Critic’s Corner
Macaria; Or, what Confederates read
By Stephen Davis · Originally published August 2017 · pp. 36–37
Macaria; Or, what Confederates read Following the battle of Franklin, Nov. 30, 1864, Confederate Gen. John B. Hood had few tactical options when Union Maj. Gen. John M. Schofield’s army retreated to Nashville. 1) He could retreat himself back to Alabama, essentially admitting the failure of his Tennessee campaign. 2) He could march around Nashville (where Schofield had united with a sizable force already assembled by Maj. Gen. George H. Thomas), then advance rather quixotically into Kentucky. Or 3) he could push up to Nashville, dig in, await Thomas’ certain assault and hope to repulse it, earning some sort of defensive victory. As we know, Hood took the third option. A few days after Franklin, Hood’s Army of Tennessee was fortifying south of Nashville, erecting works in freezing weather. Then waiting. “On the hills and in the vales adjacent to the city our troops took a position,” recorded one Tennessee veteran, “Micawber-like, waiting for ‘something to turn up.’” The Confederate who could cite Mr. Micawber—in this case, H. C. Irby of the 9th Tenn. Inf.— suggests that he and others were familiar with Dickens’ David Copperfield (1850). Dickens was a huge hit in antebellum America, in the South as well as North. But what else did Confederates like to read? Southern soldiers’ reading preferences were actually quite varied. After the Bible and newspapers, of course, there were novels, offering reading entertainment for the officers and men (when they had the time). Sir Walter Scott’s historical romances delighted many, although George Cary Eggleston is not to be believed in stating that “almost every man in the army was familiar” with Ivanhoe’s adventures. In Hood’s army during the summer of ’64, men of the Kentucky Orphan Brigade whiled away time in the trenches poring over Scott’s The Heart of Midlothian, after a gracious lady gave a copy to Bluegrass soldier Jim Bemis. “He & I would sit in the rifle pits,” recorded Bemis’ comrade Johnny Green in his journal, “with the enemies shells flying over us & read this charming story.” Comrades gathered around to hear the novel being read aloud. “Read that over again,” one would say when a shell exploded nearby; “the blamed fool yanks made so much noise I did not hear that sentence.” Once, when an enemy sortie interrupted a reading session, Bemis complained that have no soul for literature.” Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables appeared in print in 1862 and became a favorite in Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. After its translation and publication by a Richmond firm, a “soldier edition,” printed on “Confederate ‘sheep’s wool paper,’ was distributed throughout the army in the winter of 1863-64, according to Maj. Robert Stiles. “Everywhere, you might see the gaunt figures in their tattered jackets bending over the dingy pamphlets—‘Fantine,’ ‘Cosette,’ or ‘Marius,’ or ‘St. Denis,’” remembered John Esten Cooke. “The soldiers, little familiar with the Gallic pronunciations, called the book ‘Lee’s Miserables!’” The section of Hugo’s novel titled Fantine carried particular resonance. “I want a copy of that book about Gen. Lee’s poor miserable soldiers faintin’,” a Richmond lady was heard to remark in West & Johnston’s book store. “Oh! ah! yes! I know what it is now you mean Les Miserables. Fantine by Victor Hugo,” came the owner’s reply. “No, I don’t,” said she. “I know nothing and care nothing about Lays Meeserarbuls. I want Lee’s Miserables faintin’.” The lady left without the book. The mispronunciation caught on even among Yankees. After Spotsylvania, a Union officer rode by a Virginia’s lady’s porch and saw her reading. “By the way,” he hailed, “have you seen ‘Lee’s Miserables’?” The woman snapped, “Don’t you talk to me that way; they’re a good deal better than Grant’s miserables anyhow!” “Lee’s Miserables” made its way to Georgia, for Charles H. Smith, writing as “Bill Arp,” addressed the subject during Hood’s defense of Atlanta: “Sum frog-eatin Frenchman hav writ a book and kalled it ‘Lee’s Miserbuls,’ or sum other sich name….Genrul Hood have also got a few miserbels in the suberbs of his fiting groun.” Another favorite novel among Johnny Rebs—indeed, the bestselling title by a wartime Southern author—was Macaria; or, Altars of Sacrifice, written by Alabaman Augusta Jane Evans. Published in 1863, the book was a hit in the Confederate armies. Soldiers liked it for various reasons, not the least of which was that Miss Evans donated sales proceeds to Confederate hospitals. “I remember with what keen delight I read between marches and battle her ‘Macaria,’” remembered an officer in Lee’s army. One Confederate claimed that the book, tucked into his coat, took two bullets at Chancellorsville and saved his life. Another veteran remembered that the errand of returning the novel once saved him from enemy capture. The work was popular in the western army, too. A Missourian in Cockrell’s Brigade, Army of Tennessee, recounted after the war how a copy of Macaria circulated through the ranks, “every fellow waiting impatiently for his turn.” The men enjoyed “the big words and sentences,” the veteran recalled. In line at Kennesaw Mountain, a soldier was reading it when a Northern shell fragment knocked it from his hand. “Oh, hell!” he cried, “There goes ‘Mackariar!’” Miss