Your Brother in Arms: A Union Soldier's Odyssey

Preface

ix Preface In late May 1865, soldiers of the Fifth Corps of the Army of the Potomac were encamped on Arlington Heights outside the nation’s capital in anticipation of being mustered out of army service. The war was over, victory won, and at twilight one breezeless evening, the men began an impromptu candlelight march.1 Soldiers placed candles, issued to them earlier in the day, into the sockets of their bayonets. Others from the corps soon joined the rally until it involved thousands of men. They organized themselves into lines of march, holding their lighted bayonet candlesticks before them. The procession slowly wound its way through the camp, gathering more participants along the route. A formal Grand Review of the Army of the Potomac had taken place along Pennsylvania Avenue two days earlier, but for the men, this spontaneous twilight march was not a display of martial pomp but an expression of their realization that a profound experience in their lives had come to an end, and the emotions they felt were better suited to a candlelight procession than a military parade. The group made its way to the quarters of General Charles Griffin— commander of the Fifth Corps of the Army of the Potomac. The general came forward to acknowledge the men gathered before him, their faces illuminated by the candlelight. “Speech! Speech! Speech!” they called out to their commander . Griffin, a fearless leader on the battlefield, loathed public speaking. Instead, he asked one of his most respected division commanders to speak on his behalf. General Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain—a former college professor from Maine and hero of Little Round Top at Gettysburg—stepped forward .Acknowledging General Griffin, he began to speak to the hushed crowd: “The pageant has passed. The day is over. But we linger, loath to think we shall see them no more together—these men, these horses, these colors afield . . . This army will live, and live on, so long as soul shall answer soul, so long as that flag watches with its stars over fields of mighty memory. . . .”2  Preface When he was finished addressing the men, Chamberlain saluted them and then stepped back into the darkness. The group stood in silence following the general’s remarks until, one by one, their candles burned out, and the soldiers returned to their respective regiments. One soldier who had served alongside these men from August 1862 to April 1865 was not among the assembled Fifth Corps that evening. Instead, he lay in a hospital bed in Washington City recovering from a grievous wound that had threatened to end his young life and that kept him away from the celebrations of victory, such as the grand review down Pennsylvania Avenue. George Pressly McClelland had fought with the 155th Pennsylvania Infantry, Fifth Corps, Army of the Potomac for two years and eight months in some of the most significant battles of the war. McClelland recorded his wartime experiences in letters to his brothers and sisters. Together these letters form a perceptive and articulate chronicle of his experience as a frontline soldier who passed through “the fiery trial,” as Abraham Lincoln described the war in an 1862 letter to Congress. More than battlefield reports from a young soldier, McClelland’s letters reflect the social , cultural, and political currents of the war that transcend the fighting. For McClelland, letters became a crucial connection to his family and their civilian life beyond the brutality and rigors that he faced as an infantryman in the Army of the Potomac. He was an exuberant, untested teenager when he enlisted in August 1862 and a sober, battle-seasoned young man when he mustered out of the army in June 1865. His experience can be conveyed in the names of the places where he served: Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville , Gettysburg, the Wilderness, Spotsylvania Court House, the North Anna River, Petersburg, and Five Forks. At the beginning of his service, McClelland was filled with a young man’s braggadocio: McClellan’s strategy is played out. Pope doesn’t appear to do much better. Stonewall Jackson is a match for the whole of them. Granny Lincoln has again forgot the dignity of the President of a great republic. . . . Ye fathers and statesmen , who are asleep, arouse ye from your lethargy and show yourselves in the hour of your Country’s greatest distress. (August 1862) Toward the end of his service, McClelland changed his opinion of Lincoln: I am glad to know my oldest brother is prospering. Tell him...