Sarah Orne Jewett, in a charming description of Memorial Day ritual in rural America, writes: "The procession went on, and stopped here and there at the little graveyards on the farms, leaving their bright flags to flutter through summer and winter rains and snows.... They sent flags to all the distant graves, and proud were those households who claimed kinship with valor." This morning I’d like to share my pride and my "kinship with valor" by introducing you to two of my family members who fought in the Civil War: Henry Milham, my great-grandfather, and his older brother, William.
After the war began in 1861, William and Henry volunteered for service as they came of age. As we shall see, each of the brothers experienced a very different war. Victory did not come easily, and the war dragged on for four long years. Finally, in April 1865, Lee met with Grant and in the stillness at Appomattox, the surrender was signed, and the bloodiest conflict our nation has ever experienced ended. While it is true that the fighting was over in the spring of 1865, neither Henry nor William was done at that point with the war or its effects. In peace, the war lingered and continued to color their lives. Let me begin this tale of remembrance of these two brothers in war and peace in northwestern Ohio.
It's the spring of 1832 and the virgin woods just north of the Blanchard River in Hancock County are ringing with the steady sound of an axe landing in stout tree wood. Henry and William’s father, David, has come here to build a new home and a new life for his family. David is alone; his wife, Amy, and the children have remained in eastern Ohio. By summer's end David has cleared enough land to plant crops and construct a new home for his family. And by the time the trees turned yellow and crimson, David had traveled back to eastern Ohio and brought Amy and the children to their new home. David and Amy settled into this community and were active in establishing the first school and first Methodist Church in this previously unsettled region. David and Amy’s family continued to grow with the addition of a new child every other year. William and his twin sister, Elizabeth, were born in the Hancock County home in 1842. Two years later in November 1844 Henry was born. David was apparently a restless, pioneering man and moved his family again in the early 1850's to Livingston County Illinois.
The 1850's were years of great political ferment and division in our nation over the issue of slavery. Illinois was at the forefront of this ferment with the rise of Abraham Lincoln, the Republican Party, the Lincoln-Douglas debates, Kansas fever, abolitionism, free-soil and other radical ideologies. In April 1861 all the political agitation came to head at Fort Sumter, South Carolina and our nation was plunged into a bloody civil war. No doubt there were many political discussions in the Milham household about the issues of the day. Of course, as much as I'd like to tell you what they were, I can't. Whether it was fervor over the issues of the day, the draft, or other circumstances that motivated William to join the army isn't known. He enlisted in 129th Illinois Infantry, Company "C" on August 5, 1862. All the volunteers in Company "C" were from Livingston County Illinois, and the company remained in the county until late September when they were ordered to Kentucky.
In Kentucky the 129th Infantry fought a number of battles in 1862 and 1863 and became successful and battle-hardened troops. While in camp in Kentucky supplies were often short, and it was routine to send troops on foraging expeditions into the countryside surrounding camps. On one such expedition William was riding in the foraging wagon when it overturned spilling all the soldiers from the wagon. As William tumbled from the wagon he was struck in the back of the head and was off regular duty for several days. The company’s First Lieutenant said later that William did not fully recover from this blow to the head but continued duty with the company anyway. On August 29, 1863 the 129th moved into camp near Nashville, Tennessee, where they remained for the next six months.
Back in Illinois the Milhams were surely following the exploits of the 129th as closely as they could by newspapers, whatever letters William sent home, and by staying in contact with other Livingston County families with men in the regiment. Henry turned nineteen in November of 1863 and he enlisted in 17th Illinois Cavalry on December 25. Surely, there’s a story behind enlisting on Christmas Day; but I can’t tell you what it is.
In late January 1864 Henry was mustered in and sent to Benton Barracks near St. Louis to prepare for service in Missouri. Missouri was a slave state, which bordered the newly admitted free state of Kansas. Southern sympathizers along the Missouri-Kansas border were giving aid to William Quantrill and others who were involved in terror raids and guerilla tactics against civilian populations in Kansas. The military task of the 17th Illinois Cavalry was to suppress the civilian sympathizers and track down the border raiders.
