One of the toughest and also one of the most gratifying things about this project as been discovering the stories of some amazing men with disabilities who served this country. Often, the disability is not mentioned in one biography but may be mentioned in another. A photo may show a disability but nothing in their obituary mentions it. Disability is just not a part of the information that is preserved; and sometimes it is even purposely hidden. There is nothing quite like the thrill of discovering a piece of information in once place and then connecting it to another and finding that “disability was there.”

I was searching for images of Fort Stevens, Washington DC, and the Brightwood area and came across this image in the Library of Congress. It is listed as: Camp Brightwood. Col. Henry S. Briggs. 10th Regt. Mass. Volunteers and was put out by Sarony, Major & Knapp, 449 Broadway N.Y.

It is a lovely lithograph with a lot of things going on in it. And while I loved it, it isn’t quite right for the film. HOWEVER, in the lower left below the image it says, “John Donovan, Deaf Mute, DEL Oct 17th 1861”. Much to my frustration though, the Library of Congress didn’t have any additional information.

Here is where the digging came in. From “Rebellion Record: a Diary of American Events: Poetry and Incidents” (New York: Putnam, 1861/1862,” Volume 4):

“Tenth regiment Massachusetts volunteers, stationed at Camp Brightwood, Virginia, is a deaf mute, named John Donovan, who is regularly enlisted as a soldier and detailed as the regimental tailor … An accurate draft of Camp Brightwood, made by him, is in the hands of lithographers, and will shortly be issued. John was always spoken of in the highest terms of praise by the officers of his regiment, and, notwithstanding his infirmity, was fully equal, bodily and mentally, to the rank and file of the grand army of the Union…”

And do you what is REALLY cool? He actually drew himself into the picture. In the lower right, you can see him seated next to the wagon sketching the soldiers drilling – THIS VERY SCENE.

So no, Private John Donovan was never in the Invalid Corps, however, he was a member of Company A of the 10th Regiment of the Massachussetts Volunteers and worked, for a time, quite successfully as an enlisted soldier in the Union Army.  I say “for a time” because when I looked up the regimental history, “Ours”. Annals of 10th regiment, Massachusetts Volunteers in the Rebellion, I found this:

“John Donovan, of Lee, (a deaf mute,) was enlisted July 24, 1861, and followed the Regiment to Brightwood, where he, being a tailor by trade, repaired clothing for officers and men; was enlisted unlawfully, and appears to have been dropped from the rolls; had a fine taste for drawing, and made a good view of the camp at Brightwood, which was lithographed, and had an extensive sale. He came home to Massachusetts, where he died about 1864.”

James LeBrecht wrote an amazing article for Documentary Magazine that just came out yesterday. It’s called: A Place at the Table: Doc Filmmakers with Disabilities on Building Careers and Disproving Stereotypes  (https://www.documentary.org/feature/place-table-doc-filmmakers-disabilities-building-careers-and-disproving-stereotypes).

It is a fantastic article and really talks about some of the barriers that filmmakers with disabilities face. He interviews several filmmakers and asks some very thoughtful questions. More than just an introduction to the idea of disabled filmmakers the article is also a call to action.

Over the years, we’ve seen the emergence of filmmakers from underrepresented communities, which has brought nuance and authenticity to documentary films. However, one community is still far behind. I’m talking about my community: the disabled community.

As well as Jim himself, we get to meet Jen Brea; Victor Pineda; Emmy winner, Jason DaSilva; and yours truly.

And yes, I’m going to excerpt something I said. 🙂 Mostly because this is a point that I think is so so important and while I haven’t talked about it much here, it is very important to me.

