February 20, 2018
MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey
Classic Novel about The War Between the States and Sherman’s Brutal March
through the Carolinas
Friends,
A
few readers of this column receive the Confederate
Veteran magazine, but most do not. Over the years I have published a number
of items in that journal on topics dealing with the War Between the States and
the South and its history. Today I would like to share one of those with you.
Several
years ago I published a review of a fine novel about the War (Sherman’s march
through the Carolinas), Souls of Lions,
by R. E. Mitchell, in the Confederate
Veteran. The Confederate Veteran does not offer a web site showcasing its past
articles, so I have taken that review, edited it slightly, and it has been
published by The Abbeville Institute web site.
I am reproducing it here, as I think Souls
of Lions is a worthy and engrossing volume—worth your investment and the
time spent reading it. So it forms today’s installment in the MY CORNER series.
I
hope you find it of interest.
Dr. Boyd D. Cathey
Souls of Lions
Very seldom do I review
novels, even historical ones. But R. E. Mitchell’s volume, Souls of Lions,
after just a few pages, captured my attention and kept me glued to my couch
seat for several days until I had finished it…and with its surprising and
fascinating ending. At the end, tears swelled up in my eyes, as I bid goodbye
to characters I had grown to know and whose eyes I felt that I could see
through.
The plot basically concerns
two brothers, George and Walsh Hawkins, both very young and from Person County,
North Carolina, and several of their friends who are members of the 50th North
Carolina Regiment during the last six months of the War for Southern
Independence. George and Walsh actually existed, although Mitchell has
recreated various situations and added imagined and fictitious dialogue.
We follow the 50th on
its painful and gruesome march, many times as a rearguard unit against General
Sherman’s overwhelming numbers, from Savannah through ravaged South Carolina,
to Averasborough and then to the fields of Bentonville, and at last to the
final emotional farewells in Greensboro, where the Army of Tennessee, and
particularly Hardee’s command, lay down their arms and disbanded.
Through it all we get to know
these two brothers, we see through their eyes, experience their unbearable
suffering due to Yankee might, ruthless bummers, lack of provisions, and the
very cruel winter of 1864-1865. Although author Mitchell conveys fully, at
times, the desperation and hardships, we also see a true spirit of courage and
incredible sacrifice and a real love of country, and, even more, a certain
nobility that inhabits these poor farmer boys.
One of the excellent
characteristics of Mitchell’s narrative is the obvious research and attention
to historical detail he incorporates. You can actually trace the march from
Savannah to Bentonville using a good chronology—Mitchell knows his facts and
geography. But even more, he is able to express both the sufferings and
hardships, as well as the courage and, yes, even moments of simple joy.
Here is an example of his
description of the despair that can afflict a soldier in such circumstances:
“An exhausted, starving man
lives only for the moment. The past is meaningless, like a disjointed, noisy
dream. It is hard to hold. There is a bit of something here, a piece of
something there, all loosely joined memories held together by invisibilities.
