The American Plague - Molly Caldwell Crosby [10]
Parsons was a lean man with a soldier’s build. He had carved cheekbones, fair hair, a handlebar moustache and a tender smile. His eyes were deep-set and gave the appearance of sincerity, but there was also something intense in his expression. He was once described as having a look near fanaticism in his face, a passion for what he believed to be his calling and duty. Not a single surviving letter or description describes him as anything other than gentle and great; and in spite of being a Yankee, Charles Parsons was one of the most beloved rectors in Memphis.
During the war, Parsons had been a northern officer and a hero. At the Battle of Perryville in Kentucky, he continued operating a gun, single-handedly, after all of the officers and men in his company had fallen. When the Confederate artillery approached, Charles Parsons held his sword at parade rest and awaited fire. The Confederate colonel, impressed by his courage, ordered his men to hold their fire and allowed Parsons to walk off the battlefield. “That man,” the colonel exclaimed, “is too brave to be killed.”
After the war, Parsons taught at West Point and served with General George Custer in the western campaigns. Custer, a friend and admirer, tried to persuade Parsons to remain in the military, but Parsons felt a different calling. He soon took his orders as an Episcopal priest from Tennessee Bishop Charles T. Quintard, another veteran of the Battle of Perryville, but one who fought on the other side. Parsons came to Memphis to grieve the loss of his first wife, who died in childbirth, and start anew as rector for Grace Church, where this Union officer now preached to a congregation that included Jefferson Davis and his family.
On that late day in February 1878, in a city filled with the sound of hammers and the scent of lumber, Parsons preached not about heathen celebrations or temperance, but about the character of men: “There will come to each of you a time, I trust far away, when the scourge of affliction may fall heavily upon you . . . wealth, or power, or skill, or even fond affection in the utmost stretch of tenderness, can supply no companion to the soul in its journey through the valley of death.” He spoke with the confidence of a soldier who had survived the Civil War, the death of a wife and the loss of a son to scarlet fever; for all intents and purposes, he had been to that valley and returned. Parsons did not know at that moment what lay ahead, that the greatest American urban disaster to date awaited them, that when the fever would finally take him, he would have to read his own last rites.
The room was still as Parsons spoke of measuring a man’s spirit and strength against the darkest moments, and then he ended his sermon “. . . I was about to say, God send us such a man. I think it is better that I pray—God make us to be such.”
For weeks, the Memphis Appeal devoted columns to the upcoming parades, their themes, routes and security. The entire police force would be on duty downtown, and concealed weapons would be prohibited. Public drunkenness would not be tolerated, nor would revelers costumed in such a manner that would “shock the decency of the occasion.” But the paper also focused on some important national news. The silver bill before Congress authorizing the minting of the silver dollar had graced the front pages. There were the usual mentions of steamboat disasters, train wrecks and the wearing away of Niagara Falls. On Fat Tuesday itself, the paper even made room to report on the Geographical Society’s year in research, which included headlines about “Mr. Edison’s wonderful phonograph” and “Mr. Stanley’s exploration of the Congo.”
On Monday, March 4, 1878, Carnival began. Hundreds of people arrived by steamboat and railroad on Sunday, and on Monday, thousands more. As the steamboats