14 Bell Irvin Wiley Quotes on The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy - Quotes.pub

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Our election has not yet come off, and to one who like myself is not a candidate it is a time replete with feelings of disgust and contempt. The candidates of course are interested and busy. I could start out here now and eat myself dead on ‘election cake,’ be hugged into a perfect ‘sqush’ by most particular, eternal, disinterested, affectionate friends. A man is perfectly bewildered by the intensity of the affection that is lavished upon him. I never dreamed before that I was half as popular, fine looking, and talented as I found out I am during the past few days.”9

The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy Quotes

In many cases the office of captain was more or less automatically voted to the person who had been most active in raising the company; to some extent this was true also in the choice of colonels.

The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy Quotes

In the meantime the companies had been looking for arms, clothing and other equipment. State and Confederate authorities soon exhausted their supplies, and volunteer units had to scramble for themselves. But during the high tide of patriotism of 1861 there was no lack of will and effort to provide all necessities.

The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy Quotes

Few Bibles were printed in the South before the war and the Confederate Bible Society had great difficulty in obtaining Testaments. Most of the Northern societies took the view that scriptures were contraband and stopped making their publications available for Southern distribution.

The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy Quotes

In some communities young men who hesitated to volunteer received packages containing petticoats, or were seized by boisterous mobs and thrown into ponds.7 Thousands of persons indifferent to enlistment, and many who were downright opposed to it, were swept into the ranks in 1861 by the force of articulate popular pressure.

The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy Quotes

There was also a large group of those who volunteered not from any great enthusiasm, but simply because enlistment was the prevailing vogue. Scions of leading families rode about the country organizing companies for their command, thus adding the weight of social position to that of patriotism. Community belles offered their smiles and praise to men who joined the ranks of “our brave soldiers,” but turned with the coolest disdain from those who were reluctant to come forward in defense of Southern womanhood.

The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy Quotes

It would be misleading, however, to give the impression that all who took up arms in 1861 were moved by hatred of Yankees, or that all who expressed hostility felt any considerable depth of antipathy. Later events proved the contrary. The dominant urge of many volunteers was the desire for adventure. War, with its offering of travel to far places, of intimate association with large numbers of other men, of the glory and excitement of battle, was an alluring prospect to farmers who in peace spent long lonely hours between plow handles, to mechanics who worked day in and day out at cluttered benches, to storekeepers who through endless months measured jeans cloth or weighed sowbelly, to teachers who labored year after year with indifferent success to drill the rudiments of knowledge into unwilling heads, and to sons of planters who dallied with the classics in halls of learning.

The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy Quotes

There were of course many moderates in the South, including some of the most influential planters, who wanted to give the Lincoln government a trial, even after South Carolina seceded. Not that they doubted the right of secession. The question was rather one of expediency. But Fort Sumter and Lincoln’s call for volunteers took the ground from under these middle-of-the-roaders. The issue now was whether to fight with or against secessionists, and this left no choice for most Southerners.

The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy Quotes

The Yankees refused to live up to the Federal law requiring the return of fugitive slaves; they closed their eyes to the beneficent aspects of slavery; they made heroes of such fantasies as Uncle Tom, and chose to look upon Christian slaveholders as Simon Legrees; they tolerated monsters like William Lloyd Garrison; they contributed money and support to John Brown, whose avowed purpose was the wholesale murder of Southern women and children, and when he was legally executed for his crimes they crowned his vile head with martyrdom. Yankees, moreover, were considered a race of hypocrites: While they were vilifying Southerners for enslaving blacks, they were keeping millions of white factory workers in a condition far worse than slavery; while denouncing Southern wickedness, they were advocating free love and all sorts of radical isms. All in all, Yankee society was a godless and grasping thing.

The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy Quotes

I am astonished at my own indifference,” he added, “as I never pretended to be brave; it distresses me at times when I am cool and capable of reflection to think how indifferent we become in the hour of battle when our fellow men fall around us by scores…. My God what kind of a people will we be?”27

The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy Quotes

Pious soldiers in all Southern armies were appalled at the prevalence of gambling. G. W. Roberts of Mississippi was one of the many who chafed at his enforced association with the evil. But his messmates, who were evidently chronic gamblers, gave him little heed. “I have ask them to quit playing cards in our tent or about our tent,” he wrote. “It does not become any man to entrude upon me like they do. If they wish to play cards let them Build a house off to themselves then they could play to their own satisfaction.” Roberts resolved to deal patiently with the sinners and prayed God for grace to win them from their evil ways. But his efforts were unsuccessful. Gambling continued to flourish under his tent roof, provoking finally the observation, “There is men in this encampment that does not care for anyone.”3

The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy Quotes

A like reaction was expressed by a Georgian: “I felt quite small in that fight the other day when the musket balls and cannon balls was flying around me as thick as hail and by best friends falling on both sides dead and mortally wounded Oh Dear it is impossible for me to express my feelings when the fight was over I saw what was done the tears came then free oh that I never could behold such a sight again to think of it among civilized people killing one another like beasts one would think that the supreme ruler would put a stop to it but wee sinned as a nation and must suffer in the fleash as well as spiritually those things wee cant account for.”18

The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy Quotes

But this attitude could not persist. Under the supervision of “oldtimers” like Joseph Johnston, Robert E. Lee, Braxton Bragg, and Thomas Jackson, complaisant officers were gradually weeded out and West Point ideas of discipline were adopted in the Southern armies. Before the campaigns of 1862 Johnny Reb was for the most part a changed man. He had shed most of his surplus equipment, and, of much greater importance, he had abandoned the idea that military life was “all fun and frolic.” In short, the volunteer had become a soldier.

The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy Quotes

But these volunteers, like most of the others, were to discover that much preparation must come between the “joining up” and the shooting. Drilling three or four times a day was serious and unromantic business, the more so when these exercises were done under the scorching rays of the summer sun. Chopping down trees lost little of its odium by being dignified with the name of “policing.”30 Marching to new locations, preparing food, washing clothes, fighting lice and cleaning camp were duties that bore little resemblance to Johnny Reb’s conception of soldiering.

The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy Quotes