The Civil War; Interview with Daisy Turner

CAMERAMAN: May 21st, 1987, Civil War, produced by American Documentaries, camera roll 233, sound roll 48, interview with Daisy Turner, recorded flat, 7 1/2 its, -8 dB reference tone to follow. Location, Springfield, Vermont.

KEN BURNS: And, and we wanted to make a little bit of a movie about the Civil War.

DAISY TURNER: Oh, yeah.

KEN BURNS: And we wanted to, to talk to you about the Civil War.

DAISY TURNER: All right.

KEN BURNS: Um, and I wanted to know, I remember that, that you're a very good singer and you sang a couple of the songs once, the old slave songs. Do you remember how they went?

DAISY TURNER: Who?

KEN BURNS: The slave songs. Can you sing that?

DAISY TURNER: I don’t remember the songs.

KEN BURNS: The master’s —

DAISY TURNER: If you help me get up.

CAMERAMAN: No slate, no slate.

KEN BURNS: And you sang a song, an old spiritual, or old hymn, about ‘Massa’s in the ground...’

DAISY TURNER: Yeah.

KEN BURNS: Or something? Can you...

DAISY TURNER: Father...

KEN BURNS: Can you...

DAISY TURNER: Father’s slave song.

KEN BURNS: Can you, can you sing that for me?

DAISY TURNER: Do you know how, do you know how they handle the tape, typewriter, tape recorder?

KEN BURNS: Yes.

DAISY TURNER: Well, I was wondering if you could put a tape on for me, but I have a tape here, the man sent me a tape, but I can’t get anybody to put one on.

KEN BURNS: Oh, well, we’ll put it on in a little bit. Can you sing that song for us?

DAISY TURNER: Yeah, but you put, you’ll put it on in a little while and then you’ll hear what he said?

KEN BURNS: Oh, sure.

DAISY TURNER: I want you to hear the tape, what he says, and then I’ll try to put one on, and I’ll get you to write a letter to him for me.

KEN BURNS: Sure. Can you, can you sing in your own voice, that song? You’ve got such a beautiful voice.

DAISY TURNER: Yeah, that's what he wants. But he likes to hear the soldiers, soldiers, he said.

KEN BURNS: How did it go? Do you remember?

DAISY TURNER: Shall I — are you ready now?

KEN BURNS: Yes, go ahead.

DAISY TURNER: Well, I’d better let you put his tape on first. You put his tape...

KEN BURNS: Well, what, I’ll tell you what, why don’t I ask you some other questions and then we’ll do the tape at the end, OK?

DAISY TURNER: All right.

KEN BURNS: OK.

DAISY TURNER: But I thought that if you heard this tape, you’d get a better understanding.

KEN BURNS: Oh, I, no, I wanted you to sing. OK?

DAISY TURNER: Well, I’ll sing, I’ll say The Soldier’s Letter.

KEN BURNS: OK, what is The Soldier’s Letter?

