On the evening of May 10, 1864, Henry Keiser of Wiconisco, Pennsylvania found himself in the swirling cauldron of combat on the outskirts of Virginia hamlet named Spotsylvania Court House. The battle would live long in his memory.
Keiser, at the time a corporal in the 96th Pennsylvania, survived the hellish failed assault on the Confederate works that day. He recorded his memories in his remarkable Civil War diary.
I recently turned up a short documentary project I made while a senior at Hood College in the spring of 2015.
I used Henry Keiser’s Civil War diary, his words, to try to illuminate the realities of life for a participant in that conflict. Here’s the video:
Let me know what you think in the comments below! Hard to believe I made this more than a decade ago now.
Read more about the 96th Pennsylvania at Spotsylvania Court House | May 10, 1864
Podcast – Killed at Spotsylvania Court House: A Pennsylvania Family’s Story
A Civil War officer’s grisly amputation at Spotsylvania Court House on May 10, 1864
Mary Severn – The postmistress of Mahanoy City
Counting the bloody toll of the Battle of the Wilderness and Spotsylvania Court House | May 1864
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Listening to his story of battle took me back to Marlon Brandi’s line, “the horror, the horror.” As a younger man this stuff didn’t bother me. Now, as an old man it makes me sick thinking of all the young men, and more recently even women, who’s lives we’re lost or ruined and for what? We fight and destroy and then pull out with nothing improved, just destroyed… just the rambling of an old man who is sick of people in far off fortresses sending the peasants off to die.
That was supposed to be Marlon Brando. Darn autocorrect.