Civil War Writings

 I’m not expert on the Civil War. I don’t even consider myself particularly knowledgeable about that sad affair. But I have been interested in it since I was introduced to it as, I think maybe, an eighth grader. Over the many years I’ve probably read close to 200 or volumes about the war and its many battles, leaders, and settings.

From my latest binge, I’ve had an epiphany, helped by some recent volumes. A thought emerged that if one were to review the most famous works on the subject of the first 100 years after the war, and those written during the last 57 or so, one would hardly recognize it as the same historical event. It represents a bold example of a refutation of the well-known saying that the history of wars is written by the victors. 

Immediate histories of the Civil War came from the losers, or at least those who harbored a fascination with the losers. I’m not sure what this means or even if it is true. I do believe that if one were to look at the first period, it would be hard to find an account of how R.E. Lee’s army, during its two incursions into the north, captured free Americans and transported them to be sold as slaves to southern plantation owners. 

I’m currently reading “The Myth of the Lost Cause and Civil War History,” edited by Gary W. Gallagher and Alan T. Nolan. Hope for some edification. Stay tuned.

Wild Guesses

Someone asked me why the North seemed so out-generaled during the Civil War. That’s something that has confounded expert historians since April 1865. A lack of credentials never stopped me yet so here goes.

We must understand that, unlike the common wisdom states, the Civil War was unique in that the losers pretty much wrote the history, at least for a hundred years. Since Virginians largely led the effort, the southern generals were elevated into some mythical status normally reserved for near-gods or superhuman heroes. Lee’s mistakes faded into obscurity while competence on the other side faded into the same vast maw of neglected history.

George Mean decisively defeated Robert E. Lee at Gettysburg. For this affront, he never received credit, was largely despised, and is mainly remembered for failing to raising a battered army that had just participated, for three long days, in some of the most savage fighting of the war, and rolling over all the dead bodies to take after a still intact army under highly competent commanders. It didn't help that Meade was not a particularly likable person.

Overall, I think that the trend in Civil War campaigns favored the defensive side, especially when those battles took place on one side’s familiar ground. Meade enjoyed well displaced defensive and familiar positions at Gettysburg much as Lee had at Fredericksburg and the later Virginia campaigns.

We must also realize that generals are only as effective as the troops they lead are trained and ready. The south, it seems to me, was much more motivated throughout the war. We can see from modern examples how a people can be motivated when they think their social order is being threatened.

The commander of Union Forces before Grant was Henry Halleck, a remnant known as "Old Brains." He performed faithfully, but cautiously and festered at the success of subordinates, particularly U.S. Grant. 

There is no doubt that a great number of highly skilled and trained officers chose to fight for the South in April 1861. That included West Point graduates and veterans of the invasion of Mexico. That left the North with many political generals like Dan Sickles who almost cost Meade victory. Of course, the South suffered this to a degree. The left flank of the southern line in the assault on Cemetery Ridge ended up being a brigade commanded by Jefferson Davis’s nephew, a former attorney.

There are individual cases that could be studied. Some think there was ample evidence that George McClellan would have settled for two countries, as long as he could have presided over one of them. It is possible that this motivation caused his reluctance for battle. Some of Meade’s generals were supporters of Joseph Hooker, whom Meade replaced.

Internal political struggles may have hampered the armies of North more than the South. General Grant, for example, never trusted General George Thomas, a Virginian who stayed with the Union and who some believe was the best general on either side of the conflict. I’m sure there were many generals in the Army of the Potomac who never trusted Grant.

There is the matter of luck, but both sides seemed to fare equally in this respect.

There is also, I believe, the question of individual maniacy. We can go to the modern Middle East to see the effectiveness of armies composed of men bearing systemic hatred who join wars to avoid a harsh life with the belief that, upon a final sacrifice, they will ascend immediately into Paradise.

I’ll close with the question of collective manic obsession. Any observer should have known after July 3, 1863, that the South would never win that war, nor would they be recognized by England as a nation. Lee and Davis chose to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of Americans rather than admit that reality. That is a lesson we should take under consideration even unto this day.

