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Special Report
Reading the Civil War
150 years of blood in ink.
As we come to the close of the first year of the sesquicentennial commemoration (2011-2015) of the Civil War, we are struck by the astounding torrent of scholarship and writing generated in re-telling, refining and elaborating the story of the nation’s bloodiest and most consequential of its wars, a playing out of fundamental issues unresolved in the American Revolution itself.
You could say that for 150 years it has been blood expressed in ink.
James M. McPherson, the dean of American Civil War historians, writing in the bibliographical note to his Pulitzer Prize winning history, Battle Cry Of Freedom: The Civil War Era (1988), observed that he was merely sampling “the huge corpus of literature on the Civil War era, which totals more than 50,000 books and pamphlets on the war years alone — not to mention a boundless number of articles, doctoral dissertations, and manuscript collections.”
“Indeed, there are said to be more works in English on Abraham Lincoln than on any other persons except Jesus of Nazareth and William Shakespeare,” wrote McPherson whose effortless, flowing prose yielded one of the few masterpieces of The Oxford History of the United States, a series originally edited by C. Vann Woodward, himself a revered figure in the field.
Very telling, the Washington Post recently ran a pair of color photographs on the front page of its Metro section (“A symbol of Lincoln’s towering legacy,” December 15, 2011) of a three-story, 34-foot-tall installation featuring thousands of books about Lincoln. They are fire-proof aluminum fakes. This display is part of the renovated Ford Theatre’s new Center for Education and Leadership, across the street from the place where Lincoln was assassinated in 1865.
I would venture to say that the literature has increased by half since McPherson published his magnum opus.
Then there are the countless novels, movies and documentaries, among them Michael Shaara’s 1974 historical novel, Killer Angels, dramatizing the battle of Gettysburg, which won the Pulitzer Prize, and the magisterial (yes, I use that over-used word) Ken Burns production, The Civil War. It captured 40 million viewers over five consecutive nights, making it the most popular PBS documentary ever.
And mention must be made of that hardy band of Civil War reenactors who, at great expense of time and their own money, pursue the quest for historical accuracy and authenticity across the American countryside whenever the weather permits. I recall watching a spirited engagement at Galena, Illinois, one of Grant’s numerous towns of residence, and found the experience gripping, at least if you have any kind of imagination at all.
Americans seem to have an inexhaustible appetite for everything ever written on the bloodiest episode of our history in which more than 600,000 Americans died on both sides of the conflict over Union, states rights, and slavery. The latter part of the previous sentence has, itself, generated its own body of literature on the true meaning of the conflict. Many experts argued that the meaning or mission of the conflict changed over time as the blood flowed and the stakes rose astronomically. Others maintain that states rights were either a cover for the real issue, slave-holders’ rights, or so intertwined with it that they were essentially the same thing.
In 2006 Harry S. Stout, a Yale professor of American religious history, wrote a “moral history” of the Civil War, Upon the Altar of the Nation in which he utilized traditional principles of the just war doctrine to critique the conflagration less for the justice of its cause (jus ad bellum) than for its conduct (jus in bello). Stout viewed the war through the screens of proportionality and discrimination between combatants and non-combatants, finding it more akin to total, i.e., immoral, war, again, in its conduct rather than its cause.
McPherson wrote a very critical, i.e., negative, review (“Was It a Just War?” New York Review of Books, March 23, 2006) of Stout’s book and found several dozen factual errors in the military narrative. Still, he conceded that the book was “flawed but thought-provoking” and, while not necessarily offering “the right answers,” “asks many of the right questions.”
The issues, moral and constitutional, implicated in 19th century America’s handling of slavery, war, and rebellion are nothing if not fundamental, accounting for the irresistible draw of these interrelated subjects decade after decade.
Keeping up with the cascade of books is exhausting. I find myself going through bouts of Civil War reading, hardly keeping up with the new scholarship which seems to bring with it an endless supply of new information, data, insights, and analysis, not to mention newer, broader subjects ranging from diplomacy, economics, and even disease. Just the literature on calculating the actual number of troops in the field for any given battle, net after factoring in sickness and desertion, is impressive. Eventually, I have to go cold turkey, giving up reading anything remotely related to the war due to both emotional and intellectual exhaustion.
