December 28, 1863---"No Substitutions Please."

DECEMBER 28, 1863:        

During the Civil War, men of means could hire substitutes to take their place in the lines. The practice of substitution was one of the direct causes of the New York Draft Riots in July. Never popular, on this day, the Confederacy abolished substitution, requiring that all (white) men now bear arms for the nation. In practice, the abolishment of substitution had little real effect in swelling Confederate ranks. Most of those who were fit to fight were already fighting, and those able-bodied men who chose not to fight were already dodging the “recruiters” sent to find them.

December 27, 1863---The U.S.S. MASSACHUSETTS

DECEMBER 27, 1863:        

The U.S.S. MASSACHUSETTS arrives at Fortress Monroe, Virginia, carrying a shipload of discharged, wounded and ill soldiers, including Confederates bound for POW camps. 

December 26, 1863---War in the Straits of Malacca

DECEMBER 26, 1863:       

The C.S.S. ALABAMA takes and burns two prizes in the Straits of Malacca. This raid, which ultimately tool ALABAMA into the Pacific Ocean, marked the furthest Captain Semmes took his ship from home.

December 25, 1863---"The hearth-stones of a continent . . .": Christmas Day, 1863

DECEMBER 25, 1863:        

The third Christmas of the war.

In the South, Mary Boykin Chesnut records a festive holiday feast in her diary, but also remarks on the human toll of the war:

Christmas Day, 1863.

Yesterday dined with the Prestons. Wore one of my handsomest Paris dresses (from Paris before the war). Three magnificent Kentucky generals were present, with Senator Orr from South Carolina, and Mr. Miles...Others dropped in after dinner; some without arms, some without legs; von Borcke, who can not speak because of a wound in his throat...Poor fellows, they laugh at wounds. "And they yet can show many a scar." We had for dinner oyster soup, besides roast mutton, ham, boned turkey, wild duck, partridge, plum pudding, sauterne, burgundy, sherry, and Madeira. There is life in the old land yet!

In the North, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, coping with the death of his beloved wife Fannie earlier in the year in a tragic domestic accident, and the paralysis of his son, Charles, in the Mine Run Campaign, pens the classic poem, “Christmas Bells”:

I heard the bells on Christmas Day

Their old familiar carols play,

And wild and sweet

The words repeat

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And thought how, as the day had come,

The belfries of all Christendom

Had rolled along

The unbroken song

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Till, ringing, singing on its way,

The world revolved from night to day,

A voice, a chime

A chant sublime

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Then from each black accursed mouth

The cannon thundered in the South,

And with the sound

The carols drowned

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

It was as if an earthquake rent

The hearth-stones of a continent,

And made forlorn

The households born

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And in despair I bowed my head;

“There is no peace on earth,” I said;

“For hate is strong,

And mocks the song

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!”

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:

“God is not dead; nor doth he sleep!

The Wrong shall fail,

The Right prevail,

With peace on earth, good-will to men!”

December 24, 1863---Chaplains

DECEMBER 24, 1863:        

On Christmas Eve, 1863, along with a large number of Protestant Chaplains, 40 Roman Catholic Chaplains are ministering to the Christian soldiery of the Union. Jewish Chaplains had already served their flock, on December 6^th, the first day of Chanukah. Although Protestant Clergy had been serving as Army Chaplains as far back as 1775, during the Revolutionary War, and Roman Catholic Clergy had been approved during the Mexican War in 1848, Jewish Chaplaincy was a brand-new matter. A prewar bill specified that only “Clergy of Christian denominations” could be appointed as Chaplains. In July 1861, Clement Vallandigham, the infamous Copperhead, proposed a Bill to permit the appointment of Jewish Chaplains. Although the Bill went down to defeat, while it was pending, several Army units appointed rabbis to their chaplaincies. Finally, in July 1862, Vallandigham’s Bill was signed into law by the President, who had supported the measure from its initial inception. Less than 15 rabbis served the Union as Chaplains in the Civil War.  

  The Confederacy was ahead of the Union in this, as in the institution of paper currency and a central bank. Rabbis, Priests and Ministers served as Chaplains in the Confederate Army from the very outset of the Civil War, although individual States (such as North Carolina) had laws controlling the issue for their State Militias. Even fewer Jewish Chaplains served the South than the North, but the appointment of Chaplains of non-majority faiths was an important indicia of equality under the law (at least for Whites). Muslim Chaplains were approved in 1994, and Buddhist Chaplains in 2009.