Indiana man last to die in Civil War
By Rick Henly on Monday, June 22nd, 2009 |
LAST MAN TO DIE IN THE CIVIL WAR
HIS FAMILY LAST CASUALTY IN CIVIL WAR
PORTLAND
There was consequence in the death of a man like John down through the years greater than his own misfortune. His young wife, Sarah, now a widow. Aging parents, John Sr. and Polly, anguished brothers and sisters, would miss him at Thanksgiving. A son, Arthur, would only know of his father by family talk. There would be neglected farm property, and lessened economic security for his family.
Imagine the gathering at the train station the day this soldier boy came home again to Indiana, the yearly Decoration Day visits to his place in the small family plot, faithfully observed, that became intermittent at some point and finally nonexistent, as his family got older and passed away. Finally, there was the solitude of the gravesite as our northeast Indiana rain, sunshine, and snow became the only regular visitors.
Some artists have made a career of painting the stirring battles scenes of the Civil War for those fascinated by its military history. And there were stirring scenes. But there were other scenes, which do not please the imagination: the family as they receive the news of their loss, then later on the coffin; the lingering pain of those whose hero went missing and just never came home, who were in an unmarked grave somewhere… or in cemeteries remote from the old home place.
If you look him up on the internet, you may find (as I did) that Private Williams is buried in Louisiana, but that had ceased to be true when his family had his remains brought back to Portland and buried in their small family plot on their farm property. I saw the old stone at his gravesite, which had been replaced by the time I participated in the dedication of a new one as a Memorial Day tribute on May 14, 2005. I liked the old, weathered one, better than the new one. Nothing on the old one said “last man,” just that it was the soldier, John Williams. It was the way his loved ones saw it.
PALMETTO RANCH
The last fight of the Civil War was at Palmetto Ranch, near Brownsville, Texas, May 13, 1865, and the last of 618,222 died there. In that last digit is the last man, John Williams, a blacksmith of Portland, Indiana.
By the date of this last fight of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln had been interred at Oak Ridge Cemetery near Springfield a week, having been assassinated April 14th, and a month had passed since Robert E. Lee had surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox Court House—usually thought of as ending the Civil War.
War, however, gathers momentum, even creating new causes as it goes, and violently jolts on well past what ought to have been its end. Our Civil War was like that, but when it was over, secession and slavery had been cleared off, the returning farmers had put in a new crop, and blacksmiths would be needed. The Johnny of our story would not be returning to his forge, but he would not be forgotten.
This last fight was a Confederate victory. But why were there Rebel troops in the field at this point? And, why would they fight, now that it could not change the outcome? The answer would seem to be, well, they were rebels, and that is what rebels do all day long—they rebel.
A newspaper article of the period referred to an individual as being a “rebellious rebel,” leaving the reader to wonder if that meant the man was an ardent, died-in-the-wool Confederate, or that he was a rebel rebelling against Confederate authorities. After considering the context it was decided that this rebel-rebel was a thorough-going Confederate. Having served in the Army with Southerners, I can tell you there was still plenty of traction in their temperament a hundred years later.
However, this was not merely the quirky stance of a small band of diehards at the end of the Rebellion. Confederate General Edmund Kirby Smith did not surrender his Trans-Mississippi forces until May 26, 1865.
And the Rebellion was still afloat two more months past the end of “Kirbysmithdom.” The Confederate raider Shenandoah, in the waters off Alaska, was still opening fire on U.S. shipping as late as July, not having learned of the end of the ground war until August 1865.
In 1995 a cannon ball fired in the nineteenth century finally hit the ground in the twentieth century. A woman was washing her car in the Richmond, Virginia, area, when a limb broke from an old gum tree, releasing a Federal cannon ball that had been fired 130 years before, narrowly missing her, a renter on property owned by country singer Jimmy Dean. He was impressed with the incident and it came to media attention. If the projectile had completed its flight trajectory by hitting the Southern lady on the head, she may then have been the last casualty of the Civil War, maybe the LAST CIVILIAN KILLED BY THE CIVIL WAR.
GREEN PASTURES
I had often thought since my first visit that this gravesite was worthy of a great monument, but after this most recent visit I realized its pastoral setting was exactly right. Most of “the boys in blue,” as well as their gray-or-butternut enemies, were from rural places. I do believe there is more that needs to be done to memorialize this man, and the meaning of his life--and death, but it will take poetry to do it.
Kicking the can along to the day I took the above photo, April 29, 2009… Making sure there were no bulls in area where cows were grazing, and getting permission (“Oh, they will not bother you.”) I opened the pasture gate and walked in. It had been raining and the pasture in which the small cemetery plot is located was nearly too saturated to walk across.
The cattle did not pay attention to me at first. However, once I got inside the small enclosure where the stones were, I got down on the ground to take a photo, and a cow nearby cropping grass took notice, stretched his neck toward me and began an alarm-mooing that spread to the rest of the herd. I guess they no longer saw me as a familiar kind of human being once I assumed a bunched up form on the ground. When I got back to the car, my wife asked me what the commotion was about.
