One of the fun aspects of writing historical fiction
is not knowing when I’ll need to make a quick detour to Wikipedia. I’m only
three chapters into the manuscript of Redeeming
Honor, the middle book in the McBee Civil War trilogy, and I’ve already
taken some fact-chasing side trips, chasing historical rabbits, so to speak.
Since the new book starts with the arrival of
thirty-six new recruits to Captain McBee’s company, I needed some names to
attach to green soldiers. That sent me to the historical roster of Company C of
the Fifth Texas Infantry. I wanted to identify which men were recruited during
the one successful effort made to send junior officers back to Texas from
Virginia and coax men with a $50 bounty to enlist for the duration of the war,
which the South still thought they were winning and wouldn’t last much longer.
Chapter 2 had me sorting out that Mr. Bayer did not
market and coin the word “aspirin” until 1899, thirty-four years after the
Civil War ended. But key ingredients of pain relieving medicines were known
before the Civil War, so I slipped Doctor Barton, the GP in Lexington, a vial
of extract of willow tree sap, one of the sources for acetylsalicylic acid, the active
ingredient in aspirin.
Not two pages later I was clarifying the steps of
“harvesting” a hen to go in the cook pot. I have never been confronted with the
need to wring a chicken’s neck or otherwise dispatch a hen or rooster, but when
I was a teenager I went duck hunting with friends a couple of times. I still
remember one cold morning riding in Bill Daniel’s 1961 Ford Falcon that had an
air vent that was stuck open, blowing frigid air at my feet all the way to Lake
o’ the Pines and back.
I did bring back a dead duck that morning and
remember the mess I made in the back yard gutting and half-ass plucking the
poor bird. Mama wound up making me go bury it by the creek across the street. I
think she just didn’t want to cook it in her clean kitchen. I didn’t mind so
much since I’d been told wild duck meat, even the breast, was all dark, tough,
and stringy. My first meal in Paris in 2009 dispelled that myth, but in 1967
what did I know?
Probably the most interesting historical rabbit that
I’ve so far chased down regarding the material goods of the Civil War is the
story of Charles Goodyear. He spent his lifetime trying to turn his discovery
of how to “vulcanize” rubber into a successful manufacturing and marketing
business. (He was the first American to learn that sulfur and heat were key
ingredients to make rubber a practical waterproof coating on products like
shoes and tobacco pouches) He impoverished his family and ruined his health
with his decades of experiments with strong chemicals and acids, yet he did eventually
create and patent a waterproof product that could be attached to canvas and was
impervious to heat and cold.
During the Civil War, tens of thousands of highly
valued waterproof vulcanized rubber “gum blankets” were issued to soldiers in
the Union army. Besides good shoes, gum blankets were the first items that
Confederate soldiers most often stripped from fallen Yankee soldiers.
In Whittled
Away, I included a true account of some Texas Rebs stumbling across two
huge piles of new gum blankets waiting to be issued to Sherman’s troops in
north Georgia in mid-1864. In that long summer campaign of constant marching
that was plagued by recurring torrential rains, the gum blankets were likely
more valued than hard coins. Better to be penniless, dry and warm, than cold,
wet, and unable to use your money.
I hope everyone votes tomorrow or has already cast
your ballot in elections from local school boards and city government all the
way up to those running for Congressional and Senate seats. It matters.
What I’ve read this week: I finished Jeff Shaara’s
new Civil War novel about the battle at Chattanooga and Missionary Ridge: The Smoke at Dawn.
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