The photo is my great
granddad Casebeer and his siblings at a family reunion around 1900. The gentleman with a beard in the front row
is my great granddad, Calvin Casebeer. Great Granddad Casebeer passed away in 1907. The following interview never actually took
place. It’s the product of my passion, extensive
research, and a little imagination.
INTERVIEW
Around midmorning Mrs. Casebeer accompanied her husband down
the front steps of their Ozark Mountain home and into the shade. Mr.
Casebeer is small of stature, uncommonly affable, and solid as seasoned
hickory, with sharp, unblinking eyes. I shook his hand and our interview began.
“To begin with Mr. Casebeer, why don’t you tell us a little about
yourself?”
Mr. Casebeer adjusted his galluses, pushed the brow of his
straw hat back from his face, gave a gravelly but pleasant chuckle and began to
fill us in. “Well, my name is Calvin Casebeer, and I was born back
in the spring of 1838 in Defiance, Ohio. Cassie and I were married
in ’62, our son Lewis was born in ’63, and over the next twenty years we were
blessed with eleven children. We buried two of ‘em back in Ohio, and then in ‘85,
soon after laying little Eva to rest, the rest of us pulled up stakes and made
tracks for the Ozarks hoping for a fresh start. The last five years
or so I’ve been traveling the hills and hollers of south central Missouri
spreading the gospel and relying on the goodness of others. We’re
poor as church mice, and the misses is darn near thin as a rail, but the Lord’s
been good to us and all the kids are thriving.”
I’m certain our readers will be pleased to hear that you’re
doing well, Mr. Casebeer. What else can you tell us about your
family history?” “Well sir.” said Calvin, leaning into his walking stick and
smoothing his long, gray whiskers, “My great, great, granddad, along with his
brother and his folks, arrived on the shores of Pennsylvania back in the autumn
of 1724. My great, great, great granddad Johann Kasebier kept a
journal on the voyage over and word has it that the thing exists to this very
day in the castle archives back in Germany. Johann passed away shortly
after their arrival in this country, and the family had a mighty hard time of
it back in the colonies. My great granddad, John Casebeer, was a soldier in the
militia during the Revolutionary war, and served in the Continental Army with
Captain Davidson’s division out of Bedford, Pennsylvania. I’m mighty
proud of my family, and I’m mighty proud that when my time come I did my part
to keep this God fearing country whole and free.”
Well Calvin, may I call you Calvin?” “Yes sir.”
“Calvin, what do you remember today about your service to this country during
the Civil War?” “Plenty!” answered Calvin, tucking his shirt
in and puffing up just a tad. “I remember ever’ bit of it, just like it was
yesterday.” With that, Mr. Casebeer blotted his forehead with a kerchief and
began the following yarn. “Following the siege at Fort Sumter, back in ’61,
Governor Morton ordered that a camp for volunteers be set up back in Fort
Wayne, Indiana, and my brother John and I caught the stage and headed out. I
wasn’t but 23 and took the whole grievous adventure for a lark. We spent a
week or so there at Fort Wayne, bivouacked with other boys from all over the
country. They rousted us out at first light on the morning of the 22nd of
November and following a physical exam, we all gathered on the square where
Mayor Randall addressed the regiment and presented us with a crisp, new
flag. Once the sermonizing had petered out they swore us all in as
members of the Indiana 44th Infantry with these questions: Do
you solemnly promise to love this flag? We says yes sir. Do you
promise to honor it? Yes sir! Do you promise to obey
it? Yes sir! Do you promise to sustain and defend it, even unto
death? Yes sir! I, then, in this presence and before these
witnesses, solemnly join you to the American flag: and what we have now joined
together let not Jeff Davis or his minions put asunder. Then they paraded us
through town. Folks was waving and hollering and carrying on
something fierce, and we all figured we was mighty fine. Then we set off
marching, and marching, and marching, and we kep’ on marching till hell
wouldn’t have it! For the first few months we didn’t fight nothin’
but hunger, frostbite, fatigue, and the measles. It seems like it
snowed all through November, December, and January. Most of us were
cold and soaked and sick. You’ve never seen such misery in your
life. Then, about mid February, we marched through the snow to Fort
Donelson, and that’s when all hell broke loose! Colonel Reed marched our outfit
to the foot of a good-sized hill, infested with Rebs and swarmin’ like a
beehive. We formed ranks at the bottom, the order was given to
advance double quick, and we ducked our heads and charged like hell, cheering
and shooting into a hail of bullets. Nearing the top of the hill, the
confederates dove for cover in their entrenchments, and us right on their
heels. Shells was fallin’, sabers flashin’, and most of us drawing
blood for the very first time. You can’t even imagine, unless you
was there yourself! Once the Rebs was dug in good and returning fire in
earnest, General Grant himself gave the order to fall back to the brow of the
hill. We dug in there on the hill that night, cold, wet and hungry,
retrieving the dead and listening to the cries of the wounded. Next
morning the enemy surrendered and we searched the hill for our fallen
comrades. Two of the 44th were missing, 34 wounded
and 7 found frozen to the ground in their blood-soaked uniforms. After that
came another world of marching through hell and the battles of Shiloh and Stone
River. During the night of June 10th, news reached our encampment of
the fall of Vicksburg and of General Lee being routed real bad at
Gettysburg. We figured for certain the war was all but finished.
