When War Becomes Personal: Soldiers' Accounts from the Civil War to Iraq

A Civil War Memoir

When I was four years old, I was with my maternal grandparents visiting my great-uncle, Thomas Sherman, in Gorham, Maine. He was a telegrapher in Washington during the Civil War. He was in his nineties at the time. I sat on his knee, and he related his being in Ford’s Theatre and witnessing the assassination of President Lincoln. At age four, this account meant little or nothing to me. Now, as I near eighty, I think back on those events and consider my paternal grandfather, Isaac N. Clements, who was wounded in the Battle of the Wilderness and then taken prisoner by the Confederates. As a consequence of his wound, my grandfather’s leg was amputated in prison camp. Despite this loss of a limb and strenuous months as a prisoner of war, Isaac Clements went on to graduate from Wesleyan College, Phi Beta Kappa, and to serve for many years in higher education and administration. Isaac N. Clements died before I was born. It is through my father, Theron Clements, and through my grandfather’s memoir that I have come to know my proud heritage. My grandfather’s decision to enter the Conflict between the States rather than enter college is evidence of his devotion to the Union cause. However, it is clear throughout his account that he felt empathy for the Confederate soldier. That he survived his wound and amputation is remarkable, considering the mortality rate for wounded soldiers and the medical care available. So many in my grandfather’s circumstances perished. Without question, Isaac Clements’s spiritual as well as physical strength played a role in his survival. His courage and perseverance have been an inspiration to me. Spelling, capitalization, and punctuation are rendered as they appear in the original document. —Alvord White Clements : i s a a c n . c l e m e n t s A Civil War Memoir 2 0 | I S A A C N . C L E M E N T S Preliminary I was born in Draycutt, a little village near Wells, England, January 2, 1841, of George Clements and Harriet Richards Clements, his wife. In the spring of 1842, when I was one year old, my parents came to the United States and settled in Sennett, a little hamlet near Auburn, New York. When I was four years of age they removed to Skaneateles, at which village they remained until I was nine years old. My first school days were spent in the Primary Department of the old academy building, which stood on the site of the present academy. In the spring of 1850 my parents moved to a farm which my father had purchased in Tyler Hollow, a settlement in the town of Marcellus, about four miles south of the village of the same name. It was here that I passed my boyhood days—working on the farm in the summer and attending the District school about four months each winter. When I reached the age of seventeen I became desirous of securing a better education than the small District School afforded, and I made an arrangement with my father by which I was to allow him a certain amount each year for my time until I should become twenty-one years old. My father had planned to give each of his sons (of whom he had four) the sum of Nine hundred (900) Dollars when he reached the age of twenty-one years, and thus become by law the master of his own time. By this agreement between my father and myself, I was to be allowed Four hundred (400) Dollars at the age of seventeen in place of Nine hundred (900) Dollars at the age of twenty-one, thereby allowing One hundred and twenty-five (125) Dollars per year for the four years involved. I at once entered the Union School in Marcellus Village, walking the four miles morning and evening from my farm house. This I did for two years, scarcely missing a day. In the fall of 1859 I passed an examination for a license to teach school in which I was successful and engaged to teach a Normal district school in the town of Otisco, some four or five miles from my house. This maiden effort of mine in teaching was not a very great success but it gave me some valuable experience. In the spring of 1860 I entered Cazenovia Seminary as a student. My fathercarriedmewiththefewpossessionsthatIhadtoSyracuse,atwhich...