Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1996. [Vol. 3.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 23)

STUDIES - M. Thomas Inge: Sam Watkins and the Fictionality of Fact

Sam Watkins's "Co. Aytch" is a personal memoir of his experiences in the Civil War which has been acclaimed by his admirers as a lively and witty commentary on the war and its significance from the unusual point of view of an ordinary southern foot solder. Watkins had a way with words, and he invested his memoirs with a high degree of literary artistry and narrative skill. His uses of irony, humor, metaphor, imagery, fable, and description compare favorably with such authors as Stephen Crane, Ambrose Bierce, and others who created works of fiction about the Civil War. An examination of the literay qualities of "Co. Aytch" raises issues about the fictionality of fact and the factuality of fiction. Can one write a primary historical document that has the characteristics of fiction, and what does that tell us about the nature of literary art and its relation to reality? The details of the life and career of Sam Watkins suggest little about his acquaintance with literature or the sources of his inspiration as a writer. He was born June 26,1839, near Columbia, Tennessee, on a farm owned by his father, who came originally from North Carolina. Aside from working his father's land, we only know that in his youth he clerked at the general store owned by S. F. and J. M. Mayes in Columbia,

5 suggesting some rudimentary instruction in mathematics, but we know nothing definite of his early education. He did attend, however, Jackson College in Columbia, which burned in 1862 and did not reopen after the war. No doubt here he studied the classics, theology, rhetoric, and the standard fare at such schools for young men of the time (a quotation from Vergil's Aeneid, 2.5—6. appears on the title page of "Co. Aytch

" which suggests some acquaintance with classical literature and translated means: "which most wretched things I myself saw and was a great part of them")

. At the age of twenty-one, in the spring of 1861, when it appeared that Tennessee was about to secede and war was certain, Sam Watkins 5 See Sam R. Watkins, "Co. Aytch, "Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment; or, a Side Show of the Big Show, hereafter abbreviated as W (Nashville: Cumberland Presbyterian Publishing House, 1882) 146. All quotations in the text are from this edition. 49