Critic’s Corner The End of an Era - John S. Wise
By Stephen Davis · Originally published July-August 2025 · pp. 58–59
Critic’s o r The End of an Era n (1899) e r By Stephen Davis
By John S. Wise
Virginian John Sergeant Wise (1846–1913) was fourteen when the war broke out. His father, a well-to-do planter in eastern Virginia, saw to the lad’s education, which included a stint at VMI. With the Institute’s Corps of Cadets, he charged at New Market and received a lieutenant’s commission. He ended the war as a parolee with Johnston’s army in North Carolina. Afterward, he earned his law degree at UVa, practicing in Richmond and later in New York. He served a term in Congress in the 1880s, but was defeated by Fitzhugh Lee in a run for governor. Wise wrote two novels, but is best known for his memoir The End of an Era. “This book…is not an autobiography alone,” he explains; “it introduces views of Southern life and feelings and civilization, prior to and during the war” (p. iii). Writing decades afterward, he accepts the death of slavery, even as he contends that “we had every provocation to fight” (88).
I looked upon an abolitionist as, in the first place, a rank fool, engaged in trying to make people have what they did not want; and in the next place, as a disturber of the peace, trying to make people wretched who were happy, and a man bad at heart, who was bent on stealing what belonged to his neighbor, or even inciting the murder of people for slaveholding, as if slaveholding were a crime, when it was no crime, but a natural and necessary condition of society (74).
As for slavery itself, Wise depicts it as a benign institution.
Near at hand, or far away upon the hillsides, one beheld the working-bands of slaves, well clothed, well fed, and differing from other workmen, as we see them now, chiefly in their numbers and their cheerfulness and their comfortable clothing. Remarkable as the statement may seem, those slaves, over whose sad fate so many tears have been shed, went about their work more joyously than any laboring people I ever saw (140). Though at first too young to serve in the Confederate army, Wise thrilled at the prospect. “Verily, this thing called war was a fascinating sport,” he recalls, as he hoped it would not be over before he could join “its glorious exhilaration” (162). The Wise family heartily pitched in. The father was commissioned a brigadier and sent to recruit in western Virginia. Brother Richard, 17, accompanied him as ADC. Brother Jennings was elected captain of the Richmond Light Infantry Blues. Gradually, though, war’s grimness sank in. Jennings was mortally wounded at Roanoke Island, a tragedy made worse by the Yankees’ capture of the island and its garrison. The defeat and Confederate casualties brought this realization:
War is not all brilliant deeds and glory, but a gaunt, heartless wolf that comes boldly into the
most sacred precincts, and snatches even the sucking babe from the mother’s breast; that the most cherished treasure is its favorite object of destruction; that it ever plants its fangs in the bravest and tenderest hearts; and that that which we prize the most is surest to be seized by its insatiate rapacity (189).
demonstrations of sorrow. If I did, I should be lying for sentiment’s sake.” At the time Wise considered Booth’s act “a sort of retributive justice.”
When Norfolk fell in the spring of 1862, the Wise family removed to Richmond, then to a home in southwest Virginia. Later in the fall John set out for VMI at Lexington and began the life of a cadet. When Sigel pushed into the Valley in May 1864, the VMI boys joined in the fight. “Every cadet leaped forward, dressing to the ensign, elate and thrilling with the consciousness that this was war” (298). Indeed it was. Wise was slightly wounded in the head by a shell. “’Hurrah!’ I thought, ‘youth’s dream is realized at last. I’ve got a wound, and am not dead yet’” (299). In September 1864, Wise was commissioned Second Lieutenant and transferred to Col. Robert Preston’s regiment in Dublin, southwest Virginia. He was not yet 18. The memoir, of course, traces the author’s war service, but along the way Wise takes a look at some generals, too. “It is impossible to speak of General Lee without seeming to deal in hyperbole” (340-41). Beauregard was handicapped by Davis’ mistrust; Powell Hill dressed plainly, sometimes wearing a shell jacket in combat; Wade Hampton was a born aristocrat (330-31, 333). Joe Johnston “was a stiff, uncommunicative man, punctilious and peppery, as little fellows like him are apt to be” (449). “Fighting Dick” Ewell had lost a leg, “but he was still in the business enthusiastically, as if he possessed as many legs as a centipede” (332). Wise was writing several decades after Reconstruction, on which he commented rather bitterly. “Whether what has followed will ultimately result in a better civilization is as yet far from settled; but whether for better or worse, it is certain that a social, economic, and political earthquake, never surpassed in suddenness and destructive force, burst upon that people, working changes that have left little trace of what was there before” (62). The author’s bitterness extended even to the martyred Northern president. “Perhaps I ought to chronicle that the announcement [of the assassination] was received with
For four years we had been fighting. In that struggle, all we loved had been lost. Lincoln incarnated to us the idea of oppression and conquest. We had seen his face over the coffins of our brothers and relatives and friends, in the flames of Richmond, in the disaster at Appomattox. In blood and flame and torture the temples of our lives were tumbling about our heads. We were desperate and vindictive, and whosoever denies it forgets or is false. We greeted his death in a spirit of reckless hate, and hailed it as bringing agony and bitterness to those who were the cause of our own agony and bitterness. To us, Lincoln was an inhuman monster, Grant a butcher, and Sherman a fiend” (454-55). This kind of raw honesty is somewhat rare in Confederate memoirs, and it is the sort of commendable attribute that makes John S. Wise’s The End of an Era so valuable. The End of an Era was issued as paperback in 2010. My copy of Wise’s memoir was issued by Houghton Mifflin in 1902. It is inscribed, “Wm. S. Thompson from his wife Dec. 25, 1907.” That was back in the day, I guess, when wives gave their husbands Civil War books as Christmas presents. O tempora, o mores! Stephen Davis has been writing about the Civil War
for a long time—“since Jesus was in third grade,” he contends. He is author of Texas Brigadier to the Fall
of Atlanta: John Bell Hood (2019) and Into Tennessee
& Failure: John Bell Hood (2020). With Bill Hendrick he wrote The Atlanta Intelligencer Covers the Civil War (2022). His next book, The National Tribune Remembers the Atlanta Campaign: Battles, Skirmishes, Marches and Camp Life as Recalled by the Union Veterans Themselves, is being published by Savas Beatie.
The N-SSA is America’s oldest and largest Civil War shooting sports organization. Competitors shoot original or approved reproduction muskets, carbines and revolvers at breakable targets in a timed match. Some units even compete with cannons and mortars. Each team represents a specific Civil War regiment or unit and wears the uniform they wore over 160 years ago. Dedicated to preserving our history, period firearms competition and the camaraderie of team sports with friends and family, the N-SSA may be just right for you.
For more information visit us online at www.n-ssa.org.
Photographs from the Original Article
Captions and credits appear in the article text as originally printed.