DAISY TURNER: The soldier went to war, one of our Grafton boys, they lived right at the foot of the hill. Dear Madam, I am a soldier, and my speech is rough and plain. I’m not much used to writing, and I hate to give you pain, but I promised I would do it, and he thought it might be so, if it came from one that loved him, perhaps it could ease the blow. By this time, you must surely guess the truth I fain would hide, and you’ll pardon me for rough soldier words while I tell you how he died. ’Twas the night before the battle, and in our crowded tent, more than one grave boy was sobbing, and every knee was bent. For we knew not on the morrow, when this bloody work was done, how many of us that was kneeling there would see the setting sun. ’Twas not so much for self we cared as for the loved at home, which always worse to think of than to hear the cannons boom. It was then we left the crowded tent, your soldier boy and I, and we both breathed freer standing underneath the clear blue sky. I was more than ten years older, but he seemed to take to me, and more often than the younger ones he sought my company. He seemed to want to talk of his home, and those that held, that he held dear, while I had none to talk of, but I always liked to hear. So he told me of the night and the time he came away, and how you sorely grieved for him, but you didn’t bid him stay, and how his own fond hope had been that when this war was through, he might go back with honor to his home, to his friends, and you. He named his sisters one by one, and then a deep flush came, when he told me of another, but he didn’t call her name. And then he said, dear doctor, it may be that I shall fall, and if so, will you write to those at home how I love and spoke of all? So I promised, but I didn’t think the time would come so soon. The fight was just three days ago. He died today at noon. It seemed so hard that one so loved as he was should be gone, while I should still be living here who have no friends at home. It was in the morrow’s battle, fast rain, the shattered shell. I was standing close beside him and I saw him when he fell. So I took him in my arms and laid him on the grass. It was going against orders, but you think, they let it pass. ’Twas a mini ball that struck him, it ended at his side, but we didn’t think it fatal ’til this morning when he died. And when he found that he must go, he called me to his bed, and said, do not forget to write when they tell you I am dead. Tell them how I loved them, how I bid them all goodbye, say I tried to do the best I could, that I didn’t fear to die. And underneath my pillow, there’s a curl of golden hair. There’s a name upon the paper. Send it to my mother’s care. Last night I wanted so to live, I seem so young to go. Last week I passed my birthday, I was just 19, you know. When I thought of all I planned to do, it seemed so hard to die, but now I’ve prayed to God for grace and all my care gone by. And here his voice grew weaker as he partly raised his head, and whispered, goodbye, my love, and your soldier boy was dead. I wrapped his cloak around him, to keep warm about the night, and laid him in a clump of trees, and the moon was shining bright. I carved another headpost, as skillful as I could, and if you wish to find it, I can tell you where it stood. I send you back his hymn book, the cap he used to wear, the lock I cut the night before of his bright curly hair. I send you back his Bible, the night before he died, I turned its leaves together and read it by his side. I’ll keep the belt he was wearing. He told me so to do. It has a hole upon the side just where the ball went through. So now I’ve done his bidding, I have nothing more to tell, but I shall always mourn with you the boy we loved so well. That was one of the Palmer boys that lived right up the foot of our hill, where he grew up on our hill.

KEN BURNS: Great. Daisy, tell me what your daddy did in the war?

DAISY TURNER: Huh?

KEN BURNS: What did your daddy do in the war?

DAISY TURNER: He fought all through the Civil War. He was only four years old, fourteen years old, and he fought, he fought his masters, and his two masters fought with each other. The son went against the father and the father, the father shot each other at Gettysburg. After the worst battle of the Civil War. It was just before the last fierce fight, the two soldiers drew their reign, with a parting word and a touch of the hand, they might never meet again. One had blue eyes and curly hair down on his chin, right down his cheek. He was only a boy, you know. The other was tall and dark and proud, his faith in this world was dim. He only trusted the more the those who was all this world to him. They had rode together for many a mile, they had been through many a fight, and always ’til now had met the foe with a calm and a hopeful smile. But now they looked in each other’s face, in an awful ghastly gloom. The tall dark man was the first to speak, saying Charlie, my hour has come. We will ride together up the hill, but you’ll ride back alone. A little trouble I pray you to take for me when I am gone. I have a fair fond face upon my breast I’ll wear into the fight. And write to her, Charlie, when I am gone, send back the fair fond face. Write to her tenderly what I have said, and pay, and tell her my resting place. Hear then the blue eyes of the boy, his voice was low with me, with pain. I’ll do your bidding, comrade, if I ride back again, but if you ride back and I’m gone, you must do as much for me, because mother at home will hear the news, so write to her tenderly. Just then the orders came to charge. For an instant, hand touched hand, and in the next moment came the awful rebel yell, [COUGHS]. In a low, sweet voice only those could hear came the orders to charge. They rode ’til they came to the crest of the hill, and the rebels, with shot and shell, poured death and destruction in the toiling ranks, and pierced them as they fell. And among the dead that lay on the ground was the boy with the curly hair, and the dark man who had rode at his side lay dead beside him there. There’s no one to write to the blue-eyed girl the words that her lover had said, and the mother at home would only know that the son she loved was dead.

KEN BURNS: Daisy, that was wonderful. It’s nice to hear those poems. We’re going to change the roll of film and then we’ll start again in a couple minutes.

DAISY TURNER: OK?

KEN BURNS: OK?

DAISY TURNER: Yeah, all right.

KEN BURNS: Thanks, so thank you very much, we’ll just, just take a couple more minutes long.

DAISY TURNER: This, this is, uh...

