The next meeting of the Nashville (TN) Civil War Roundtable will be on Tuesday, April 16th, 2024 in the visitor’s center of Ft. Negley Park, a unit of Metro Parks, Nashville, TN. This is located off I-65 just south of downtown between 4th Avenue South and 8th Avenue South on Edgehill Avenue/Chestnut Avenue. Take Exit 81, Wedgewood Avenue, off I-65 and follow the signs to the Science Museum.
The meeting begins at 7:00 PM and is always open to the public.
The Nashville Civil War Roundtable was founded in April 2009 and features well known authors and historians as speakers on a variety of related topics. This month we turn 15 years old - Happy Birthday to us!
Attached is this month's newsletter in both Word and as a PDF file. If you cannot read either please email me and I will resend it as a regular email.
Our Speaker and Topic – “Humor In The Civil War: Stories From Federals, Confederates, Civilians and Mascots of the Civil War – With a Slight Addition of CS General Earl Van Dorn.”
It has been said that to the soldiers of both sides of the Civil War that it was “months of sheer boredom followed by moments of sheer terror.” For the former it was months and months of taking civilians and making them into volunteer soldiers which entailed endless drill followed by more endless drill. While that made for better units on a battlefield, it was not that exciting and then came “down time.” Playing cards, playing musical instruments, reading newspapers and letters from home (and writing back) and getting into some level of trouble was the norm.
Out of this, and the experience of battle, came “gallows humor,” which ran dark and could only be that way due to the terror part of combat and all that entailed. Many soldiers of both sides would not have survived had it not been for humor. President Lincoln even said, “if I did not laugh occasionally I would die,” and the stress of being a Commander in Chief in war was huge.
Then comes the issue of Confederate General Earl Van Dorn, a marginally successful Confederate commander who also had an issue seeing married women that would get him killed in Spring Hill, TN on May 7, 1863. One Confederate quipped that Van Dorn had, “one too many buggy rides,” an illustration of his buggy rides with the married Jesse Peters, wife of a Tennessee legislator.
Our program this month will be provided by master story teller and well known historian Thomas Cartwright. Thomas is historian and director of the Lotz House Museum in Franklin, TN where he has served the Middle Tennessee Civil War site for many years. Prior to that he was at the Carter House. Thomas has been seen on television documentaries on the Civil War, has lectured across the nation to Civil War Roundtables and conferences. His experience at giving guided tours not only of Franklin but other sites is well known.