PAGES FROM THE PAST

From the crowded Cairo levee to the swamps of Southeast Missouri, the Civil War had a human face.

Both John Brinton and Charles Wills witnessed the war, serving in the Union Army.

Both men spent time in Southeast Missouri and Southern Illinois in the war's early stages. Their letters and memoirs offer a glimpse of the war from a personal perspective.

Southern Illinois University Press in Carbondale recently reprinted their writings in two books: "Personal Memoirs of John H. Brinton: Civil War Surgeon, 1861-1865," and "Army Life of an Illinois Soldier: Including a Day-by-Day Record of Sherman's March to the Sea" by Charles W. Wills.

Wills' account is taken from letters he wrote to his sister and from his diary. Brinton recorded his observations after the war for his family.

"They are primary accounts which I think have a certain timelessness about them," said Gordon Pruett of Southern Illinois University Press.

Dr. John Y. Simon, a history professor at Southern Illinois University, wrote the forewords to both books.

Both Brinton and Wills spent time at Cairo during the war.

Brinton described Cairo and Cape Girardeau as he saw them in 1861 as medical director under Gen. Ulysses S. Grant.

"It was a place where almost everybody had strong expressions about it," said Simon.

"It was low. It was unhealthy. It was uncomfortable. It was overcrowded. It represented to a lot of people the discomforts of war, the reality of war.

"It has always had its detractors and very few defenders," he said.

Simon will discuss "The Civil War in the Heartland" Saturday at 2:30 p.m. at the Barnes & Noble book store in Cape Girardeau.

Brinton and Wills came from far different backgrounds. Brinton came from a well-to-do Philadelphia family and was a well-trained surgeon.

Wills of Canton, Ill., was a student and store clerk before enlisting in the Eighth Illinois Volunteers. He later served as an officer in the Seventh Illinois Cavalry.

A high-spirited idealist who craved excitement, Wills found that Army life "beats clerking."

Excerpts from the writings

Brinton on Cairo:

"Topographically considered, a stopping place of exchange, or inland port for the steamers of the two great rivers and their tributaries, Cairo was exceptionally favored," he wrote.

"On the other hand, as a pestilential hole fraught with all malarial poisonous influences, the town unquestionably is pre-eminent...

The levee and its bordering buildings were infested with rats, many of them of a very large size, and at night, they swarmed out of their holes....

"Cairo at this time was not altogether a pleasant place, but yet I learned to like it, and I soon came to care very little about the rats, although I never could quite bring myself to think kindly of the swarms of merchants, peddlers, produce dealers and the like, who infested the levee and its neighborhood."

Brinton on Cape Girardeau, Nov. 15, 1861:

"It was not an American town, but a French one, a reminder from the French occupation of this region, and consisted almost wholly of one long narrow street leading upwards from the river, with high flat stones for crossings, and deep ruts for wagons, almost as in the days of Pompeii," he wrote.

"The houses were low, mean looking, and with projecting roofs or eaves. French was the language of the town; and the air of quietness and repose, which prevailed, almost banished the idea of civil contest.":

Wills at New Madrid:

"Captured a lot of ginger snaps and had a good talk with a handsome widow, while the boats were firing on the Michigan cavalry on our left."

At Bloomfield in November 1861:

"This Bloomfield is a rank Rebel hole. The first Rebel company in Missouri was raised here....

"Here the boys got the understanding that we were to be allowed some liberties and take them they did. They broke open four or five stores whose owners had left and helped themselves."

Wills on Arkansas and Missouri Confederate troops' dislike for each other:

"This part of Missouri (near New Madrid) goes a great deal on old blood, the very best I believe is Catholic French, and these people have a sovereign contempt for the barbarians of the Arkansaw, while the Arkansawans accuse the Missourians of toe-kissing proclivities and cowardice."