CAMERAMAN: OK, there’s no slate on that into, entire roll. No slate on that entire roll.

DAISY TURNER: And, uh, he has written... [TONE]

CAMERAMAN: May 21st, 1987, Civil War, produced by American Documentaries, camera roll 234, sound roll 49, recorded flat, 7 1/2 ips, -8 dB reference tone to follow. [TONE] Continuation of interview with Daisy Turner.

KEN BURNS: Proud to be a soldier in the Civil War?

DAISY TURNER: Huh?

KEN BURNS: Was your father proud to serve in the Union Army?

DAISY TURNER: Did he serve?

KEN BURNS: No, was he proud?

DAISY TURNER: Proud?

KEN BURNS: Yes.

DAISY TURNER: Well, yes, he couldn’t do nothing else but try to get free and run away. And here’s his young missus had helped him from the time he was five years old, when he burned up his father’s, papa’s little boots, and so Papa couldn’t read, he never had no schooling, and my mother had never had no schooling except for my father taught her. But my father was very smart. And so he sold milk, he filled the milk for his old master, and his master liked him, so they got on all right. But the father was a Dr. Golden, and all of the other slaves, you know, you, you all don’t know it here, how, they didn’t have no clothes, they went, had to go barefoot and everything. That was the terriblest four years the world has ever know, that Civil War.

KEN BURNS: Daisy, what, you, your, your father, what’s the John Wilkes Booth story?

DAISY TURNER: Huh?

KEN BURNS: What’s the story about John Wilkes Booth, the night they shot Lincoln?

DAISY TURNER: Oh, that was a terrible night, because my father, war, the war was just over, and they was, all of the soldiers was going home, and my father’s had been quartered with the first New Jersey cavalry, and they was quartered on the edge of Washington, waiting for they to get their papers so they could come home from the war, because they didn’t have nowhere to go, and the, Lincoln had made out a paper so that Pa could come back and fought, and find a place for the colored soldiers to come back up here. And you know, Norman Wright, who we charged right here, up Cheshire Road...

KEN BURNS: Yes.

DAISY TURNER: His mother had made, her mother had turned her house, and she grew up under where the covered bridge, in that brick house, she turned her house into a place so to help to take these colored soldiers, and these white soldiers that didn’t have no money and no place to go, just one sock on and no socks at all and, it’s a terrible time. And men was working for 25 cents a day and couldn’t find no work at that.

KEN BURNS: But didn’t, didn’t, then Lincoln was shot.

DAISY TURNER: Yeah, well, Papa was there, waiting to get his papers, when they got the word that Lincoln had been shot. And Papa was waiting to get the papers so to leave, but Mrs. Lincoln, you know, was a spy, his wife, she turned on her own husband. And she’s the one that fooled and had them, Booth to shoot him.

KEN BURNS: What do you think about the men who fought for the black man during the Civil War and died?

DAISY TURNER: Yeah, well, that’s just it. That’s what they’re doing right here, right here, yesterday and today, this day, I’ve had an awful time here. A woman was here, and wants me to sign the paper for this land thing, so this, the, to lock me in this place here, and there’s the only one they would lock, so, uh, we had a regular fight, fight over it this morning.

KEN BURNS: Daisy?

DAISY TURNER: Yeah?

KEN BURNS: You said something once to me about the, the fertile ground filled with the blood of the soldiers.

DAISY TURNER: Oh, yeah.

KEN BURNS: Can you tell me that again? What were you saying?

DAISY TURNER: Yeah, I said that the green shroud, the green grass, in Virginia, was fertile with the blood of the Negro slaves from Africa and these white boys and white men that laid their all on the other so that we could have our freedom, so that we could be free like everybody else. And this morning they want me to sign the paper. I was, wouldn’t give up my freedom.

KEN BURNS: What did your father say about fighting in the war? What was it like?

DAISY TURNER: Well, of course, he was a slave, he wanted to be free, so he was doing everything that he could to help the, Lincoln, and to help the soldiers. It was a terrible time. Fifty thousand soldiers, and they had just did, had, had the heart, you know, over to [UNCLEAR].

KEN BURNS: Can you sing that ‘Massa’s in the Ground’ hymn that you sang for us before?

