The Death of Writing, and Its Impact on Our Politics

Photo Credit: Real Clear Politics For four months before the battle of Gettysburg, Pvt. Myron A. Clark, a 21-year-old clerk in Company I of the 14th Vermont Infantry, wrote every day in a leather-bound diary he’d bought in Washington, D.C.

He filled it with descriptions of camp life’s boredom and tedium and flashes of news. His prose, marked with spelling errors, was spare, yet lively and informative, and an entry often said more than its words. On March, 19, for instance, Clark noted: “Peter Berges on Knapsack Drill for laziness & Frank Pasno in the Guard house for drunkenness.” Four days later, he complained of “a miserable straggling march of about 7 miles.” The 14th Vermont, in the middle of a nine-month enlistment, was having discipline problems.

By July 1, Clark was camped in a wheat field south of Gettysburg, Pa., ready for a fight after a 12-mile march. “I washed myself, changed my shirt, threw away my old one so it makes my load only a Rubber & Fly tent and pr. Socks, but it is enough. This P.M. marched for Gettysburgh & saw the smoke — guess the village is burnt.”

Then, two days later, different handwriting recorded that Clark had been killed at 4 a.m. by a 12-pound cannon ball that took off “all the back part of his head.” He was one of the first casualties of the battle’s final, bloody day.

“He was a good boy and soldier,” the anonymous writer scrawled. “The whole Co. mourns his loss & Especially his Capt. Such are the fortunes of War and they are deplorable.”