THE GATES OF LIGHT
A Story of the American Civil War
By
- Prescott Johnson
Copyright © 1999 by J. Prescott Johnson
Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 00-90150
ISBN 0-9679477-0-7
Printed by
Kellogg Printing Company
Monmouth, Illinois 61462-0437
April 2000
For Mable
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness to those whose assistance in the development of this work proved invaluable.
Ms. Holly Hurd-Forsyth, Reference Assistant, of The Maine Historical Society, sent me material relative to The First Maine Cavalry. Ms. Brenda M. Lawson, Curator of Manuscripts, of The Massachusetts Historical Society, was also unstinting in helping me find documents concerning the Massachusetts units.
Ms. Norma Teesdale, of The Green Hat Bookstore, located in Niota, Illinois, found out-of-print rare books that were essential to the project.
Ms. Doris Ward, publisher of Prescotts Unlimited, has generously provided space in the Quarterly to apprize the readers of the book.
I am also appreciative of the assistance furnished me by my colleagues at Monmouth College. Dr. Richard Reno, Director of The Information Systems Center, and his successor, Mr. Daryl Carr, were unsparing in advice and assistance relative to my work on the computer.
The staff of The Hewes Library gave invaluable support. The Director, Dr. J. Richard Sayre, was always ready to afford any help that I might request. Ms. Patricia Pepmeyer, Access Services Manager, obtained sources through Interlibrary Loan. Ms. Sue Stevenson, Acquisitions Manager, gave me generous access to Civil War and Lincoln materials in the Rare Book Collection.
I am under special obligation to the members of my immediate family for their understanding and encouragement over the three years of almost constant work in research and writing. In particular, my wife, Mable, and daughter, Ms. Beth Johnson were most helpful in proofreading the manuscript as it was being developed.
I owe my interest in the Civil War to my mother, Caroline Prescott (Eaton) Johnson. In the springtime of my youth, when living in the Oregon “Valley of the Rogue,” she told me of her father’s participation in the battle of Antietam and of how he had kept a diary. That diary is now in my possession. It was extremely helpful in detailing the route the New Hampshire troops took in their journey to the Valley of the Antietam. My maternal grandfather, George Levi Eaton, 6th New Hampshire, figures in the novel, as does my mother.
I cannot compare myself to the genius of the great figures in American literature. It would be presumptuous of me to do so. Yet something happened to me that calls to mind Henry James’ account of the genesis of a story. One afternoon, in my study at home, I was reading through the list of Revolutionary War veterans, which is found in The Prescott Memorial, compiled in 1870 by William Prescott, M. D. I decided to go through the book and make a list of the Civil War veterans. The book is in two sections: the Prescotts of Massachusetts and those of New Hampshire, from which line I am descended.
I came upon a Maine family, John and Rhoda (Marrow) Prescott, descendants of the New Hampshire line, whose five sons fought in the Eastern Theater of the war. All of them survived the war. I was profoundly impressed by the thought that the first Christmas after the war’s ending must have been especially moving and significant. It would have been, of course, saddened by the loss of Amanda, the youngest daughter in the family, in the spring of 1864. This explains the Christmas narratives at the beginning and ending of the story.
As the Foreword indicates, the primary purpose in writing the story is to leave a record of the sacrificial contributions that were made by an older generation of familial kinship in the service of the ideals for which this country stands. I sincerely hope that those who may read this account will find something that resonates in their own hearts and that awakens from the past the voices that sang the ancient hymn of freedom and liberty.
FOREWORD
This story of the time when the American nation faced its decisive moment–crucial to its being and destiny‑-is factual in the circumstance that five brothers of a Prescott family fought on the Union side in many of the great battles of the Civil War. They survived their ordeals and lived to see the triumph of the Union forces, although one was seriously wounded at Antietam. This story is also factual in the recounting of some of the major historical events of that war.
However, the narrative that details the individual fortunes of these five Union soldiers is fictional. Many of the things that happened to them in this story did not actually occur. Yet, again, the fiction that is theirs is, in a deeper sense, true of the times in which they lived and fought. For the fictional narrative seeks to bring to light both the reality and significance of the events that constitute the real story of that great American war.
The daughter in the Prescott family, who in this story becomes a nurse, did not actually so serve in the Union cause. But she brings to the story of the war an authentic and significant aspect of that great struggle.
In our own time, we are apt to lose sight of the vision that ennobled a past generation in the effort to achieve a greater measure of fulfillment for all those who dwell within the borders of this land. The Civil War defined America, setting forth in no uncertain terms the great revolutionary design of justice and freedom that had given birth to this nation.
History is a story. It is a story told from an old and persistent memory. History is a remembrance. It remembers, not only the factual occurrences of a bygone time, but the ideals that underlay those occurrences. In bringing those ideals to view, history then becomes a guide to assist those who live today in their task to be true to the promise of the future. Only as historical memory becomes the memory of a living individual, can he or she find a significant place in the service of a transcendent purpose.
This work is written, primarily, for the author’s young grandchildren and the young children of his relatives. The Prescott brothers who become the characters in the story are, in real life, relatives of these young ones. They constitute, therefore, a personal link that can bind young minds and hearts to the past, so that it can live in the present and work its wondrous leaven in forming the future. Once the young realize that the history of their country is closely knit to themselves, that history will then lose its abstractness and become their own history. In this way history will take on a personal meaning that can become effective in molding for good the course of individual lives, and in turn, the course of the nation.
In 1640 John Prescott emigrated from England to the Colony of Massachusetts. A few years later, in 1665, a cousin, James Prescott, followed suit and settled in Hampton, New Hampshire. The writer, on his mother’s side, and his family are descendants of James Prescott. The family of Prescotts that figures in this novel are likewise descendants of James Prescott.
The author’s paternal grandfather came to this country from Vaasa, Finland, in 1884 or 1885, settling in Coos Bay, Oregon. He changed his name from Henric Bengtas to Henry Johnson, in deference to his new life in America. In the spring of 1919, my father, John Edward Johnson, married Caroline Prescott Eaton, my mother, whose grandmother was Caroline M. Prescott. The Saxon lineage, long established in this country, was thus united with a newer lineage, the Scandanavian. This was but a part of the blending of peoples and nations that has contributed to the American character.
CONTENTS
FOREWORD PAGE
CHAPTER 1 The Valley of Shadows 1
Christmas, 1860
2 Hell Opened Before Us 25
The Peninsula, 1862
3 Landscape Turned Red 54
Antietam, 1862
4 A Terrible Gale 77
Chancellorsville, 1863
5 Stars In Their Courses 107
Gettysburg, 1863
6 The Plains of the Wilderness 127
The Wilderness/Spottsylvania, 1864
7 The Garden of Virginia 154
Shenandoah, 1864
8 The Long-Awaited Inevitable 176
Appomattox, 1865
9 The Call of the Ages 204
Golgotha, 1865
10 The Gates of Light 223
Christmas, 1865
11 An Epilogue 248
Christmas, 1905