DAISY TURNER: Oh, I don’t like to sing it because I’m all stirred up from the fight through the day and this morning and through the night. I ain’t slept any all night.

KEN BURNS: Well, if you could just do it briefly, you’ve got such a beautiful voice. We’d love to hear it again.

DAISY TURNER: Well, I’d got — who is with you? Anybody?

KEN BURNS: Yes, we have a cameraman here, who wasn’t here the last time I came. Julie and I are here.

DAISY TURNER: Oh, but he’s leaving now?

KEN BURNS: But he — yes, and he hasn’t heard you sing it. If, I was wondering...

DAISY TURNER: Oh, I see.

KEN BURNS: ...if you could sing it for him.

DAISY TURNER: What’s his, is his name?

KEN BURNS: His name is Buddy.

DAISY TURNER: Buddy what?

KEN BURNS: Buddy Squires.

DAISY TURNER: Squires.

KEN BURNS: Mm-hmm.

DAISY TURNER: Where did he come from?

KEN BURNS: He comes from Massachusetts.

DAISY TURNER: What part of Massachusetts?

KEN BURNS: Boston.

DAISY TURNER: Boston.

KEN BURNS: Can you, can you sing it for him?

DAISY TURNER: Well, I don’t know if I can sing it all, but I...

KEN BURNS: Can you give it a try?

DAISY TURNER: Round the meadows am I ringing, the darkey’s mournful song, all the darkeys are weeping, Massa’s in the cold, cold ground. Hard to hear old Massa calling because he was weak and old. Now when the summer days are coming, Massa never calls no more. Oh, the white people had a hard time down there. The white slave men was having children by them Negro slave women. Their wives didn’t like it, then they had all these young sons that were their own sons, and they were the slaves of those Negro women and they were smart and they, the fathers didn’t know what to do. Half the time—that Liza, the father had a son by Liza, and the son was after Liza, and the father, the father decided to tell Liza further down in Kentucky so as to get her out of the son’s reach. That is when the son gave his his socks out, pulled off his socks, put them on Liza’s feet so that Liza could see if she could cross on the ice, because it seemed that the colored slave had people up in New Jersey, and he had gotten in touch with the New Jersey people, and they was going to meet Liza if she could get across, if she could get across the Rappahannock River, they was going to meet Liza there with the car so to bring Liza up to Vermont, down to this house, as you go up the [UNCLEAR] Road.

KEN BURNS: Daisy?

DAISY TURNER: Yeah?

KEN BURNS: What do you think’s the most important thing that we should understand about the Civil War, and that fight, that terrible war?

DAISY TURNER: Well...

KEN BURNS: What shouldn’t we forget?

DAISY TURNER: They should never forget, because that’s where all of the hopes lay, and the, they saw what was going on, and they said, with everything being broke up, with the white men having them children, the Negro slave women, what were they going to do with that, how’s it going to end? The white men ought to have known better than to commence having children by them Negro slave, slave women. And there was no education, no schools. They didn’t allow them, and they was part of Africa, and so it was, something had to break. Somebody had to stand on their feet, be heard, and do the right thing. And everybody, there wasn’t any of them doing right. And of course the white slave men wanted to make good money fast by having the Negro slave men to work free. They thought that was a good way for them to make quick money, don’t you see.

KEN BURNS: Yes. Um, didn’t your daddy hear John Wilkes Booth’s horse?

DAISY TURNER: What there?

KEN BURNS: Didn’t your daddy hear John Wilkes Booth’s horse after he shot Lincoln, riding away? Didn’t you tell me that? That...

DAISY TURNER: Told you what?

KEN BURNS: That after Lincoln was shot, your daddy heard the horse running away?

DAISY TURNER: Yes, he heard the sound of...

KEN BURNS: Tell, tell me that story.