The building past the small plot is the Joy County Retirement Center on County Road 200 N a mile east of Highway 27. –If you go there, you must go to the front door of the main building and ask permission from the manager to go to the gravesite. Besides cows, there is sometimes a bull in the field you will have to walk across.
In the old days, families provided care for their elderly parents, but some unfortunate souls wound up poor and without a family. They would go to the “Poor Farm” or “Old Folks Home.” People worked their whole lives, or until they were physically broke down, then they relied on their savings or their family for care in old age.
If you are still able to take basic care of yourself (and meet other criteria) you can stay in this wonderful old building in your “golden years,” with a staff to attend to meals and other such amenities, for abut $38 a day, Jay County residents having admission priority.
A gentleman I talked with there told me the elderly ladies and gentlemen have occupancy in opposite sides of the house, which was built in 1895, and tend to stay separate from each other anyway. There is a porch on the east side of the building (facing the cows) and the west side of the building (facing the pigs), with the east side being the nicest by far—the ladies have claimed that. While the men could also share it, they all go to the porch on the west side. Both enjoy sitting on the front porch.
The fellow I talked with said some of the residents have a lot to say about the past, and have family stories, but not many visitors are interested. Someone in those families will wish to know, some day, but those stories will become the little secrets of time and eternity. The history of our country is mostly buried in the graves of everyday people. If you have elderly relatives, now is the time to speak with them of the past, and your family, and take notes, and label old photos. Tomorrow is not just another day, it is perhaps a day past understanding.
AN ALLEGORY
In his second inaugural address, President Lincoln, in the manner of a man in the reflective stage of grief, invites The People to consider the possibility, that the hand of God was in the war and its finishing.
“Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”
In this understanding of the war and its sacrifices, John Williams was required in a calculation beyond human understanding, to pay a cost in blood that only God could justly mete out. It took a man with the humility of Abraham Lincoln to ponder that perhaps it had never been in the power of the “great men” of the time to start or end the thing.
What is the meaning of this man’s sacrifice? Some will be struck by the statistical aspect of someone having to be that last man to die in a great war, and the role chance plays in our lives. At least, that is what you might think of first when reading his memorial stone. But that is to notice a fact without noticing a meaning. Standing at his final resting place, I felt that this was the right place to say a prayer of thanks for the sacrifices of Federal soldiers, and their families, necessary to save our Union. If Private Williams died an allegorical death, its meaning may be a lesson that takes in the entire Civil War and the modern visitor to his grave, making each a comrade of this long-ago solider in the experience of life, including its last battle…
To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die;
A time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal;
A time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh;
A time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
A time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to get, and a time to lose;
A time to keep, and a time to cast away;
A time to rend, and a time to sew;
A time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate,
A time for war, and a time for peace.
Ecclesiastes 3: 1-8.
Sources:
--Federal Census records for Jay County, Indiana for 1860-1870 are basis for name of window, parents, child.
--A host of individuals and organizations were present at the dedication of the new stone: The Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War, who always do great things on what we call Memorial Day (formerly Decoration Day), along with the Daughters of Union Veterans of the Civil War. Reenactors, including a Lady in White, a Lady in Black, were present. “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” was sung, prayers said, and Taps solemnized the occasion.
--The Last Battle of the Civil War: Palmetto Ranch by Jeffrey W. Hunt is my source for basic information on the fight.
--Best Little Ironies, Oddities, & Mysteries of the Civil War by C. Brian Kelly / Ingrid Smyer-Kelly. P. 215, uses Thomas L. Livermore as authority for the casualty figures. Of the 618,222 Federal & Confederate soldiers who died, 414,152 (67%) died of disease. No one knows for sure exactly how many died in the war, but anything is better than rounding the human toll off as if these men were matches, and the historian who does so has been in his books too long.
--“1860s Cannonball Drops From Tree Into 1990s – Artifact From Civil War Nearly Hit Caretaker in Henrico,” by Gary Robertson, a staff writer for the “Richmond Times-Dispatch,” Nov. 15, 1999, City Edition, Section: Area/State, Page B-1 is the source for the Jimmy Dean story. (Talking with a librarian at the newspaper, I was told that a man had been killed in the area by a cannon ball thought to be solid, but which had an explosive charge, just the past year !)
--The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, as published by “The Abraham Lincoln Association” (Rutgers University Press, 1953) is the source of the 2nd Inaugural Address quotation.
--It is possible that the number of slaves imported into North America is equal to the number of those who died in the Civil War. Using the tables located for me in An American Dilemma, by Gunnar Myrdal (NY: Harper & Bros., Pub., 1944) pp.118-119, a fair use of the date can arrive at this estimation. President Lincoln apparently understood such an equivalency.
©June 2009 by Archie Lintz
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