Lawrence Charles McClarey: Requiescat In Pace

My beloved son, Lawrence Charles McClarey, passed away of a seizure last night.  I found him this morning at 6:15 AM when I attempted to rouse him for the “Daddy Readings” that he and I had done daily since he was a small boy.  Larry had autism, an infectious smile, and was a continual joy to all who knew him.  Once he attained puberty he began having seizures, not uncommon in autism, and I gave him seizure medication daily.  He lived for 21 years on this earth and he was the light of this world for myself and his mother, my bride.  On this dark day I am comforted by the knowledge that even now he is beholding the Beatific Vision.  He lived in love and now he will stand forever before Love Incarnate.  Please pray for the repose of his soul.  I will resume blogging sometime after Memorial Day.

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?”

“Yes, Lord,” she replied, “I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who is to come into the world.”

May 19, 1863: First Assault at Vicksburg

After his successes at Jackson, Champion Hill and Big Black River, Grant assumed that Confederate morale might be low enough that Vicksburg could be taken by assault and avoid a time consuming siege.  In that he was mistaken.  The Confederates lacked the strength to defeat him in open battle. but they had both the strength, and the morale, to hold Vicksburg.  The first assault by Grant occurred on May 19, 1863 and was aimed at the Stockade Redan.

The New York Volunteer

Something for the weekend.  The New York Volunteer sung by Bobby Horton who has waged a one man campaign to bring Civil War music to modern audiences.  New York supplied more troops to the Union than any other state.  Some 400-460,000 New Yorkers wore Union blue during the War in 27 regiments of Cavalry, 3 regiments of United States Colored Troops, 15 regiments of artillery, 8 engineer regiments and an astounding 248 infantry regiments.  The New York Volunteers took a back seat to men from no other state in the Union in providing manpower to win the War.

May 17, 1863: Battle of Big Black River Bridge

 

 

An anti-climatic engagement the day after the decisive battle of Champion Hill, the battle is chiefly memorable because it deprived General Pemberton of 1751 men taken prisoners, and demonstrated that Pemberton’s Army of Mississippi had no further taste to meet the Army of the Tennessee in open field combat.  Pemberton’s force could hold Vicksburg for a time, and his men did that valiantly, but a mass sortie to break the siege simply was no longer within their power or will.  Here is Grant’s description of the engagement taken from his Personal Memoirs:

May 16, 1863: Battle of Champion Hill

The decisive battle of the Vicksburg Campaign, and one of the decisive battles of the War, the battle of Champion Hill led to the siege of Vicksburg, and once it became a siege, with the Union able to bring endless reinforcements to reinforce Grant during the siege via the Mississippi, the fall of Vicksburg became merely a matter of time.  Pemberton with 22,000 men had planned to attempt to attack Union supply columns coming from Grand Gulf, south of Vicksburg, to Raymond, Mississippi.  Receiving repeated orders that he move on Clinton, Mississippi instead, he counter-marched and took up a defensive position against the advancing Federals at Champion Hill.

Here is Pemberton’s description of how the battle began, taken from his official report:

American Gothic and Ma and Pa Kent

A first-rate video on Grant Wood’s American Gothic (1930).  One of the more famous pictures at the Art Institute in Chicago, I have long admired it.  Endlessly interpreted, the  picture lends itself to a Rorschach  type of test where what the viewer says about the painting says more about the interpreter than it does about the painting.

Whenever I look at it, I have always thought of Jonathan and Martha Kent, the fictional foster parents of Superman.  The date of the painting would have been when the future Superman would have been around 11 based on his original chronology.  The Kents would have been desperate to keep their beloved son, just beginning the mastery of his awesome powers, away from the notice of the World.  The figures in the painting seem to me to be keeping a great secret.  They look suspiciously at the viewer.  The shades on their house are drawn.  The averageness of the couple is belied by their desire to keep prying eyes away from that house.  At the same time there is nothing that gives any hint of evil about the man and woman.  They simply have something great that has been placed into their care and they wish to protect it from outsiders.

The association of the painting with the Superman saga is not original to me.  In Superman The Animated Series Mr. Mxyzptlk, the imp from another dimension who periodically torments Superman, turns Ma and Pa Kent into a facsimile of the painting.