DAISY TURNER: All right, it’s just as he heard the, heard the story. And the, and then they, all the men got up with exciting, went to the captain, and sure enough, Mrs. Lincoln was crying and upset that Lincoln was dead. And we had the pay, the two pencils here. They’ve got, they stole, my papers has all been stole these past two, three months. Lincoln had the two Booth pens, where he signed the paper in ’62 and ’63, for our freedom. The war was still going on, but he signed the paper with a pen so that — that is when he saw that he wasn’t going to win the war unless the Negro slaves helped, because old Jeff Davis was causing the Southern men to help, and they was winning, and they said they were going to have slavery. And Lincoln said that they would fight, and that’s when he called for the Vermont boys to come to help, and the Vermont boys, right here in Grafton, one of them was Frank, right up on the hill, and all the Burgess boys, and the Danielses, and the Duncans, and Walter Hemingway, he was only 14 years old, Walter Hemingway, it was his son, nephew, that wrote, Ernest Hemingway, the book, but he was 14. He went in the war as a drum major fighting for the South. All laid down their blood the same as Jesus did upon Calvary Cross, so to give the Negros their freedom.

KEN BURNS: Daisy, we just ran out of film again, so we’re going to reload the camera. It will take another few minutes. So let’s stop talking about the Civil War and you can tell me about, about this mur— [TONE]

CAMERAMAN: May 21, 1987, Civil War, produced by American Documentaries, camera roll 235, sound roll 50, recorded flat, 7 1/2 ips, -8 dB reference tone to follow. Continuation of interview with Daisy Turner.

DAISY TURNER: Father told me, [COUGHS] but we didn’t get it quite ready in time.

KEN BURNS: What did your father tell you about the Civil War?

DAISY TURNER: My father didn’t tell them anything, I just told them what my father told about his mistress and master, what he knew about himself.

KEN BURNS: How bad was slavery, Daisy? How bad...

DAISY TURNER: It couldn’t be any worse, there. I just keep trying to tell you. Can anything be any worse, when a white man was having children by the Negro slave women and then putting them up for sale on the block? Putting my father, they want to sell my father for a breeder, for twelve thousand dollars, when he was twelve years old. And old Golden, John Golden, wrote the [UNCLEAR], he wouldn’t sell him for that. This lady that was in this room this morning is from New Orleans, one of the women. Just these past two weeks, she found this picture of my father down in New Orleans, that she’s bringing it to me now, going to have, I’m going to have a copy of it, of my father.

KEN BURNS: Great. What regiment did he fight in, Daisy?

DAISY TURNER: First New Jersey Calvary. When he ran away, my father was on the plantation working for his master. And he and 27 other boys ran away, swam across the Rappahannock River, and joined the First New Jersey Calvary in sixth, for the war.

KEN BURNS: Was he a good fighter, your father? Did he fight hard for the Union?

DAISY TURNER: Oh, yes, yeah, he was a brave boy. Actually, he had nothing else to do. He was a brave boy, he had to be brave, to come up here in this country and make a living and get ahead and get on his feet and raise a family.

KEN BURNS: What battles did he fight in, Daisy?

DAISY TURNER: [COUGHS] I told you one, I rehearsed the piece that he wrote, when they first do, what he fought for, well, he was fighting for one of the two soldiers.

KEN BURNS: Yes.

DAISY TURNER: Through the rain. It’s just before the last fierce fight. Two battles, two soldiers drew their reigns, with a parting word and a touch of the hand, they might never meet again.

KEN BURNS: Right, that was a very nice poem.

DAISY TURNER: That was the last battle.

KEN BURNS: That’s right, that was Gettysburg, right?

DAISY TURNER: Yeah, the Battle of Gettysburg.

KEN BURNS: Tell me about that battle, it must have been —

DAISY TURNER: Of the Yankees, the rebels was, the rebels was terrible. They didn’t have no mercy on anybody, even when they, they took in the soldiers, and when the Negro soldiers got to fighting, they put up a fort for them, and when the guns went, they fought the other Southerners with their heads. Fought them with their heads. They all, all of the soldiers’ guns, they only shot one time, you know. They had to load the guns with powder and their women was back here making little bags, put those little long boxes of caps in, and a little powder in so they wouldn’t get damp, because then they couldn’t fight no more. They didn’t have no rifles then to fight. They’d have cleaned up the war in no time.

KEN BURNS: Daisy, do you remember any other songs from that time?

DAISY TURNER: Well, not to, no, because I’m a little nervous this morning. I don’t...

KEN BURNS: Because, because you sang for us ‘Massa’s in the Ground,’ but it, was there any other ones from the Civil War and from slavery that you think that we should remember?

