A Bitter Sweet Battle

The battle I write about in this post is not specifically Martha Dandridge's although her daily battles revolved around  it.  Another letter from "the box" was from Lewellyn Shaver in 1889. Apparently, Martha Dandridge was gathering mementos for the Atlanta Exposition and she had communicated with people who had fought or served in the Civil War asking them to contribute worthy items. Mr. Shaver wrote back responding to her request.
In part from Washington:

"I have sent you by mail today my haversack and Bible, which Emma wrote me you would like to place among Confederate mementos which you prepare to exhibit at the Exposition. The Bible was handed to me by Miss Lou as I went out of the door of your residence the morning I started to join my Company in the latter part of 1862. I carried it in my haversack for convenient reference. The haversack is the only one I had during the War and accompanied me on many a weary march and throughout several bloody battles. On the morning of March 31, 1865,about nine days before the surrender, while we were charging the enemy over an open field on the “White Oake Road” to the right of Petersburg near “Hatchers Run”, a ball struck the haversack, was deflected by the Bible(which it shattered) and passed out. You see the two holes in the haversack...the one made by the ball as it entered and the other as it passed out. The Bible, doubtless, saved my life..."

Miss Lou, to whom he refers, was Martha Dandridge's sister and Emma was his sister. Mr. Shaver's story is an unusual one of salvation with the physical Bible being the protector. I'm sure he felt the intervention extended beyond the physical and it seems he would have reason to believe that. The haversack was returned to his sister after the Exposition.

The bitter or sad side of Mr. Shaver's story became apparent when he spoke in 1899 at Oakwood Cemetery on Decoration Day at the request of the Ladies' Memorial Association. He stood over the myriad of tombstones covering the hill and gave a somber talk. Included in his speech, he said these words:

"I was further constrained to accept your invitation by a desire once more to lift my voice, feeble though it be, in praise of the martyrs to a just cause, who, more fortunate than their survivors, passed from 'the perilous edge of battle' over the river and are resting peacefully under the shade of the trees on the farther shore.
I speak of them as more fortunate than their survivors. They have been spared the struggle for existence under adverse conditions, which with the Confederate soldier succeeded the struggle of war, and the pain of witnessing the misfortunes of the South consequent upon the failure of her cause. Often in the stress of life’s battle since the war, when these matters have weighed heavily upon me, my heart has seemed as full of sorrows as the sea of sands, and I have been unable to repress the unmanly regret that I did not fall at Chickamauga."

Did I say "somber"?  His words resonate the sobriety of the South and one specific veteran thirty years after the war.