Dear Editor:
A week ago I attended the concert of a choral group. The final piece was the Battle Hymn of the Republic. When I heard the words, “Christ died to make men holy/let us die to make men free,” I thought of the tens of thousands of Union soldiers who marched to that anthem, one of whom was my grandfather. Yes, my father’s father fought in the battles of Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, and the bloodiest battle of the war, Spotsylvania Court House. The Civil War published by American Heritage Publishing Co. describes the worst event of that battle:
What followed was the most vicious struggle of the Civil War.
The front was so narrow that the Northerners were piled up thirty ranks deep, those in the rear passing loaded muskets forward. In many places, particularly at a bend in the lines called the Bloody Angle, there was hand-to-hand fighting of unbelievable savagery. Cannon fired canister at point-blank range, and soldiers were “stabbed to death with . . . bayonets thrust between the logs in the parapet which separated the combatants.”
The “bloodshed surpassing all former experiences” continued in the rain and smoke and indescribable din until well past midnight, ending only when Lee completed a new line across the Salient.
My brother and I visited the Spotsylvania Court House battlefield, and there, at the site of the Bloody Angle, was a monument to the 49th Regiment of New York, our grandfather’s outfit.
It is incredible that so many lives were spent in a war “to set men free” and yet it took another one hundred years to complete the task. In the ensuing years the freed slaves continued to live lives of economic, social, and political depravation as to be hardly better off than in slavery. It took a peaceful, non-violent revolution led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to accomplish what the carnage of the Civil War did not.
Memorial Day, originally called Decoration Day, was established to honor the dead of both sides of that war. It continues to be observed to honor the dead of all subsequent wars. I believe that we do no honor to the Americans who have given their lives, if we continue to decide every issue on the field of battle.
I intend to demonstrate my feelings with a silent vigil at the Memorial Day observance in Weehawken. I invite all Weehawken citizens for peace to join me in this endeavor.
James T. Dette