Matthew Pearl - The Dante Club

He did not like to ask others to write letters on his behalf like some of the other illiterates or semiliterates, so when Galvin would find dead Rebel soldiers with letters on them he would send them to Harriet in Boston so she might hear of the war firsthand. He would write out his name at the bottom so she would know where the letter came from, and he included a local flower petal or a distinctive leaf. He did not want to bother even the men who liked to write. They were so tired all the time. They were all so tired. Galvin could often tell by the slowed expressions of some men’s faces before a battle—almost as though they were still asleep—who would surely not see the next morning.

“If I could only get home the Union can go to Hell,” Galvin heard one officer say.

Galvin did not notice the diminishing rations that angered so many, because much of the time now he could not taste or smell or even hear his own voice. With food no longer particularly satisfying, Galvin began a habit of chewing pebbles, then scraps of paper torn from the assistant surgeon’s dwindling traveling library and from Rebel letters, to keep his mouth warm and occupied. The scraps got smaller and smaller, to conserve what he could find.

One of their men who grew too lame on a march was left at camp, and was brought in two days later, murdered for his wallet. Galvin told everyone that the war was worse than Napoleon’s Russian campaign. He was dosed with morphine and castor oil for diarrhea and the doctor gave him powders that made him dizzy and frustrated. He was down to a single pair of drawers, and the traveling sutlers who sold them from wagons asked $2.50 for a pair worth thirty cents. The sutler said he would not lower the price but might raise it if Galvin waited too long. Galvin wanted to bash the sutler’s skull inside his head, but he didn’t. He asked the adjutant to write a letter to Harriet Galvin asking her to send two pairs of heavy wool drawers. It was the only letter that was ever written for him during the war.

Pickaxes were needed to remove bodies fixed to the ground with ice. When the heat came again, Company C found a stubble field of unburied black bodies. Galvin marveled at so many blacks in the blue uniform, but then he realized what he was seeing: The bodies had been left in the August sun for a full day and were burned black by the heat and crawling with vermin. Men were dead in every conceivable position, and horses beyond count, many of them seeming to kneel genteelly on all fours, as though they were waiting for a child to saddle them.

Soon after, Galvin heard that some generals were returning escaped slaves to their masters and chattering with the slave masters like they were meeting for cards. Could this be ? The war made no sense at all if it was not fought to better the slaves. On one march, Galvin saw a dead Negro whose ears had been nailed to a tree as punishment for attempted escape. His master had left him naked, knowing well how the voracious mosquitoes and flies would intercede.

Galvin couldn’t understand the protests raised by Union soldiers when Massachusetts formed a Negro regiment. One Illinois regiment they came upon was threatening to desert as a group if Lincoln freed one more slave.

At a Negro revival Galvin had seen during the first months of the war, he listened to a prayer blessing the soldiers passing through the town: “De good Lord take dese ‘ere mourners and shake ‘em over Hell, but don’t lieff ‘em go.”

And they sang:

“The Negroes have helped us, spied for us. They need our help as well,” Galvin said.

“I’d rather see the Union dead than won by niggers!” a lieutenant in Galvin’s company shouted in his face.

More than once, Galvin had seen a soldier take hold of a Negro wench fleeing her master and whisk her off into the woods to roaring cheers.

Food was gone on both sides of the battle lines. One morning, three Rebel soldiers were caught scavenging for food in the woods near their encampment. They looked nearly starved, jowls hanging out. With them was a deserter from Galvin’s ranks. Captain Kingsley ordered Private Galvin to shoot the deserter dead. Galvin felt as though he would vomit blood if he tried to speak. “Without the proper ceremonies, Captain?” he finally said.

“We’re marching for battle, Private. There’s no time for a trial and no time to hang him, so you’ll shoot him here! Ready… aim… fire!”

Galvin had seen a punishment for a private who had refused such an order. It was called “bucking and gagging,” having one’s hands tied over his knees with one bayonet lodged between his arms and legs and another tied in his mouth. The deserter, gaunt and empty, did not look particularly perturbed. “Shoot me, then.”

“Private, now!” ordered the Captain. “You want your punishment with them?”

Galvin shot the man dead at point-blank range. The others ran the limp body through a dozen or so times with the blades of their bayonets. The captain recoiled, an icy glow in his eyes, and ordered Galvin to shoot the three Rebel prisoners on the spot. When Galvin hesitated, Captain Kingsley yanked him to one side by the arm.

“You’re always watching, aren’t you, Possum? You’re always watching everyone like you know better what to do in your heart than we do. Well, now you’ll do just what I say. Now you will, by thunder.” All his teeth were bared as he spoke.

The three Rebels were lined up. After “Ready, aim, fire,” Galvin shot each of them, by turn, in the head with his Enfield rifle. He could feel as little emotion, as he did so, as he could smell, taste, or hear. That same week, Galvin saw four Union soldiers, including two from his own company, molesting two young girls they had taken from a local town. Galvin told his superiors and, as an example, the four men were tied to a cannon wheel and had their backs beaten with a whip. Because Galvin had been the one to inform on them, he had to employ the whip.

At the next battle, Galvin didn’t feel like he was fighting for one side or another, against one side or another. He was just battling. The whole world was battling and raging against itself, and the noises never ceased. He could barely make out Rebel from Yank, in any case. He had brushed against some poison leaf the day before and by nightfall his eyes were almost completely shut; the men laughed at this because, while others had their eyes shot out and heads split open, Benjamin Galvin had fought like a tiger and didn’t get a scratch. One soldier, who was later put in an asylum, threatened to kill Galvin that day, pointing his rifle at Galvin’s breastbone and warning him that if he didn’t stop chewing that damned paper, he’d shoot him dead right then.

After Calvin’s first war wound, a bullet to the chest, he was sent to be a guard at Fort Warren off Boston Harbor, where Rebel prisoners were being kept, until he could fully recover. There, prisoners with money purchased nicer rooms and better food, regardless of their levels of culpability or of how many men they had killed unjustly.

Harriet begged Benjamin not to go back to war, but he knew the men needed him. When he anxiously rejoined Company C in Virginia, there had been so many openings in the regiment from death and desertion that he was commissioned a second lieutenant.

He understood from newer recruits that rich boys back home were paying three hundred dollars to exempt themselves from service. Galvin boiled over with anger. He felt heart-wrenchingly weak, and he did not sleep for more than a few minutes a night. But he had to move: to keep moving. During the next battle, he dropped among the dead bodies and fell asleep thinking of those rich boys. The Rebels, poking through the dead that night and finding him, picked him up and took him to Libby Prison in Richmond. They let all the privates go because they were not important, but Galvin was a second lieutenant, so he spent four months at Libby. Galvin remembered only blurry images and some sounds from his time as a prisoner of war. It was as though he continued to sleep and dream the whole time.