I’m a tree hugger and I love
books, so this photo probably shows the best dead tree anywhere.
The tall stack of wooden books
prompted me to pull off the bookcase the volumes I used to research With
Might & Main. In comparison, my books about the Civil War in Louisiana
in 1863 and 1864 are a short stack.
It would be a much taller stack if I could have figured out how to include the many online websites I used. It bothers me a little that those sources exist only in my laptop, but boy, were they helpful in ‘digging deep’ after some bit of arcane information.
It would be a much taller stack if I could have figured out how to include the many online websites I used. It bothers me a little that those sources exist only in my laptop, but boy, were they helpful in ‘digging deep’ after some bit of arcane information.
The cover image of With Might
& Main is a remarkable small painting that is also a poignant primary
source. The painting is a rendition of the Battle of Milliken’s Bend, a small engagement,
almost lost to history. Milliken’s Bend was a landing on the west side of the
Mississippi River, a few miles upriver of Vicksburg. There, on June 7, 1863,
while the siege of Vicksburg was ongoing, an all-Texan force of Confederates
assaulted a similar-sized garrison of Union soldiers who had fortified a
section of flood control levees.
The painting is the work of a
19-year-old Texas soldier who was wounded in the hip during the Texans’ attack.
After he fell, he sat and watched the hand-to-hand fighting on top of the
levee. After the battle, he was taken to a field hospital where he created the
painting while a patient in the hospital. The young soldier was named David
Batey. He was a private in the 17th Texas Infantry and lived near
Bastrop, Texas before the war. He died in the field hospital of his battle
wound, probably from infection, which is a slow and painful way to go. Someone
saved his painting and somehow it was returned to his family. A fold is
visible, suggesting it was mailed. A relative of Private Batey still has it.
While Private Batey’s painting is
primitive, it also is chock-full of clearly defined details. Batey portrays
many of the Rebel soldiers wearing red shirts and suspenders rather than gray
jackets. Muskets are upended being swung as clubs. There are ‘bombs bursting in
air’ and billowing smoke from two steamboats behind the levee in the river. A
Confederate soldier is waving a captured Union flag. The bloody dead and
wounded litter the ground.
All in all, the image is a fairly spectacular
painting of the small vicious battle at a location that has since been covered
over by a course change of the Mississippi River. You can’t walk the ground or
climb the levee where 1,400 white Texans and a like number of black freedmen
from Louisiana went at each with ‘hammer and tongs’ in the first battle for all
of them. But you can look at the battle in color from the viewpoint of gallant
Private Batey and imagine being there.
And you can make my day by ordering
With Might & Main to read during the interminable ads during football
games on TV. Here is a link to my author’s
page on Amazon where any of my novels can be ordered.
Let me see, should I buy a
Whataburger to eat during the game or McBride’s new book? Choices, choices.
