Published: October 17, 2009 05:02 pm      

Soldier details his humble career

It was heavenly ... it was a Thursday, and I had the whole day off. Our girls were in class; Laurie was at work. It was softly raining, and rain was predicted all day, so I couldn’t rake leaves, clean gutters or help get the struggling U.S. economy back on its feet.

So I spent the whole day rereading one of my very favorite books, a 1920 classic titled “The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865.” The author was a judge in tiny Erie, Kansas, named Leander Stillwell. He enlisted in the 61st Illinois Volunteer Infantry in 1861, at age 18, and stayed until September 1865.

I have read a lot of Civil War books through the years, but “The Story of a Common Soldier” is the closest I’ve ever come to spending a few hours with a veteran of the Civil War.

During the war, Stillwell wrote letters to his mother and father each week. His parents saved them and he eventually got them back. In 1916, using them and a pocket notebook used during his soldier days, he wrote the little memoir for his son, Jerry. Another 100 copies were printed for friends and for sale.

In 1918, author and critic H. L. Mencken obtained a copy, and wrote a glowing review in his literary magazine, The Smart Set.

“It is a modest and excellent composition, a chronicle of war without any of the customary strutting and bawling in it,” Mencken wrote. “Judge Stillwell served in the Union Army for four years, and saw some of the most savage fighting of the Civil War, but he nowhere hints that the event at Appomattox was due to his personal butcheries, nor does he describe or discuss any battle at which he was not present, nor does he pile on the rhetoric in describing the battles he actually saw. In brief, a war book of a quite unusual sort, and an effective antidote to the gorgeous tomes which now burden the book counters. More, it is done in plain, straightforward American, naked and unashamed.”

The first edition was only 150 pages long. Stillwell added 128 more pages for the second edition, which was published in 1920. He died in 1934 and the little blue volume was largely forgotten until 1981, when Time-Life Books issued a leather-bound reprint as part of its “Collector’s Library of the Civil War” series.

The popularity of that book led to a stage show called “Leander Stillwell.” Then, in 2008, a paperback edition was published, titled, “Sgt. Stillwell — The Experiences of a Union Army Soldier of the 61st Illinois Infantry During the American Civil War.”

The book’s appeal lies in the fact that Stillwell — a common soldier — was an uncommonly good writer who knew how to make a scene real. He saw his first combat on the first day of the Battle of Shiloh, and his account of that day “is full of brilliant flashes, little episodes that stick in the mind,” Mencken said. “No better writing could be imagined.”

Stillwell noted that “the extent of a battlefield seen by the common soldier is that only which comes within the range of the raised sights of his musket, and what little he does see is as ‘through a glass, darkly.’ The dense banks of powder smoke obstruct his gaze; he catches fitful glimpses of his adversaries as the smoke veers or rises.”

The first morning of the battle was eerily still, he said, then, “Suddenly, away off on the right, in the direction of Shiloh Church came a dull, heavy, ‘Pum!’ then another, and still another. Every man sprung to his feet as if struck by an electric shock, and we looked inquiringly into one another’s faces. ‘What is that?’ asked every one, but no one answered.”

The heavy booms then came more quickly, followed by the “continuous roll of thousands of muskets, (which) told us the battle was on.”

Chaos ensued as the boys of the 61st Illinois buckled their cartridge belts, grabbed their rifles, formed lines and waited. Five minutes later, to their right, a long brown line of Confederates emerged from the woods, with sunlight glistening off the rifle barrels.

“We began firing at once. From one end of the regiment to the other leaped a sheet of red flame,” Stillwell wrote. “ ... I aimed low in the direction of the enemy, and blazed away through the smoke.” He had no idea if any of his bullets hit anybody, but beside him, another soldier was struck squarely in the head.

“I stared at his body, perfectly horrified!” Stillwell wrote. “Only a few seconds ago that man was alive and well, and now he was lying on the ground, done for, forever!”

The two sides fired at each other for more than an hour; then the Union line withdrew.

One sight, he said, “sent a chill all through me. It was a kind of flag I had never seen before. It was a gaudy sort of thing, with red bars. It flashed over me in a second that that thing was a Rebel flag. It was not more than 60 yards to the right. The smoke around it was low and dense and kept me from seeing the man who was carrying it, but I plainly saw the banner. It was going fast, with a jerky motion, which told me that the bearer was on a double-quick.”

Stillwell was surprised by the transformation that came over men in combat.

“ ... The fact is, a soldier on the fighting line is possessed by the demon of destruction,” he wrote. “He wants to kill, and the more of his adversaries he can see killed, the more intense his gratification.”

Much of the book tells the story of soldiers on the march, soldiers in camp, soldiers dreaming of home. Food is always on their minds. Stillwell provides some wonderful insights into how raw troops became expert at making delicious meals from hardtack, salt pork, coffee, sugar and whatever fruit, vegetables and chickens they could “appropriate” from the surrounding countryside.

He talks about how cold it was in Tennessee, how hot it was in Mississippi. He talks about his friends, camp illnesses, an Army hospital, and General Grant, whom he saw twice during the war. The final scene is one of my favorites. It is September 1865; the war has been over for five months, and the 61st Illinois is finally being discharged. The unit is hauled by train back to Springfield, and then the men must wait and wait for their pay. Finally, he makes it to the little village of Otterville, near his father’s farm in far-western Illinois.

Lt. Stillwell walks down the road, a proud veteran, in uniform, holding his sword over his shoulder like a rifle. He hopes for some sign of welcome, but none comes. The man at the general store stares at him, and says nothing. A big dog jumps off the porch of a house and barks at him. His parents, at least, are happy to see him.

The next morning, he sets his uniform aside, puts on some of his father’s old clothes, grabs a corn knife and proceeds to wage war on the standing corn.

“The feeling I had while engaged in this work was sort of queer,” he wrote. “It almost seemed, sometimes, as if I had been away only a day or two, and had just taken up the farm work where I had left off.”

Stillwell went on to become a lawyer and a judge, but “to me,” he concluded, “my humble career as a soldier in the 61st Illinois during the War for the Union is the record that I prize the highest of all, and is the proudest recollection of my life.”

Danville native Kevin Cullen is a former Commercial-News reporter. Reach him at irishhiker@aol.com.