By early 1864 it was becoming apparent that the North was poised to take the war deep into the heart of the Southern resistance. General William Tecumseh Sherman was massing a large army in Tennessee to prepare an attack on Georgia and beyond. William and 129th joined Sherman's army near Chattanooga and started south through wooded hills thick with underbrush. On the 9th of May 1864 William's company marched all day through heavy rain, and in a few more days they made camp in the area of Resaca, Georgia, knowing that a large Southern force under General Joseph Johnston was near. On May 14 the Union and Southern forces engaged each other, and a large two-day battle ensued. The Union force was much superior in number; and after two days of fierce fighting, the Southern forces retreated from the battlefield. On May 16 Union forces remaining on the battlefield after the retreat reported, "The battlefield around Resaca bore evidence of the great struggle that had taken place. Thickets of brush, even great saplings, were literally mown down by a storm of musket balls, shot, shell, grape and canister." A southern officer wrote of this battle, "...we moved out of our trenches and began our retreat from the blood-dyed hills of Resaca, and not a heart heaved a sigh of regret at abandoning a spot where we had struggled so hard."
Some of the blood that dyed the hills of Resaca was William’s. He was shot in the hip during the battle on May 15. A company officer later stated that "[William] was wounded while the line was advancing and he fell and was not afterwards seen by any in [the] company." The Norton-Jones house, the only surviving structure from wartime Resaca, was probably used as a hospital during the battle. Perhaps, William was brought to the Norton-Jones house before he was removed to a hospital in Tennessee. He was not returned to duty until September 1864. Meanwhile, back at Benton Barracks in St. Louis, Henry also spent much of the summer of 1864 in the hospital with a case of typhoid fever.
William did not rejoin his company when he returned to duty. Instead he was assigned to guard prisoners in Louisville, Kentucky. In the fall of 1864 William was given a furlough to go home to Illinois and vote. He voted for Abraham Lincoln, who. as we know, won the election. In his inauguration speech Lincoln, realizing that the war was nearing an end, asked for reconciliation between the sides by calling on Americans "... to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."
April 1865 brought the end of hostilities between the North and South. William's company had marched south with Sherman to the Carolinas and was mustered out on June 8, 1865 after a victory march through Washington, DC. William, of course, was not with his company; he was not mustered out until August 1865. He then went home to Illinois to resume his life.
At the war's end many of the Union regiments stationed on the western frontier were not mustered out of the service. They were kept on to fight in the Western Indian Wars. Henry's regiment was among those designated to quell Indian uprisings. In the summer of 1865 Henry's company was sent into Kansas to engage troublesome Indians. Henry and nearly his entire company refused to fight. The war they had enlisted to wage was over, and they had experienced all the death and destruction they could endure. They were branded mutineers, force-marched back to Fort Leavenworth, and placed in confinement.
It wasn't until January 1866 that Henry was given an honorable discharge, released from confinement, and went back to Illinois. Henry thought this had occurred because of sympathetic officers. In fact mutinies and wholesale desertions were so common across Western frontier as a result of retaining volunteer units that the Federal government was forced to grant some relief. Governors of the many states whose units had been retained brought political pressure to bear in getting these troops released and sent home in an honorable fashion. Back in Illinois the two ex-soldiers, Henry and William, were reunited. Henry was a bit shocked by William's appearance. He said later that William entered the US Army "a well, hearty man" and came out a physically incapacitated man.
Henry attended William’s marriage to Sarah Carey in Illinois in 1868. William and Sarah had two sons both of whom were born in Illinois. In 1872 William moved his family to Dickinson County Kansas. Three other Milham brothers also homesteaded in the same general area. Lack of available land in Illinois and possibly pressure from their father David to strike out on their own, as he had done, may have contributed to this exodus.
Henry must have had a certain impetuous romantic streak. From all appearances Henry eloped with Catharin Jennie Ritchie in December 1870. They were married in Harrisonville, Missouri and settled in the area, which Henry would have known from his Civil War service. It was a short marriage. Catharin died in childbirth in 1872, and their child was also lost. No doubt this was a great blow to Henry. He moved west to be near his family and spent the winter of 1872-1873 in Clay County Kansas with his favorite sister, Mary, who was married to Catharin’s brother, William. When spring came Henry moved south to Dickinson County with the intention of taking a claim near his four brothers.