That was one of the few good nights I remember from the whole campaign. By
September of 1863, the Rebs had withdrawn all the way back to the northwest
corner of Georgia’s confederate heartland. The confederacy had its
back against the wall! Digging in along the west branch of
Chickamauga Crick, them tenacious Rebs was bristled like a bulldog with a bone!
September 19th found us bivouacked at the ol’ Poe place, just
northwest of the crick. The battle had been arduous, and we’d been
rode hard and put up wet. Late that evening, a commotion in the
confederate encampment across the crick signaled the arrival of the Rebels long
awaited reinforcements. The arrival of Longstreet and his company marked a
considerable change in the mix. Leaders on both sides immediately
began rethinking tomorrow’s battle. For ol’ Bill Rosencrans and
Braxton Bragg this was in one sense just your typical garden-variety chess
game. Each of them would engage his men in a time-honored
confrontation, attacking, retreating, and maneuvering, in an effort to sweep
the board. But these pawns weren’t inanimate chess pieces; this was
flesh and blood, and before noon the next day the Chickamauga was running red
with it. Occasional skirmishes continued through the night as each side
exchanged potshots at the muzzle flashes of the other. Then, around
mid-morning of September 20th, the action began in earnest. For
several hours we managed to turn back the confederate advances; wave after wave
was repelled and driven back to the crick. Just prior to noon the
confederate forces, along with Longstreet’s reinforcements, began a
concentrated assault on the Union front. At some point during the conflict,
perceiving an imminent threat to Thomas’s forces to the north, ol’ Rosencrans
reassigned Woods division to address the threat. As the reassigned
troops pulled back to assist Thomas, the effect was like pulling your finger
from a dike! Within moments, the punctured Federal lines busted open like a
saturated earthen dam, and the wall of Rebs swept over everything in their path.
The battle of Chickamauga was about the bloodiest of the war, and the
casualties were overwhelming. The 44th Indiana infantry only
had three men killed, but 10 men were unaccounted for and 59 were shot up perty
bad. My brother and I were counted with the wounded. John had been
run over by a runaway wagon, and I’d been shot through the leg. The
field hospitals had performed amputations, patchwork, and temporary fixes,
until their medical supplies were exhausted, and then they clenched their teeth
and proceeded without ‘em. The traffic of dead and dying soldiers
from the Chickamauga to points north and south was slow and steady, and the
pitiful laments of the injured rose from the wagons in a low guttural moan that
for many was only answered in the thralls of death. By the afternoon of the 20th,
John and I were in the back of a wagon on our way to a field hospital. We
slept, best we could, shielding our eyes from the glaring sun and our ears from
the sounds of agony and despair. Even in sleep, the scenes of battle
repeated in my mind, and my consciousness reeled from the stench of death and
war. War has always been an enigma to me, an irreconcilable
amalgamation of glory and Godlessness. Even now after my baptism of fire and a
near death experience, I view it with a strange mix of abhorrence and
wonder. It’s as though, despite its revulsion and abomination, war
has some redeeming quality. I can tell you this about war; if war possesses any
redeeming qualities, they’re not apparent out on the battlefield where gallant
young men are killing and being killed. The redeeming qualities of
war are perty illusive to those who observe its horrid stench first hand. War’s
finer facets, in order to be fully appreciated, must be polished, politicized,
and refined, by some well bred, manicured, articulate, gentleman back home.
Back home the less desirable aspects of war may be overlooked. One
may sip their brandy, smile benevolently, and observe, ‘Ain’t war inspirin’’. In
the case of the civil war, both sides sought peace. The north
was bound by the patriot’s sense of E PLURIBUS UNUM, and the south was bound by
home and hearth and their ancestral way of life. Few would argue
that either was served by war. Death and destruction may quell
revolt, but they rarely result in peace. Don’t get me
wrong. I realize that freedom requires commitment, commitment
requires perseverance, and perseverance requires the will to act. When
freedom and just causes are threatened, honorable men respond. But
surely war is the last resort of those who know its grief. Surely
for reasonable people there’s a better way. Freedom is every heart’s
desire and every just government’s goal, but it’s a mighty illusive concept
when you’re at war. Freedom is nearly impossible when you don’t have
peace.”
So what, in your opinion Mr. Casebeer, is our best hope for
peace? “Well sir,” Calvin responded, briefly removing his hat and
running a red bandanna over his wispy, white hair, “ol’ Abraham himself summed
it up far better than I ever could.” With this Mr. Casebeer reached into his
pocket, produced a tattered remnant of President Lincoln’s second Inaugural
Address, and read aloud, “With malice toward none; with charity for all: with
firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to
finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who
shall have born the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan – to do all which
may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all
nations.” With that, Mr. Casebeer smiled warmly; parted by offering the
unfailingly compassionate hand of true Christian fellowship, and Mrs. Casebeer
assisted him back to the house. SC
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