Maltby, Campbell and Hardin siblings.
The Maltbys were three brothers, Henry, Jasper and William, two of whom joined the Confederacy and the final, Jasper, joined the Union.
After several years apart, Jasper, a Brigadier General, and William, a paroled prisoner of war met on a boat on the Mississippi. Jasper had arranged for his brother to get medical treatment at the federal garrison in Vicksburg. During Reconstruction, Henry and William became outspoken secessionists, operating a Confederate newspaper.
After Jasper died, both of his brothers named one of their sons after him.
The second anecdote was about Alexander and James Campbell, Scottish immigrants who moved to New York and South Carolina, respectively. They also fought for their new homes’ respective sides.
During the war, Alexander resigned after two years, while James spent the final two years as a prisoner of war.
Through over 80 letters to each other and their family during the war, they revealed fractures in American society and how they had almost had a reunion on the battlefield, when both of their companies were nearby Successionville, South Carolina.
After the war though, their letters did not show any resentment or bitterness between each other. James became a rice farmer, and Alexander became a stone cutter.
“’I hope to God that he and I will get through it all,’ wrote Alexander to his wife Jane, shortly after his near encounter with his brother,” O’Brien quoted. “’And he will have his story to tell about his side, and I will have my story to tell about my side.’”
The final anecdote was about Martin and Lemuel Hardin. Martin became a Brigadier General for the Union at 26 years old, and throughout the war was wounded four times, lost his left arm, and almost died twice.
Meanwhile, Lemuel had his leg smashed during a battle and so had gone to live with the third Hardin sibling, his sister Ellen, who would later go on to be one of the founders of the organization Daughters of the American Revolution.
However, due to the war, “if brother Martin visited and discovered Lemuel living in her home, he would be duty-bound to turn his Confederate brother over to local authorities,” O’Brien said.
Ellen eventually came up with the plan to spirit away Lemuel to Canada by dressing him as a woman, and due to a letter from the Hardin siblings’ mother, President Lincoln eventually granted him
a pardon.
After the anecdotes, two workers at Grant Cottage, volunteer Tim Gaffney and Operations Manager Ben Kamp, held a reenactment of two brothers, Jed and Beux, writing home about the war while both marched near Gettysburg.
The reenactment ended when one of the brothers was dying on the ground after being shot, and the other brother found him and stayed with him in his final moments.
The musician from the beginning then began playing again, this time the Battle Hymn of the Republic, which the audience joined in singing for the chorus.
For more details, contact Grant Cottage at grantcottage.com or at 518-584-4353.