Evans was already a published author and an avowed Southron when the war broke out. After helping to establish a soldiers’ hospital near her home in Mobile, Evans found time to compose her novel of pathos, romance, moral didacticism— and Confederate propaganda. In its very opening page Macaria is dedicated to the Confederate armies, “who have delivered the South from despotism, and who have won for generations yet unborn the precious guerdon of Constitutional Republican liberty.” At the start of Macaria, sixteenyear-old Russell Aubrey works hard at his schooling while trying to support his invalid mother and sickly young sister. His efforts, however, are blunted by the disgrace of his father, a debtor who was taunted to murder by a creditor, and who committed suicide in prison, and by a poorly educated employer who jealously sought to stifle young Russell’s energies. In the second chapter the reader is introduced to fourteen-yearold Irene Huntington, daughter of a wealthy aristocrat—and one can guess the match of the future. Much of the plot involves Russell’s and Irene’s struggle for honor and decency against a
Macaria; or, Altars of Sacrifice By the author of “Beulah.” SECOND EDITION. 183 p. RICHMOND: WEST & JOHNSTON, 145 MAIN STREET. 1864. somewhat callous society. Only on page 241 does the first hint of sectional strife appear. From that point Miss Evans interweaves her story with frequent pronouncements on the political ideals for which Southerners were fighting. Origins of the Civil War lay in the attempt by Northern demagogues to seize control of the government; against this Russell warns that Southerners must protect the Constitution and their liberties under it. Then, when Lincoln’s administration tries to suppress civil liberties in the North, Evans writes, “Liberty fled from her polluted fane, and sought shelter and shrine on the banner of the Confederacy.” Then there are the Yankee soldiers invading the Southland. “How long – how long,” Irene asks, “will Almighty God withhold his vengeance from the wolfish hordes who are battening upon the blood of freemen?” Against these hordes the Confederate soldier selflessly committed himself to a fight to the death. “Springing to meet the columns of the foe,” the author extols, “cheerful in the midst of unparalleled hardships, content with meagre rations,” the Southern soldier fights bravely, “asking but a grave on the soil he died defending.” With pronouncements like these, it may seem puzzling that a New York publisher in 1864 turned out another edition of Macaria (albeit without the original dedication page). Still, the novel was so pro-Rebel that Union general George Thomas banned the book from his troops and burned all available copies. Augusta Jane Evans’ Macaria has been reprinted several times, even in recent years, but may no longer be in print. That’s all right; we’ve lost our taste for that style of nineteenth-century fiction (not to mention Confederate propaganda). But that shouldn’t blind us to the recognition that there was once a time when “the big words and sentences” of such stilted novels delighted the officers and men fighting our civil war. Sources: •
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Bell Irvin Wiley, The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy [Indianapolis, 1943], 161-62 David Donald, “Introduction,” to George Cary Eggleston, A Rebel’s Recollections [Indianapolis, 1959], 12 John W. Green, Johnny Green of the Orphan Brigade: The Journal of a Confederate Soldier, ed. by A.D. Kirwan [Lexington KY, 1956], 150 David Kaser, Books and Libraries in Camp and Battle: The Civil War Experience [Westport CT, 1984], 18 Robert Stiles, Four Years Under Marse Robert [New York, 1904], 252 John Esten Cooke, Mohun: A Novel [New York, 1896 (1868)], 325 J. Tracy Power, Lee’s Miserables:
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Life in the Army of Northern Virginia from the Wilderness to Appomattox [Chapel Hill, 1998], iii Horace Porter, Campaigning with Grant [Bloomington, Ind., 1961], 11617 B.A. Botkin, ed., A Civil War Treasury of Tales, Legends and Folklore [New York, 1960], 456 Charles H. Smith, Bill Arp’s Peace Papers [New York, 1873], 81 Louise Manly, “Augusta Evans Wilson,” in Joel Chandler Harris et al., eds., Library of Southern Literature, 16 vols. [Atlanta, 1907], vol. 13, 5842 Fannie E. Selph, “Army Relief Work by Women of the Confederacy,” Confederate Veteran, vol. 25, no. 12 [December 1917], 560 A.C. Jones, “Inaugurating the Picket Exchange,” Confederate Veteran, vol. 26, no. 4 [April 1918], 156 “’Macaria,’ by Augusta Evans,” Confederate Veteran, vol. 18, no. 6 [June 1910] 298 “Seeing the notice of ‘Macaria,’” Confederate Veteran, vol. 18, no. 8 [August 1910], 367 William Perry Fidler, Augusta Evans Wilson 1839-1909 [Tuscaloosa AL, 1951], 72, 86-87, 233 Augusta Jane Evans, Macaria; or, Altars of Sacrifice [Richmond and New York, 1863-64], 244-45, 347, 440-41
Steve Davis of Atlanta is a regular contributor to Civil War News and is the Book Review Editor. His book, A Long and Bloody Task: The Atlanta Campaign from Dalton through Kennesaw Mountain to the Chattahoochee River May 5-July 18, 1864, was published as part of Savas Beatie’s Emerging Civil War paperback series. The companion volume, All The Fighting They Want: The Atlanta Campaign From Peachtree Creek To The City’s Surrender, July 18-September 2, 1864, has just been published this Spring.