Humor in the Civil War

By Thomas Cartwright, Lotz House Civil War Museum, Franklin TN

Presentation to CCWRT on May 19, 2011, Summarized by Mike Rhein

Photography by Shane Gamble

©Cincinnati CWRT, 2011

Formal soldierly poses in Civil War daguerreotypes did not reveal varied facial expressions or hints of human emotion, rarely showing qualities of joy, sorrow or even humor. Witty incidents, quips and ridiculous responses from that tragic time are provided in literary glimpses.

Our May speaker, Mr. Thomas Cartwright of Franklin, Tennessee, in his debut appearance before the CCWRT, delighted the audience with jocular accounts, anecdotes and absurd situations, revealing that a sense of humor, despite the terrible atmosphere of war, can bubble to the human surface. A key comment towards the end of the presentation by the former executive director of the Carter House at the Franklin Battlefield (Tenn.) and currently heading the Lotz House Civil War Museum near the Carter House, crystallized his apparent theme: “It (humor) was to get away from the sadness and the cost (of war).”

For a ludicrous situation, could one imagine Confederate General Frank Cheatham fist-fighting with an Irish private (who took offense to the general’s cursing him during drills) and losing the contest but still earning the admiration by the Irish unit? Mr. Cartwright described Southern soldiers tensely waiting for the charge of Gen. George Pickett’s division at Gettysburg and seeing quail and rabbits scattering away from them. One rebel yelled, “Run, cottontail, run! I would run with you, too!”

A vignette on Union General William Sherman’s hatred for newspapermen by the speaker: when hearing about a ship with reporters aboard sinking in the Mississippi River by Vicksburg during the night, the general exclaimed, “We’ll get a dispatch from hell before morning!”

General Sherman’s close friend, Gen. U.S Grant, known for being almost tone-deaf, in response to a question about his favorite tunes, replied, “Yankee Doodle and the other wasn’t Yankee Doodle.” Mr. Cartwright, noting the unpopularity of Confederate General Braxton Bragg, shared a telling comment by a private (who had witnessed Union troops fleeing from the Chickamauga, Georgia battlefield the day before) disdainfully replying to Bragg’s irritating question of his knowing the definition of a military retreat: “Sure, I’ve been with you for two years!” President Abraham Lincoln, assailed by political and military pressures, was once accused of being two-faced. He responded, Mr. Cartwright related, “Would I have chosen this face, if I was two-faced?”

Mr. Cartwright, who has appeared on Civil War television documentaries such as History and Discovery, described regimental attachments to dogs as mascots such as “Harvey” (with a Massillon, Ohio regiment), “Sally” (11th Pennsylvania) who hated “Democrats, rebels and women,” “Kirby” (11th Ohio) who “was buried with military honors” and “Little Charley” (a Georgia artillery battery). Even a rooster (Third Tennessee Confederate) “was given a military funeral.” He described such attempts to break up camp tedium as an Ohio regiment conducting lice races at Shiloh, Tennessee, even videttes and pickets from both sides establishing “truces with each other, trading things and play(ing) poker,” emphasizing that “boredom was the chief enemy.”

Mr. Cartwright’s amusing array of Civil War soldier-life depictions illustrated the human need for making such unlikely emotional attachments as to pets, breaking the tautness of battle tension with droll and ironic wit and even stolid officers displaying humorous moments in unmasking a sense of the ridiculous in an atmosphere of violence and sadness.