“This is Where I Stood”

“I was 16 years old, the youngest Confederate killed in the fighting. My father was Marianna businessman William Nickels, who was a Unionist. I was burned to death in the St. Luke Episcopal Church”.

“I was a senior deacon and Sunday School leader from Greenwood Baptist Church who rode out with Robinson’s school boys as they came to fight. At the age of 76, I was the oldest man killed in the Battle of Marianna. I was burned beyond recognition in St. Luke’s Episcopal Church”.

In Confederate Park I listened intently while the re-enactors told the heart wrenching stories of ten of the men that fell in battle over a hundred and forty years ago.

The words were familiar to me, but it was as though I was hearing them for the first time. I sensed that many of the listeners were also caught up in the moment.

As battles go, the Battle of Marianna was not much.

It did not have the intensity and the bloodshed of Antietam, the worst single day of that four year struggle, when thousands of Americans died.

It was not a turning point, like Gettysburg, where General Robert Lee, Commander of the seemingly invincible Army of Northern Virginia, was turned back from his invasion of the North.

It was not like Manassas. The inhabitants of Washington had loaded their buggies with picnic food, and had driven out to watch the mighty Union Army vanquish the upstarts. But a strange Confederate general stood his ground and for evermore was known as “Stonewall” Jackson, and the party goers fled back to the safety of the city in panic, and carried with them the sudden understanding that this war was real and terrible.

Marianna was a battle that was a microcosm of this wider conflict, a conflict that was played out over and over throughout our country. There was drama and unspeakable cruelty and great heroism. Men fought for a cause and for their homes, and for each other.

Former Governor Leroy Collins in his book “Forerunners Courageous” told about visiting the site of the Battle of Natural Bridge near Tallahassee as a young boy. There was a feeble old man who would search the ground until he found a particular spot. He would plant his walking stick there and shuffle around it and sing in a monotone “This is where I stood”. Collins said that the boys, himself included, would make fun of the man, but Collins’ father explained that he was one of the last survivors of the battle, and he always looked for the spot where he stood firm against the enemy on that fateful day.

On Marianna Day we watched as men told “where I stood” in a simple way.

I have been privileged to visit many of the War’s battlefields. Theresa and I would try to sense what the commanders were striving to accomplish, and to grasp the soldiers feelings where they stood. One of my ancestors, Samuel Calhoun White, was a member of the 31st Georgia Infantry, and we traced his footsteps through most of the battles in the East and, finally, to his part in the last battle of the great Army of Northern Virginia. We always tried to stand where we imagined Samuel stood at each of the battlefield sites we visited.

Uncle Samuel stood with Jackson’s troops on the unfinished railroad at the battle of Second Manassas. The Southern men ran out of ammunition, so they threw rocks at the Yankees down the hill. The Yankees threw rocks back!

He stood with General John B. Gordon’s brigade below Cemetery Ridge on the second night at Gettysburg. Gordon begged for permission to continue fighting, bnt was refused. The next day Pickett’s Charge sealed the fate of General Lee’s army at that battle.

He stood many more times with the Army, and was wounded three times in combat.

I wanted to record this in a book, as though he were writing home, but I did the last chapter first, and I have never done any others. Perhaps these paragraphs that I did pen will give the reader a sense of the foot soldiers who did not see the battle from the generals’ views, but experienced it on the ground and within a few yards of where they stood.

Here is how I imagined Corporal Samuel Calhoun White, Confederate States Army, wrote of the last day of his war:

The next day we lind up by company four abrest and startd out down the little rode where we had gone to that last fite. Only this tim Genl Gordon led us slow on his horse and he looked real sad like Lee had lookd. And we was draggin along too. We got down the rode a piece and the Yankees was drawd up on one side facin us and some fellow namd Chamberlain sat on his horse lookin at us. We was sad and movd slow and sort of draggd. And then Chamberlain calld out to his men and they come to attention and he told them to “carry arms” which is how fightin men salut. And blame if ever one of them bluecoats didnt do it and then Genl Gordon reard his horse up and did an eyes rite and returnd the salut with his saber and then we all drawd up strait and tall and marchd like we was on parade and returnd the salut.

But then we got down the rode a ways and we stoppd and turnd and stackd our rifels and put our flags acrost them and we all cried, most of us. And then we stood up and walkd down the rode a piece and then just sorta broke ranks and left. And that was the end of the Army of Northern Virginia.

And I thout back to when I left home and went to Savana on the cars and jined Lee’s army. And I rememberd friends I lost and battles we won and lost and what a good army we was and I think it was the best ever. And there was never anythin like us charging like a bunch of horses and yellin til it skeerd the other side and even the animals run from us. And I recollect Jackson and how he died and others and how there was always some good ones to take each place at least for a while.

And I thout about how there shoud have been a better way for us to go than stragglin off, but there wasnt and then I thout to myself dammd if I will ever love another country.

And then Samuel White left, to walk back to Georgia.