DAISY TURNER: I don’t think it, I don’t think there is. Hm. Father gives it — my father had a beautiful tenor voice. He used to sing a different slave song. Nellie Gray. There’s a low green valley, on the old Kentucky shore, where I’ve whiled many happy hours away, a-sitting and a-singing by the little cabin door where I went down to see Nelly Gray. One day I, night I went to see her, she’s gone, the neighbors say, that a white man came and he bound her with his chain while I toiled on the old Kentucky shore. We had a lot of the slaves chained. They stole all my truckload of Southern things and, those slaves chained, they didn’t save, they’ve gone in magazines and, you know.

KEN BURNS: Yes.

DAISY TURNER: Yeah, all those slave chains.

KEN BURNS: Is there anything else, Daisy, you want to tell us about the Civil War that I haven’t already asked you? Something else that we should know?

DAISY TURNER: Oh, yes, there’s, I don’t know, there’s a lot.

KEN BURNS: What do you think of Abraham Lincoln?

DAISY TURNER: Well, Abraham Lincoln was poor, and he didn’t have no chance, only he knew they had no right to do like that, and he didn’t think they ought to have slavery, and he said they would break it right up. Break it up at the start. So they’ve start, he talked to his, all of the people up in Oklahoma, they all agreed with him and elected him. He had a brother John, that brother John wasn’t educated, wasn’t smart in the head, you know, he wasn’t an educated at all, but he was smart just the same. But Abraham Lincoln could see further, and he knew that they ought not have no, that was going to get the country to war. So he started right off the rail, like the [UNCLEAR] did here, seeing what he could do.

KEN BURNS: Well, thank you, Daisy. You’ve been very kind to tell us your stories.

DAISY TURNER: No. No, I...

KEN BURNS: It’s so nice to hear.

DAISY TURNER: I think that it’s, it’s a wonderful thing, it’s one of the greatest, it’s, well, it’s one of the greatest wars that’s ever been fought and ever will be because now, because [TONE] because they’ve got all these rifles and they kill everything. And as I said, they got the men here, they didn’t have nothing but a few mules, they couldn’t do nothing with the mules. That’s how come John, he got to Chester, oh, Papa got over in West Town, Chester.

KEN BURNS: Well, thank you, Daisy, it’s very, very...

DAISY TURNER: All right. And so they got to, they lived up, just above Chester, so they got these war horses down there that they could ride the horses, as they bring the good old bugle boy, we sing another song. That’s marching with a, fifty thousand strong, soldier [UNCLEAR], fifty thousand strong.

KEN BURNS: Mm, that’s nice.

DAISY TURNER: Yeah.

KEN BURNS: Do you think the Civil War had to happen in order to free the black —

DAISY TURNER: It had to be. That Civil War had to be to clear this universe, because otherwise we’d be, all, everybody killing each other today, today, today we’d be nothing.

KEN BURNS: So it had to happen, you think.

DAISY TURNER: It had to be. From the time Abraham, from Abe and Eve, from the time that Adam, and, you know, that was from the old Bible times. the Bible, the, and those old, those old church members, and the Civil War, and history tells how Jesus was in the ground, and they was already commenced doing the wrong thing, so then, he told Adam and Eve what they would have to do if they want to keep the world running smoothly like it was. But Adam and Eve both commencing sex and decided to do what they want to do. And what did they do but have those children? And he did, they had those boys that came out in the first war, and so instead of them doing the right thing, they had married to have a baby without getting married to Joseph.

KEN BURNS: Daisy, do you think that, that the black person has been better off since the Civil War?

DAISY TURNER: Huh?

KEN BURNS: Do you think the black person has been better off since the Civil War?

DAISY TURNER: Since the Civil War?

KEN BURNS: Yes.

DAISY TURNER: Why, yes. There’s a man and a woman now in freedom. Before that, they couldn’t talk. Couldn’t, they wouldn’t allow you to sit down on the same train. You couldn’t sit down, go to the hospital. You couldn’t go to the library or anything, you didn’t have no freedom. And the Negros, you know, they couldn’t go to school. That was one of my second hurt, and I wanted to take up shorthand, to, because I want to write this story, and of course they didn’t have tapes and things, but I read, I worked, picked berries, ten cents a quart. Got enough to get a rummy...[TONE]