An Excerpt from A Virginia Girl in the Civil War: A Poet’s Perspective

The inspiration for my poem "A Casualty of War" comes from an excerpt of a Civil War memoir by Myrta Lockett Avery, published in 1903.  The memoir documents the experiences of a young southern woman from the Civil War, 1861-1865. 

Myrta Lockett Avary - Image courtesy of the Atlanta History Center

The experiences were not Ms. Avery’s, however, but rather those of a neighbor whose identity Ms. Avery does not reveal. The neighbor, the wife of a Confederate officer, describes her life in a military encampment, the struggles for food and supplies, loss of property, and, of course, loss of life.  The description of the suffering of the southern women is quite profound, yet one section of the memoir was a reminder that not all deaths were on the battlefield.  The event is set in the aftermath of the Battle of Seven Pines (Battle of Fair Oaks), May 31-June 1, 1862, in Henrico County, Virginia.  It is my poetic vision of a young woman who dies of grief. In a memoir filled with the agony of the Civil War, these few sentences were so heartbreaking that they inspired me to write the poem "A Casualty of War."

The following is an excerpt from the memoir about the aftermath of the Battle of Seven Pines (Battle of Fair Oaks) and the tragic story of this young woman.

“As my husband's command had been ordered to join the troops at Seven Pines, I took the train for Richmond the next day, stopped a few hours, and then went to Petersburg. When I got there the Battle of Seven Pines was on. For two days it raged — for two days the booming of the cannon sounded in our ears and thundered at our hearts. Friends gathered at each other's houses and looked into each other's faces and held each other's hands, and listened for news from the field. And the sullen boom of the cannon broke in upon us, and we would start and shiver as if it had shot its, and sometimes the tears would come. But the bravest of us got so we could not weep. We only sat in silence or spoke in low voices to each other and rolled bandages and picked linen into lint. And in those two days it seemed as if we forgot how to smile.

Telegrams began to come; a woman would drop limp and white into the arms of a friend — her husband was shot. Another would sit with her hand on her heart in pallid silence until her friends, crowding around her, spoke to her, tried to arouse her, and then she would break into a cry:" O my son! my son! "

There were some who could never be roused any more; grief had stunned and stupefied them forever, and a few there were who died of grief. One young wife, who had just lost her baby and whose husband perished in the fight, never lifted her head from her pillow. When the funeral train brought him home we laid her in old Blandford beside him, the little baby between.”

Fair Oaks, Virginia. Rear view of old frame house, orchard, and well at Seven Pines. Over 400 soldiers were buried here after the battle of Fair Oaks.  Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA https://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print

 A Casualty of War

I was at the Battle of Seven Pines on May 31 and June 1, eighteen sixty-two

And what happened there still wounds me through and through

Where our General Joseph E.  Johnston was replaced

Due to an injury, there was no disgrace

And General Robert E. Lee was there to command

Our Confederate forces there to take a stand

Of the eight thousand casualties for our Confederate gray

There was a sight there that I state will never go away

In the fields where our soldiers, some wounded, some dead, lay strewn about

It was where I found him; there was no doubt

The young soldier that I shall tell you about was dead on the field

But I could not find a wound anywhere; there was nothing to yield

It was then that I noticed his hands on his heart

There was something in them that gave me a start

I bent down to have a look at what was grasped in those hands

It was a photograph of a young woman, oh, she was so grand

I can only tell you what happened when this young man was returned to his wife

She was in labor with their child when she heard of this strife

That her husband was no more, and her child was born without breath

She then turned her head and joined them in death

So instead of a single grave to accept the soldier alone

There were three: husband, wife, and baby under the stone

So, I tell you now, not all death was due to battle during this Civil War

That the Angel of Death gathered his harvest and more

A heart-wrenching grief that this young wife just could not bear

I think of all of them now and bow my head in prayer

Notes:

Internet Archive https://archive.org/details/virginiagirlinciavary/page/40/mode/2u 

A Virginia Girl in the Civil War, Myrta Lockett Avary, 1903, D. Appleton & Co., New York

Ms. Avery was also a co-editor of the Mary Boykin Chestnut Diary, “A Diary from Dixie,” and a journalist for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.