Reflect that the chief source of all evils to Man, and of baseness and cowardice, is not death, but the fear of death. Against this fear then, I pray you, harden yourself; to this let all your reasonings, your exercises, your reading tend. Then shall you know that thus alone are men set free.
- Epictetus, former Roman slave, A.D. c. 125
Chapter Ten
Memories glint like the winking of sunlight off a thousand shouldered rifles. Glancing back at the snakelike column, four abreast, bayonets and brassery of buttons gleaming within the cadence-chorus of a trampling blue-backed horde.
From the mountains of Missouri, we march for twenty-eight days southward, toward the sweltering heat of Louisiana. It is the first time these eyes set beyond the borders of neighboring plantations. Each crest of a hill gives glimpse of an ever changing and limitless horizon that expands my boundaries.
During much of the march, we proceed in “route step,” a looser restriction on regimental order. Breaking into song, enjoying the attention as throngs of people line the streets to survey our massive legion, mostly to observe the spectacle of black in blue. We wear the colors with pride.
It is the last time mirth dictates our mood.
In Louisiana, we defend the Union from the latrinal position, that is: digging wells for water, and latrines for soldiers to piss in. General Sherman’s orders are strictly obeyed. Since white soldiers are prohibited from performing more than ten days fatigue duty, their duty is often carried out by prisoners, but here in the 62nd, colored troops fatigue for days on end.
Encamped near the latrine lines -as is the only space afforded negro troops- the regiment quickly succumbs to disease. After constant training and drilling back in Benton Barracks, after the long march south, rather than confronting the yellow eyes of the Confederate, we are beset by alligators, sand, bedrock, and dysentery.
Insidious foes fell our ranks.
Typhoid fever ravages the camp consuming swaths of men as fast and cruel as any rebel assault. Every other tent contains a contaminated man. We fall asleep each night to the low chorus of moans of the dying. Our trench digging repertoire expands to daily grave duty. The dead cart piles heavy. A foul stench blankets the campground. I notch my spade for every dead man I bury, in a short time, carving seventy-three marks in my shovel. For some of the fallen, those slashes are the only remainders of their existence.
Momma once told me that the brown thrasher, a seemingly dull and ordinary bird, sang over 1,000 unique songs, proof that plumage was merely a cloak of semblance, but beneath that veil incinerated a fiery spirit. What was it she used to say? “Every song unsung is absence. We feel it. Music missing from the earth.” I can still hear her sing-song whisper, quoting the poet, “I have, O Lord, a river in my body, but a sea in my soul.”
These men die the indignity of indigents, before a free note could sound. Expunged. Obliterated. Songs swallowed by a mass of unknowing. Shoveling soil over the faces of men whose names I barely know, the Roman slave Epictetus cups his hand to my ear: "Not death is evil, but a shameful death."
Evenings: nightly tutoring lessons become difficult. The men, exhausted, lose their hunger for learning, displaced by sheer survival. I continue teaching, making rounds to the more earnest students, ending my nightly sick-bed visits in the tent of Jed, who succumbs to swamp fever. Jed’s appetite for learning remains rapacious. We read and talk, endlessly dreaming of what we will do once the war is over. Jed's wife was killed while in the slave quarters by the hands of an overseer, their two children sold at auction but Jed does not know where. Much of our discussion rambles into thickets of uncertainty, our words grappling for pathways, led by longing.
Colonel Branson gathers newspapers of surrounding communities and passes them along to the troops, the papers, weathered and greasy by the time they make the rounds are nonetheless welcome. Branson surprises me with copies of The New Orleans Tribune, the first daily negro newspaper ever published. I instruct Jed to read from the headlines and editorials to which he proceeds, but eventually he reads phonetically from the French version (issues are printed in both English and French due to the large population of French speaking citizens in the New Orleans area). We close each evening in howls of laughter as Jed struggles to speak French words, comically stretching the vowels, l'armée de l'union, his exaggerations growing larger as the long, hot day slinks into darkness. Paragraph after paragraph, we exhort weariness from our bones and add to our knowledge something of the world we are walking into.
A world much like the Fort Pillow Massacre. Southern troops, under the command of Bedford Forest, slaughtered hundreds of surrendered negro soldiers. We traveled through Fort Pillow on our march south, and, acquainted with the area, we replay the horror in our minds. The familiarity affects in us the Southerner’s propagandic intent: fear. But fear, in the way it is wont to do, foments to anger.
The putrid piles of dead soldiers on empty promises. The inferior work. The indignity of wills surrendered to new masters.
The shovels in our hands bear new significance, barriers between what we are allowed to do and what we want to do: fight. We (many of us) do not wish to fight so as to kill; we wish to fight so as to live.
Every gouge of earth from a shovel sinks the resolve of a good learner, burying with each dead body desire and pride in the living. As each day passes, I struggle to keep the men interested. The disease-riddled camp, the overworked men, the boiling temperatures, the carcasses of soldiers: our minds preoccupied, not as much with the fear of death but with the terror of never a chance to live.
One evening, I return to Jed’s tent and discover him whimpering in the corner. Seated on the floor, his knees to his chest, mouth gagged, hands tied, arms draped over his knees. Through the crook of his elbows and backs of his knees thrust a stick. He sits skewered like a roast pig, rocking back and forth, shaking from chills. The regimental doctor declared Jed able to return to work but Jed refused. Our army calls this punishment “bucked and gagged” and reserves it for those unwilling to work.
I untie the knot, help him stand, and guide him toward his cot.
“Can’t die here, Liberty,” his voice quivers plea and protest, “this uniform s’pose to see us through.”
He squares in front of me, seizes me by the shoulders, eyes flashing in frenzy, “Through, Liberty,” his grip vices, grasping for anchor, “s’pose to see us through.”
The next morning, we bury Jed.
I lay his blue book, dog-eared and weathered, across his chest and cast the last scoop of soil over his grave.
Out of the corner of my eye, a red breasted vermillion cuts the sky, sweeping low across the graves of soldiers too soon forgotten, the mounds of piled earth a chorus of unsung melodies.
The bugler blows.
I notch my spade.