In an old trunk, up in the garret where the family letters were deposited
for more than half a century, I found the diary of a soldier, in which
the following notes attracted my attention: “August 14, 1864. Yesterday
was a terrible day for me. The battle at Deep Bottom, near Richmond,
took the last of my messmates. Andrew Brown was wounded early in the
engagement—shot through the thigh. Comrade Charles Pepperman assisted
him to the rear. While they were gone, the man at my side, Amos Friedel
was shot through the head and died instantly. Thus three of my messmates
left my side within fifteen minutes. Pepperman joined the ranks an hour
later, and a few minutes after was shot and fatally wounded. This morning
Henry Traveler was found on the battle field, with his arm shattered
horribly, and was taken to the hospital.
“In noting these fatalities and injuries, I cannot help but recall
Comrade Shoemaker, the first of my messmates to pass out. His was the
most pitiable death of all. He died three months ago of nostalgia. This
is simply a melancholy growing out of homesickness. Shoemaker had married
a pretty girl only a few weeks before he enlisted and went to the front.
The army lay in supine idleness for several weeks, and Shoemaker had
nothing to do but brood over his separation from the one he loved so
fondly. A deep melancholia settled down upon his soul and we could not
awaken an interest in his heart. Hour after hour his mind dwelt upon the
scenes of his Pennsylvania home, and his deserted wife’s sad face looked
out of the shadows and smiled the lonely smile of a forsaken woman.
“They took him to the hospital, but the doctors could find no organic
disease in his body. He was simply dying of loneliness and a longing,
longing to be with the people he loved. He was a large man, standing six
feet in his bare feet, and this made his death all the more pathetic.
We tried to get him a furlough and send him to his family at home, for
thirty days, but the officers laughed at us, and said the man would come
out of his melancholia in a few days and go to eating hard-tack. They
were men without heart or sentiment, and they did not know the depth of
Shoemaker’s gloom.
“Three weeks after being taken to the hospital, he died, and was buried
in Virginia, and the longing wife never saw his face again.
“August 25th. Was to see Comrade Brown today, before they removed him
to the hospital at Washington. He is very badly wounded, the bone being
shattered and there is danger of gangrene. He gave me a letter to read
which he received the previous day from home, written by his sister,
Barbara. Among the many things she wrote was this: ‘On the night of the
15th and about two o’clock in the morning I dreamed that you came home.
I could see you walking up to the door as plainly as I ever saw your
familiar face. Your knock on the door wakened me out of a troubled sleep,
and so sure was I that you were down at the door waiting to be admitted,
that I insisted on some one going down to let you in. Of course it was
all a dream, but so realistic, that I was sorely troubled until father
read in the Tribune that you were wounded. Surely you must have been
thinking of home at that hour.’”
There the diary ended. For it was only a portion of the book in which
this unknown comrade had been jotting down the events of his army life.
The hand that put those written pages in the old trunk has been dead for
many years, and we can only guess who the writer was. He, too, may have
left his bones to decay in Virginia soil, and his diary sent back to
Northern friends. But I knew this Samuel Shoemaker, and I still remember
of hearing my parents talking about his sad death. No doubt there were
many thousands of young men taken from their mountain homes and rushed
to the front, and the change was so great that they could not prevent
their hearts from longing for the dear old scenes of home—for the dear
old mother, wife or sweetheart. And then came the hopelessness and
melancholia and the loss of courage, and finally death.
And yet that war settled nothing. The negro question is still the
overshadowing problem calling for a solution. Burning negroes at the
stake marks America as one of the barbarous nations.