One can imagine the encounter that led to the painting.

From the diary of Jonathan Kent:

May 14, 1863: Grant Takes Jackson, Mississippi

After crossing the Mississippi, Grant set about the process of isolating Vicksburg from the remainder of the Confederacy by seizing the capital of Mississippi, Jackson, defeating the Confederate forces there, and destroying the rail links with Vicksburg.  This would make it much more difficult for a Confederate force to attack his army once he put Vicksburg under siege.  It was a strategy that Johnston, who was in overall command of the theater of operations for the Confederacy lacked the resources to combat.  With 6,000 troops in Jackson, he decided to withdraw which he did on May 14th, after brief resistance. giving Grant a free hand to wreck the rail lines.

Great Lakes Aircraft Carriers

One of the odder incidents of World War II is the story of the training of US carrier pilots on the Great Lakes.  Confronted with the necessity of training massive numbers of carrier pilots, the Navy decided to do almost all of the initial training of carrier pilots where no enemy action was possible, on the Great Lakes.  Purchasing two coal burning paddle wheeler excusion vessels, the Navy converted them to the USS Sable and the USS Wolverine, training carriers.  The idea of training pilots on the Great Lakes was the brainchild of Commander Richard Whitehead who was stationed at the Naval Training Center 35 miles north of Chicago.  The USS Wolverine  operated out of Chicago and its flight operations, often conducted within sight of Chicago, frequently caused massive traffic jams on Lake Shore Drive due to the hordes of gawkers who turned out to witness the training.  Pilots on their way back to the carriers would often get frisky, buzzing the streets of Evanston, Illinois for example.

Ann Marie Jarvis, West Virginia and Mother’s Day

Today is Mother’s Day in the US, a time when we honor those women who go through the pains of pregnancy to bring us all into this life.  It all began with a feisty West Virginia mom, Ann Marie Jarvis.  Born in 1832, Ann Marie Reeves was the daughter of a Methodist minister who in 1843 was transferred to Phillipi in what would become West Virginia.  In 1850 she married Granville Jarvis, the son of a Baptist minister.  Together they would have eleven children, although tragically only four lived to adulthood, a not uncommon occurrence in those days when modern medicine was in its infancy.

A born reformer, in 1858 Ann Marie Jarvis founded in Western Virginia, Mothers Work Clubs that worked to improve sanitation, health and to care for indigent families.  During the Civil War she proclaimed the neutrality of her clubs, and they aided Union and Confederate soldiers alike, providing nurses to them during outbreaks of camp diseases like typhoid fever and measles, the great killer of soldiers during the War.

After the war she helped organize Mother’s Friendship Day in West Virginia to help heal the divisions of the War.  During the celebrations Union and Confederate veterans would participate and the bands would play both The Star Spangled Banner and Dixie.

This remarkable woman continued her good works throughout her life and died in 1905.  She often expressed a desire for a  day to honor all mothers.  After her death her daughter carried out her wishes by celebrating the first Mother’s Day in Grafton, West Virginia in 1907.  She headed a national campaign that culminated in President Wilson declaring Mother’s Day a national holiday in 1914.

The daughter of Ann Marie Jarvis,  Anna Marie Jarvis, grew to regret the commercialization of Mother’s Day.  She despised the habit of buying greeting cards for mothers as being a sign of people being too lazy to write a letter to their mothers.

Her Southern Soldier Boy

The gentlemen killed and the gentlemen died,
But she was the South’s incarnate pride
That mended the broken gentlemen
And sent them out to the war again,
That kept the house with the men away
And baked the bricks where there was no clay,
Made courage from terror and bread from bran
And propped the South on a swansdown fan
Through four long years of ruin and stress,
The pride–and the deadly bitterness.

Stephen Vincent Benet, John Brown’s Body

Something for the weekend.  Written in 1863 by Captain G. W. Alexander, The Southern Soldier Boy is a fitting tribute to the ragged warriors of the Confederacy who maintained an unequal struggle for four years and the women who loved and sustained them.  During the War it was popularized by actress Sally Partington, the toast of Richmond, who would sing the song as part of the play The Virginia Cavalier.  The above version is by Bobby Horton, who has waged a one man crusade to bring Civil War music to modern audiences.