Where do baby books come from? I get a
variation of this question at almost every talk I give. Readers want to know
where or how their favorite authors come up with their stories. At first,
I found it easy to answer. I wrote "A Scratch with the Rebels" to
tell the story of my great-uncle's Civil War regiment and their experiences.
Buet the full story is much more complicated. My
interest in James McCaskey started when I was only a child. I could remember
seeing a mysterious headstone that bore the name of my great-uncle James
McCaskey, who was killed in the Civil War. It was only much later that i
returned to Pennsylvania to learn more about him. After much searching, I found
this marker in the same Pennsylvania cemetery where many of my other McCaskey
ancestors are buried. It reads: James McCaskey  BornApril 12, 1839 Died June 16, 1862 James Island, S.C. Those
details are all correct; the military action on James island was the Battle of
Secessionville. The problem is that the notification of his death says
that his body was never found. The official records say that the Confederate
troops buried the Union soldiers killed in the battle (some 509 of them) in
unmarked graves on the battlefield. North Sewickley Cemetery records indicated
that the headstone was placed in 1875, after Mrs. Jane McCaskey purchased three
adjoining plots and ordered three matching stones — one for her recently
deceased husband John, one for herself, and one for her missing eldest son
James. A tombstone does not always equal a real burial, of course.
Obviously, James's headstone marks an empty grave, a not uncommon phenomenon
during a war that swallowed up so many young men on distant battlefields. The
Grand Army of the Republic honors James McCaskey's service every Memorial Day
by placing a flag on the grave site, but even their records stop short of
stating that he is actually buried there. I
learned more when I discovered in my mother’s attic a small packete of letters from
Uncle James written during the war. James McCaskey was killed in the
little-known Battle of Secessionville in June 1862. I was moved by the
letter of notification written by his commanding lieutenant -- and particularly
touched when I realized that on that letter the blotches were caused by
someone's teardrops that had made the ink run. The letter
that really got my attention, however, was written by a fellow soldier who
described the experience of the battle in a letter to his sister. It was
full of bravado -- almost exhilaration -- as he talked about those who had been
wounded or killed. He said things like, ""Not me! I didn't
duck, neither. I stood up cause I wanted to see where the bullets was
comin' from." For a long time I couldn't understand why the sister had
passed this letter on to James's parents. It didn't feel comforting to me.
It seemed almost heartless, as if the neighbor had thoroughly enjoyed his
experience. In
one way or another, I've been working through those conflicting emotions of
cockiness and grief ever since. They led me to explore the Civil War
holdings of several local libraries and genealogical societies in western
Pennsylvania and in South Carolina. I discovered one treasure trove of
artifacts at Penn State, and another at the at the US Army Military History
institute. Each one took me deeper into the story. It took me twenty-five years to get it all
down on paper. |