Of what point are they? Yet, they are the things every man has done, the
commonplace. George had eaten thousands of meals, slept in bed countless times,
all without giving it much thought. But now his desperation was a concentration
of plain, simple memories, a singularity of infinite desperation, like
struggling to draw a breath, and so the future had become everything.” (p. 112)
And of the superhuman courage,
emotion, and exhilaration that comes in the midst of contested battle, here is
Mitchell describing a successful Confederate counter-attack by the 50th in
the heat of Bentonville:
“The smoke had cleared enough
for him [George] to see the [Yankee] skirmishers reforming. Several were
kneeling, reloading their rifles. He charged them recklessly, swinging his
rifle like a club until the enemy fled back into the brush. George charged
after them and soon found himself back among his company. He was flying as
though in a dream, destined to rule the world. There was nothing they could not
do. They were invincible. Here at last there was glory and honor, not of
this world, but of another dimension, where all his senses were compressed by
time, an excitement so exhilarating, he felt immortal.” (p. 135)
Tears came to me as Mitchell,
speaking through his characters, recounts the death OF young Willie Hardee the
general’s only son, aged only sixteen. Learning of young Willie’s wound,
George asks: “How serious is it?” And his compatriot’s reply: “Mortal, they
say. I guess the general finally gave in. I guess it was hard to say no when a
lot of sixteen-year-old boys were fighting and dying. I guess they did some
good…Anyway, we’re asked to pray for the boy.” Then, on hearing of Willie’s
death from Captain Van Wyk, George sadly exclaims: “I’m sorry…a lot of Willies
have died in this war. A lot of fathers have lost their sons.” (pp. 139, 143)
And, again, I felt the
emotions as the news reaches their camp outside Raleigh that Marse Robert had
surrendered at Appomattox: “The men tried all that day to understand the
meaning of Marse Bob’s surrender. Some denied it was true. It couldn’t be
true. Why, Lee had whipped Grant at the Wilderness and Spotsylvania and Cold
Harbor….” (pp. 155-156) And then thinking about what surrender would mean, in
one of the finest summations of what separated those valiant Southern boys from
their Northern counterparts, George declares:
“It [the war] will be OUR
fault….that is the way it will be told. We liked things the way they were. It
was the Yankees who wanted to change things. They want to change the world. But
when you think about it, I imagine that most folks are farmers same as us. When
you think about, that should be enough. But the Yankees want to lay up
treasures on earth. The whole country will be belching smoke and puffing steam.
A man will try to sleep at night to trains and the whistles of steam. I reckon
now we’ll see the kind of world they want to make. It ain’t likely to include
us.” (p.
156).
The final laying down of arms and
banners at Greensboro also captures the bursting emotions and the memories of men
who, despite their seemingly infinite hardships and sufferings, had an
incredible esprit de corps and
composed an army scarcely paralleled in human history: “One by one, the
regimental flags dipped and were surrendered. The men lowered their heads with the
flags and wept. Tears flowed freely down every face. Not one could hold back
the tears. To capture an enemy flag was a great feat, but to lose the colors, a
disgrace.” (p. 163) And at General Hardee’s farewell, “[T]he soldiers
cheered…They reached up to touch the general and shake his hand,” and one
companion of George and Walsh expressed their emptiness: “I feel like a hound
with his teeth pulled….At times I prayed for this day, but with a different
ending. It just don’t feel right.” (p. 164)
There is also a heroine in Souls of Lions. Her name is Sally Jo,
and she catches George’s eye in the midst of what probably is the low point
during the Carolinas campaign. It would be unfair to reveal details of their
amazing romance, for it comprises a special ingredient that makes this novel so
rewarding and heartrending. Needless to say, if you are like me, you will not
have a dry eye after reading this volume.
At the very end, thirty years later in
1895, at a reunion of those now aged heroes of the 50th on the
battlefield at Bentonville, “a band played, the Goldsboro Rifles paraded by the
light of the campfires, and the Confederates commenced to sing the old songs.
George listened for a while and then joined the singing. His voice cracked with
emotion…of sadness and joy, of sweet memories and bitter ones. He had known
suffering but little joy, defeat and no victory, but through it all he had done
his duty….” (p. 194)
Thus, with Souls of Lions Mitchell’s vision, through the eyes of his
larger-than-life characters, becomes reality. Through this stirring account of
their pain, but also their unexcelled courage and heroism in defense of their
country and a way of life, we can see what they saw and fathom what they felt.
About Boyd Cathey
Boyd D. Cathey holds a doctorate in
European history from the Catholic University of Navarra, Pamplona, Spain,
where he was a Richard Weaver Fellow, and an MA in intellectual history from
the University of Virginia (as a Jefferson Fellow). He was assistant to
conservative author and philosopher the late Russell Kirk. In more recent years
he served as State Registrar of the North Carolina Division of Archives and
History. He has published in French, Spanish, and English, on historical
subjects as well as classical music and opera. He is active in the Sons of
Confederate Veterans and various historical, archival, and genealogical
organizations. More
from Boyd Cathey
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