In closing, as the combatant said in North Dallas Forty, “What could have happened did happen."                                                                                                                                                                                      

Sadness On The Land

Back to Gettysburg. The news of recent days distracted me. Finally, I decided that it seemed appropriate to return to a previous crisis in which 85,000 men fought to save the Union and dissolve slavery and 75,000 men fought to save slavery and dissolve the Union. It started when elements of Heth’s Division stumbled into Union Forces north of the city of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania and ended when Robert E. Lee withdrew his defeated army and retreated to Virginia. More than 7,000 soldiers and one civilian, a woman named Jennie Wade would lie dead. The Union would survive and the bigotry and inhumanity that ignited would end.

They thought. We thought.

I once worked with a great-grandson of Thomas G. Clark who marched into Gettysburg on July 1, 1863 with his two sons Jonathan and Albert as members of the 42^nd Mississippi Regiment under BG Joe Davis, a nephew of Jefferson. He shared transcripts of letters now in the Confederate Museum at Oxford, TN.  Captain Clark had written to his wife on June 13^th: “Try to keep in good spirits for I intent to come home this summer or fall to stay for I think that the Boys have had experience enough now to git along without me and it is my duty to pay some attention to my family at home and in fact I think that I am gitting to old and have become unhealthy and I think that in justice to myself and family at home it it is my duty to quit this army at least for a while.” [Grammar transcribed as written.]

Thomas and his son Jonathon would die on July 1, when General Heth’s division ran into that of General Buford. Many of Davis's men would die in an abandoned railroad cut when he lost control of the division after an initial victory. It's likely this included the father and son. No one knows where they are buried.

Albert would die on July 3 as part of the left flank making the assault on Cemetery Ridge. A few of the men in that sad and battered regiment would make it to Emmetsburg Road and maybe 50 would cross it. The Virginian descendants of the Pickett’s fresh division would cruelly blame those on the far left for the failure of the insanely ordered assault. History can be as deceitful as the present.

A granddaughter would later write of the widow and mother of the Clark men: “When the news of this awful disaster reached home, Grandmother Clark prayed and shouted all night, and she often told us in speaking of those days that we didn’t know what sorrow was.”

Renown author Zora Neale Hurston would have one of her characters in “Their Eyes Were Watching God” express the war differently: “But it was a long time after dat befo’ de Big Surrender at Richmond. Den de big bell ring in Atlanta and all de men in gray uniforms had to go to Moultrie, and bury their swords in the ground to show they was never to fight about slavery no mo’. So den we knowed we was free.”

Free? As we have found over the last days, not quite yet.

Day One: The Railroad Cut

Planning and Execution

Reading the account of the assault on Cemetery Ridge by Earl J. Hess. Unlike, say, “Pickett's Charge in History and Memory” by Carol Reardon, Hess concentrates on the military minutia. Seems that generals Hancock and Hunt on the Union side had a little “set-to” about whether to maintain artillery fire before the assault to motivate the Union troops, (Hancock), or to save it for the assault to de-motivate the Confederate troops (Hunt). I’ll put that on my list of things to ask the “Redleg Major General” about next time we share one another’s company.

Yes, I know a Major General. I know a couple of ministers too, along with a bunch of banjo pickers and a few curmudgeons. My social spread would amaze you. I learn from each person within it. I even know some affable conservatives. They aren’t as cocky now as they once were but we still enjoy fellowship.

Anyway, the pre-assault bombardment on the third day at Gettysburg went on for something like an hour. (It seems nobody timed it exactly.) I think I read somewhere once that they heard the sounds of it in Baltimore. Brave officers on both sides rode along the infantry lines bolstering courage. Real leaders to that. The apex of danger is no time to spread distrust. Amidst all the death and destruction, some of the Union troops actually fell asleep toward the end of the bombing.

Finally, things fell silent and flags began to appear in the distant woods. The assault had begun.

Like many things that aren’t thought out carefully, or flow from ego and not reality, it didn’t end well. Ask a banjo player. The fingers all have to roll in rhythm for to carry the tune.