Henry made his way to William’s homestead in southern Dickinson County. There, surrounded by a magnificent view of the treeless, green Smoky Hills, these two old soldiers were together again. There's a good chance that Henry lived with William during the period before he took a claim of his own. It's certain that Henry struck up a friendship with William's neighbors, Thomas and Lucy McGlothern. Henry became so fond of this couple that he is said to have told Lucy that if she had a daughter he would marry her. Henry acquired a homestead in 1874, built a house on it, and began farming the land. Sometime in this period the McGlothern's newly widowed daughter, Eliza Ann, came to Kansas, Henry met her and they were married in September 1876. The homestead was their first home. They had four children, two sons and two daughters.
The mid-1870's and early 1880's were bad times for farmers in Kansas. There were droughts and grasshopper infestations, and all five Milham brothers were forced to sell out their homesteads. Henry stayed in the area, but farmed someone else's land. William and Sarah also stayed in the area and moved to a farm owned by one of their sons.
By the late 1880's William’s physical and mental health had deteriorated noticeably. He would leave the homestead, find a job, and stay away for months at a time. He said of his relationship with Sarah and his sons that he "agree[d] to disagree by giving [them the] farm calves, horses, and farming utensils." William's family was rightly concerned and had him placed in the Soldier's Military Home in Leavenworth, Kansas. This changed nothing for William; he just had a new place to wander away from. St. Louis was his favorite place to wander to, and once there he would get a job, light carpentry was his specialty, and move into a rooming house.
In 1896 Henry suffering from heart disease, failing eyesight, and other ailments applied for and received a soldier's disability pension. He gave up farming and moved into the town of Gypsum, Kansas. He died in 1908 seated in a rocking chair while waiting for his daughter to bring the grandchildren to him.
William made a monumental effort to get a soldier's disability pension; he never succeeded. He suffered from rheumatism, heart disease, kidney trouble, spinal pain, and headaches that kept him from sleeping. He walked with a limp, possibly from his gunshot wound, and was missing all the teeth in his lower jaw. His mental condition was not good: A physician described him as paranoid, and fellow veteran said he was partially demented. Still, William mounted an all out campaign to get a pension. First, he discovered that since he was not with his unit at muster out, he didn't have a proper discharge. He fixed that and got a small army of people to testify or work on his behalf: his brothers, soldiers who had served with him, friends, people he roomed with in St. Louis, and lawyers. No matter the effort, his pension application was repeatedly rejected.
In 1899 William took a furlough from the Soldier's Military Home and came home to the farm for the winter. After the weather warmed up in the spring of 1900, he was off again to St. Louis. He found a room in Mary Peck's rooming house and a job at William Shuttleworth's shop. No doubt, he kept working at his pension application. On October 18 William set out as usual from the boarding house with a copy of his discharge and his pension papers stuffed in his pants pocket. Perhaps, he was late or perhaps it was just his routine, but he took a shortcut to his job by walking along the Wabash Trolley tracks. It was on these tracks that he was struck by an electric trolley car engine and killed instantly. His body was so badly mutilated that the only means of identification were the army discharge and pension application he carried in his pocket. His brothers-in-arms had described William as a "good and faithful soldier," and he was, perhaps not by choice, a soldier to the end. William was buried the day of his death in the National Cemetery at Jefferson Barracks, Missouri. It was weeks before his family back in Kansas learned of William's tragic death.
William's widow, Sarah, did get a federal pension, but she needed much help to accomplish this. Sarah was old, feeble, and not a well person. But, she had remarkably caring neighbor women who looked after her needs. They brought her food, bathed her, clothed her, and looked after her interests. They appeared before notaries and judges and signed statements on Sarah's behalf. Forty years after the Civil War these remarkable women, Hattie Bannon, Mary Ruch, Eliza Bumbrick, and Margaret Baird, understood the full meaning of Lincoln’s admonition "... to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan ..." and put them into practice.