Day Al-Mohamed, who is blind, is making a documentary about the Civil War “Invalid Corp,” a little-known Union Army unit comprised of disabled men. “The biggest roadblock to building a career, especially now, I think, is the invisibility of disability,” she observes. “There is a lot of discussion about diversity in the industry; about women in film and women directors; about #OscarsSoWhite and the need for more LGBT representation. As a woman of color who is LGBT, I couldn’t agree more. However, disability has not been a part of this discussion—not anywhere. If we are willing to acknowledge that biases exist when it comes to hiring individuals working with those identities, it is not difficult to imagine how the societal prejudices around disability would impact the opportunities available for filmmakers with disabilities. People with disabilities are not seen as legitimate professionals within the industry.”

It is one of the reasons I am so proud that more than 90% of the people working on the Invalid Corps film have disabilities. We should have, as Jim puts it, a place at the table.

Introduction

One of the smaller things I wanted to do with this project was to increase the visibility of at least some of the activities of the Invalid Corps (Veteran Reserve Corps). One of the most common questions or comments from people is that they mention an ancestor in one regiment or another and ask about what may have been their duties. That, coupled with a desire to understand more fully the contributions of the Invalid Corps to the Civil War (beyond the Battle of Fort Stevens) resulted in this series.

Thankfully, The War of the Rebellion: a compilation of the official records of the Union and Confederate Armies, includes a “final report” to Brigadier General James Fry, Provost Marshal General from J.W. De Forest, Captain, Veteran Reserve Corps and Acting Assistant Adjutant-General on November 30, 1865. In it, he breaks down some of the services performed by the various Invalid Corps (Veteran Reserve Corps) regiments. Specifically, the 1st Battalion. By this point in time, the 1st Battalion soldiers were under the authority of the Provost Marshal’s Office and the 2nd Battalion soldiers (those with more significant injuries and illnesses) were under the authority of the Surgeon General of the Army. While it doesn’t encompass everything, I thought the records provided some great details. I’ll be following up with individual posts about each of the 24 regiments. 

Captain De Forest begins with a general discussion about the Invalid Corps/Veteran Reserve Corps:

The services performed by the Veteran Reserve Corps have been so varied in nature that it is impossible to state them in a compendious exhibit. Where one regiment has escorted thousands of prisoners, convalescents, recruits, and conscripts, whose numbers can be given with accuracy, another has simply guarded important posts and vast stores of public property, thus performing duty which cannot be expressed statistically.

After examining the voluminous reports of the regiments for the year, I find it impossible to present their information intelligibly otherwise than by detached summaries. These epitomes will be brief; they will indeed be little more than the barest memoranda, necessarily unjust to certain organizations, but this error cannot be avoided without a fullness of detail which would render the report too voluminous. It should be observed that the services of the Second Battalion are not stated here for the reason that its records are not under the control of the Bureau.

He also highlights several of the corps’ general activities:

No statistics of the ordinary duty performed by the corps during this official year have been collected, except the fact that 21,345 recruits, deserters, &c., were guarded by the Tenth Regiment, with a loss of only thirty-five. At this distance of time it would be difficult to obtain data for an accurate or even approximative report on the subject.

It is known, however, that the services rendered by the Veteran Reserves were very arduous, and it is believed that more duty would not have been demanded of a similar number of able-bodied soldiers.

They furnished guards for the rebel prison camps at Rock Island and Chicago, Ill. ; Indianapolis, Ind. ; Johnson’s Island, Ohio; Elmira, N.Y.; Point Lookout, Md.; for the recruiting depots and camps of distribution at Portland, Concord, Boston, New Haven, New York City, Trenton, Pittsburg, Fort Snelling, and Alexandria; they supplied provost-marshals of districts with details to enforce the draft; they conducted the conscripts to rendezvous; they escorted large numbers of substitutes, recruits, and rebel prisoners to and from the front; guarded the railroad between Baltimore and Washington, and performed the patrol and guard duty of the capital; manned a portion of the defenses of Washington during the raid of Early, and for four months before and after guarded many general hospitals, and supplied them with ward-masters, nurses, and clerks; furnished clerks, also, to various military departments and superintendents of recruiting.

The War of the Rebellion: a compilation of the official records of the Union and Confederate Armies – https://archive.org/details/warrebellionaco17offigoog/page/n574