Uprooted from the liberal Berkshires as a boy, to live in the south for more than a decade, I was amazed to discover there in the late 1970s the strong affection in which many still held the Confederacy.
From stars and bars plates on the front of pickup trucks to rock songs celebrating — or warning — that “the south’s gonna do it again,†I may as well have been relocated to Mars. What was the Civil War to me, a white adolescent whose ancestors had been living in Canada and Italy in the 1860s?
The persistence of this southern mystique of rebellion could be seen in last fall’s national election, in which the controversy over the flying of the Confederate battle flag over the South Carolina Statehouse played a part in the struggle for the Republican nomination for president. After the election, some peculiar past remarks on the Confederacy by two Bush cabinet nominees became a focal point of opposition to them.
Clearly, even 136 years after the end of the Civil War, this struggle — and what it represents — still packs a punch.
Stuart Murray’s A Time of War: A Northern Chronicle of the Civil War also packs punch. This tremendous book, just published by Berkshire House, in Lee, looks at the soldiers, civilians, scoundrels, heroes, and just ordinary people of Berkshire County who played a part in the war on the front and on the homefront. And the Berkshires played a large part in many ways in the struggle.
Indeed, the Civil War was not as far removed from my boyhood in North Adams as I had once thought. For facing Marshall Street on one of the stone pillars at the courtyard gate at MASS MoCA hangs a faded old plaque — one I had ridden or walked past thousands of times and never had noticed. It reads: “The Johnson Grays/The First Volunteer Company from North Adams in the Civil War/Camped on these grounds/And in June 1861 became Co. B 10th Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry.â€
Even after learning of the plaque a few years ago, I still knew next to nothing about this unit, other than that it was named after its benefactor, North Adams industrialist Sylvander Johnson. Where to find out more? As great a book as it is, James M. McPherson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning study of the Civil War era, Battle Cry of Freedom, offers nothing specific about Berkshire County.
A Time of War is the book in which to find these details, written with the meticulousness of a historian and the clear style and eye for telling, humanizing detail of a novelist. Murray, who lives near the Berkshires in East Chatham, N.Y., is in fact both a historian and a novelist.
A Time of War follows the Johnson Grays as part of a larger unit, the Tenth Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, from formation to the rush to defend Washington D.C. at the beginning of the war, through fighting in various campaigns, including the pivotal battle at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
The web of the associations the narrative brings to mind can be amazing. For instance, we all know that North Adams native Jane M. Swift may soon be governor of Massachusetts, one of the few to come from Berkshire County in the state’s history. George N. Briggs, a native of Adams who made his home in Pittsfield, served as governor from 1843 to 1850. His youngest son, Henry S. Briggs, who before the war was following his father into the law, rose from the original commander of Pittsfield’s Allen Guards to serve as the first Colonel in command of the Tenth Massachusetts, which included the Johnson Grays, Allen Guards and many other companies. Briggs served with distinction, twice severely wounded.
Throughout the book one learns fascinating details: George F. Root, who wrote the song “Battle Cry of Freedom†— the most popular Union song of the war — was a native of Sheffield. Radical abolitionist John Brown once visited Pittsfield under mysterious circumstances. Fire-eating secessionist William Lowndes Yancey, born in Georgia, spent part of his youth in the north and attended Williams College, where he was a disciplinary problem, his offenses including “playing cards, public intoxication, disturbing a religious meeting, and disorderly conduct in the town of Adams.†Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens, like Yancey, attended Lenox Academy as a boy.
Murray follows the formation and war service in the various theaters of battle of units formed wholly or partially of Berkshire men. But he also details the heroes of the home front such as sickly Sarah Morewood, of New York and Pittsfield, who so gave herself to welfare of Berkshire soldiers that one regiment named its camp off the Louisiana coast after her.
Murray recounts everyday homefront details both comical and tragic. The latter include the murder of a mother and her children in Otis to a night of drunken fun resulting in a drowning in the Green River in Williamstown. The author does not slight the role of Berkshire business and industry, and he describes progress on the Hoosac Tunnel.
Prominent abolitionists and literary lights figure prominently, such as author Catharine Sedgwick of Stockbridge and Lenox “who came to believe the Civil War was a holy crusade to destroy slavery.â€
Dying on the battlefield after being shot off his horse at Antietam, her nephew, Union officer William D. Sedgwick, wrote in one last letter to his mother, Elizabeth Sedgwick: “As I have been lying here in very great pain, shells have been bursting close to me almost constantly. I wish my friends to know that I have fallen while doing my duty as well as possible ... and that I have not uttered a groan as yet, lying alone on the hard ground, in the sun, with no friends near.â€
Herman Melville, author of Moby-Dick, lived in Pittsfield at Arrowhead during much of the war. Murray effectively weaves poems by Melville on episodes of the war throughout the book. These the melancholy author later collected into the then-critically panned volume Battle Pieces, many poems of which critics now see as important contributions to literature on the war.
Murray also skillfully weaves both the local and national aspects of the war into a nearly seamless garment. We learn at the same time that most Berkshire men, as well as most soldiers in the north, went to war to preserve the union, not free the slaves. But abolition was a strong motive for many.
Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, of New York and Boston, was the son of abolitionist parents. He helped organize and lead the 54th Massachusetts Regiment, the first black regiment to be raised in the North. Shaw’s Berkshire connection included that he married part-time Lenox resident Annie Haggerty and was a friend of William D. Sedgwick.
About 120 black men from Berkshire County enlisted in the 54th, which proved its fighting worth under withering fire while attacking a fort in South Carolina. Shaw died leading his troops in this battle. The movie Glory detailed the story of this unit, whose soldiers took a principled stand in not accepting pay which was less than that of white soldiers.
Murray also informs us that the first black regiment officially mustered into the Union Army was the First Louisiana Native Guards, who also had a white commander, Colonel Chauncey Bassett, a native of Lee.
This review just skims the surface of the rich and rewarding detail a reader finds in A Time of War. After reading it, this Berkshire native feels much more knowledgeable about and connected to his region’s important role in a war that not only preserved a nation but more importantly put an end to the indefensible practice of slavery. This book may well become required reading in Berkshire schools.
A Time of War is 352 pages and is packed with interesting period photographs, line illustrations, and maps. It is available now at bookstores at $18.95 and will be available nationwide in March. Murray will be discussing his book throughout the county. This newspaper will provide details on this as they become available.
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Winter Storm Warning Issued for Berkshires
Another snowstorm is expected to move through the region overnight on Friday, bringing 5 to 8 inches of snow. This is updated from Thursday's winter weather advisory.
The National Weather Service in Albany, N.Y., has posted a winter storm warning for all of Berkshire County and parts of eastern New York State beginning Friday at 4 p.m. through Saturday at 1 p.m.
The region could see heavy to moderate snowfall rates of 1 to 2 inches per hour overnight, tapering off Saturday morning to flurries.
Drivers should exercise caution on Friday night and Saturday morning, as travel conditions may be hazardous.
Saturday night should be clear and calm, but warming temperatures means freezing rain Sunday night and rain through Monday with highs in the 40s. The forecast isn't much better through the week as temperatures dip back into the teens with New Year's Eve looking cloudy and frigid.
Many homeowners are showing their holiday spirit by decorating their houses. We asked for submissions so those in the community can check out these fanciful lights and decor when they're out.
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