John Dos Passos
My great grandfather was a cavalry trooper in the American Civil War, serving in one of the most revered of the confederate units, Cobb’s Legion. You may recall that in Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind , Scarlet was obsessed with Ashley Wilkes who served in Cobb’s Legion. What is a “Legion?” It was a military unit of about 1,000 men, an suggested the romance of the Roman Legions of ancient times. It was the fashion of the moment for southern men of affairs, men of wealth, men of property to organize in effect their own small armies. Each of these “legions” included cavalry, artillery and infantry. My great grandfather,Calvin Cephus Sego, joined the legion organized by the Georgia legal scholar, Thomas R.R. Cobb of Georgia, younger brother of Howell Cobb the politician who had opposed secession only to become a patriotic supporter of the Confederacy after Georgia seceded. Thomas R.R. Cobb’s legion, as well as all the others, were broken up when Robert E. Lee became commander of confederate forces.
Lee consolidated the cavalry, artillery and infantry units into larger commands known in military parlance as “corps.” Members were all volunteers. As a matter of pride, Calvin Cephus Sego’s cavalry unit continued to refer to itself as “Cobb’s Legion Cavalry,” as did the original infantry companies who clung to the association with Cobb’s Legion. The cavalry unit fought in the eastern campaigns, including Brandy Station, the largest cavalry engagement in the history of the western hemisphere. That battle got the Gettysburg campaign off on the wrong foot in the sense that the violent contest confirmed the capability of the new Union cavalry which now had excellent training, equipment and, most importantly, soldierly confidence in themselves and their commanders.
Lee’s gamble in attacking the massed union army at Gettysburg was a disaster from which his army never recovered. Cobb’s Legion Cavalry, part of ‘s cavalry corps arrived at Gettysburg after a long and unproductive reconnaissance around the union army. Several officers of Cobb’s Legion Cavalry were killed or wounded in an ambush arranged by none other than the aggressive young Major George Armstrong Custer. Because the confederate cavalry arrived too late to play a decisive part in the fighting at Gettysburg, Gen. J.E.B, Stuart has often been accused of contributing to Lee’s defeat at Gettysburg.
Calvin came home to Augusta after surrendering at Bentonville, North Carolina. He was able to ride his own horse home since confederate cavalrymen were required to supply their own horses. He became a law enforcement officer and he and his wife raised a family and operated a store south of Augusta in Richmond County. He joined the local chapter of Confederate Veterans when it was organized. His offspring would become railroad conductors, school officials and in the case of one grandson, a mechanic–my grandfather Calvin Leon Sego. As you may recall, Calvin witnessed the great fire that destroyed much of downtown Augusta in 1916, and as a mail boy delivering mail to the military camp, he witnessed the burning of corpses when the “Spanish” flu killed so many of the young men returning from the war in Europe in 1918-1919. Each generation experiences its own equivalent crises that re-frame its world: Civil War, pandemic, the Great Depression, Pearl Harbor, the assassination of John Kennedy, the Great Recession and now the Corona virus. Each generation must find its way forward in a world that retains much that is familiar while embracing new realities.
My grandfather learned his history from his father and grandfather, from the newspaper and from the Bible. I never heard him once blame Yankees or the Civil War for the terrible times through which his family had lived. Nor did he ever find reason to express regret about his humble choice of livelihood as a tractor mechanic or his decision to move to God’s smallest place, Gough, Georgia where he lived his entire adult life.
Like me he was a short man, in fact he was much shorter even than I, standing only 4’10”” in height. To be with him was to be in the presence of an admirer, one who wanted to know all you were doing and thinking. And, through hard times he always had a small gift of money when the grandchildren visited. When we were still small children, he often presented us with a gift he had made, something from his shop–a wooden car or train, a metal tractor–something to say that in our absence, he had thought of us and loved us.
In the isolation we are living through, when our connections with loved ones and friends are mostly electronic, it’s a good time to reflect on who made us what we have become and to thank them if they still share this life with us. My grandfather has been gone for some forty years, but I often have questions for him. He still shares this life with me.
No moment in time is without precedent. We may try to close the door on the past but it seeps under and around the door. As Faulkner said, the past isn’t dead, it isn’t even past. If we accept Dos Passos’ advice, we can perhaps find some sense of relief in the knowledge that our times are not unique, and that our challenges have been met before by other generations. While history can provide no sanctuary, it does remind us that we are only the latest generation to be challenged and to triumph.