With our nation once more at war, it seems fair to ask: How do we understand these words today? How does our national leadership understand its obligation "to bind up the nation's wounds...? Not very well, I’m afraid. Memorial Day or to give it its older name, Decoration Day, grew up organically from the American people as a way of dealing with the terrible devastation and loss of human life in the Civil War. Yet this Memorial Day has a strange feeling to it. It is acceptable to remember and honor those who fought in the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and the first Gulf War, but one should remain silent about our wounded and fallen service persons in the Iraq War. One writer said about the Iraq War, "... our troops go to war and get killed, but you never see the bodies coming home."
A recent telecast was devoted entirely to reading the names of those killed in Iraq. This program was widely criticized as unpatriotic and refused airtime by some broadcast groups. In the midst of war, President Lincoln went to Gettysberg, Pennsylvania to dedicate a new cemetery. Here he gave a short, moving, and never to be forgotten speech. Concerning the Civil War, he said, in words memorized by generations of American school children, "We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it as a final resting place for those who died here that the nation might live." Lincoln thus gave public acknowledgement to the great sacrifice required to preserve the nation. In the view of our leaders, our service men and women are dying in Iraq that the nation might live. Yet, they refuse to honor their death's publicly. Suppressing public awareness of casualties is not the stuff of real leadership; and far from binding up the nation’s wounds, it deepens them.
The names of the wounded in Iraq are usually not announced publicly. There are about six persons wounded for every person killed in this war. This ratio is substantially higher than American combat forces have experienced in past wars. Many think that this ratio has been increased by use of body armor and improved medical care, which are allowing many to survive what would previously have been fatal attacks. The downside of survival is that a large portion of the wounded tends to be more severely disabled than in past wars. Because of the nature of this war, loss of limbs, loss of vision and eyes, and brain damage are common among the wounded. A real question at this point is: how will America treat these wounded veterans? It seems grotesque, but the administration is proposing to make access to health care more difficult and more costly for veterans. The congress has yet to deal with this issue, but it’s worth noting that out of 535 members of the congress only one has a child in the war and only six others have a son or daughter in the military service. It seems that the stage is being set to deal with Iraq War veterans "on the cheap."
Dan Baum in a recent New Yorker article about the wounded from the Iraq war wrote that "Though the Purple Heart club is a band of brothers, there is a hierarchy of wounds. A whole leg trumps a half. A right hand trumps a left. And everybody was down on one soldier who was physically unmarked but said he had been mentally wounded by the war." What these veterans are saying about the mentally disabled reflects a common societal prejudice against mental disorders—a prejudice, which, if not overcome, will prevent many veterans from getting the help they need. I'm personally convinced that the greatest harm any war does is not to the body but to the human mind and spirit. Whether harmed physically or mentally, no American veteran should spend a lifetime carrying a war around in his or her pocket as William Millham did.
The Unitarian Universalist theologian, James Luther Adams, advocated what he called the Prophethood of All Believers. On this Memorial Day 2004, I believe that our religious community is called to prophecy: prophecy in the sense of the biblical prophets confronting authority and demanding justice; prophecy in sense of Olympia Brown's call to ever teach the great lesson that there is no real security in fighting; prophecy in the sense of Albert Einstein's recognition that peace only comes through understanding. Let us remember that, "where there is no vision the people perish." About supporting our service personnel, President Sinkford said it well: "Let us not confuse our feelings about those who made the decision for war with our steadfast support for those who are called to make war itself. So let us pray as one people for our soldiers."
May it be so.
I was a young child during World II; the war frightened and confused me.Copyright © 2004 Merrill E. Milham. All Rights Reserved.
I was a young teen during the Korean War; the war frightened and confused me.
I was a young adult during the Vietnam War; the war frightened and confused me.
I was a young senior citizen during the first Gulf War; the war frightened and confused me.
Now, I am past young old age in the midst of the Iraq War; the war frightens me, but it has not confused me:
I see with an unwanted clarity the mounting danger to our nation, brought on by our own actions.