We have come a long way from the elegant, if strictly military, narratives of Shelby Foote and Bruce Catton, the former slightly pro-South, the latter slightly pro-North. According to McPherson, both of them drew on the seminal work of James Ford Rhodes, who wrote seven volumes from 1892 to 1906, and Allan Nevins and his eight volumes, penned between 1947 and 1971.
I have longed wondered if the Civil War and its nexus with slavery, Lincoln, and the westward expansion of the nation actually fills the role that the classics and ancient history played, say, for 19th century Englishmen, providing lessons and models of human suffering, heroism, cowardice, and pathos. There are so many, many historical persons and episodes from which Americans draw at least some wisdom as it relates to humanity’s capacity for folly, tragedy, sacrifice, and perseverance.
About the Author
G. Tracy Mehan, III served at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in the administrations of both Presidents Bush. He is a consultant in Arlington, Virginia, and an adjunct professor at George Mason University School of Law.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (87) | Leave a comment
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c. j. acworth| 12.29.11 @ 7:37AM
Um, Lincoln was assassinated in 1965? In which one of the 57 states did that happen?
Quartermaster| 12.29.11 @ 2:24PM
The state of Jefferson.
Mike D.| 12.29.11 @ 9:11AM
In which one of the 57 states did that happen?
That would be Washington DC., now known as the 51st State, the State of Chaos! 52nd State is known as the State of Mind by Leftists because thats where Collectivism can only exist in reality. 53rd State is the State of Destruction which we will all soon be living in. 54th State is the State of Play, which a large percentage of the population exists in while the rest of the country collapses and crumbles. 55th State is the State of Grace where few people dwell anymore. 56th State is the State of Well Being, another state nearly de-populated.
And last but not least is the 57th State, the State of Insanity located near and having great influence on the 51st and 53rd states. So there you have it, 57 States just as Obamao declared it.
Claypoole| 12.29.11 @ 9:20AM
The Civil War was a war for power. Lincoln was willing to sacrifice as many lives as necessary to maintain federal power over the entire nation.
After the CSA surrendered, Robert E. Lee said--I paraphrase--there would now be no stopping the power of the federal government. Anyone who doubts the truth of that has not been paying attention.
ncatty| 12.29.11 @ 9:55AM
Yes, the Civil War was a war for power - by all involved. Yes, Lincoln was willing that the War continue until the Confederacy surrendered or was destroyed. Yes, the overarching question is whether there is any limit to the Federal government. It increasingly appears that there is no limit.
David T| 12.29.11 @ 11:24AM
Read Lincoln's inaugural address. His main point was that government of, by, and for the people was impossible if the states did not accept the results of a fair election under the Constitution. A minority must accept the outcome and fight politically for its cause, but it cannot reject the will of the people. The alternative is tyranny or anarchy.
The South's constitutional rights had not been violated--it chose to secede. Lincoln knew that the future of the Union was at stake if a minority could leave the Union rather than accept the results of a free and fair election.
Derek Leaberry| 12.29.11 @ 1:29PM
I don't want this to turn into one of those 200+ post angry threads but I would ask the following questions:
1) Would not the USA of 1861 have remained a continental power without the seven agricultural Deep South states which originally seceded?
2) In the political writings of the 1840s and 1850s, did not both Northerners and Southerners express irreconcilable contempt for the other region?
3) If Lincoln's desire was to continue the Union, was it really worth while when it came at the expense of 600,000 dead men and economic ruin in the South?
4) Is the US somehow walled off from previous world history in that it must always retain its current boundaries? Consider that all countries in world history have been altered to one degree or the other and many, like Austria or Mongolian, are mere remnants of what they used to be.
Occam's Tool| 12.29.11 @ 7:50PM
Derek--yes, we could have lost the South without problems. But what of the next dispute, and the next, and the next. How would we have stayed together if we allowed secession then, for the worst reason imaginable. Remember that the New England States had threatened secession themselves earlier that Century. And remember how many Republics there were at that time in which there were no kings or aristocracy. I have always like Lincoln.
Red Phillips | 12.29.11 @ 8:42PM
"How would we have stayed together if we allowed secession then"
Why is staying together a necessarily desirable goal? Was the break up of the USSR a bad thing? This illustrates why nationalistic interventionists so often support Lincoln and "saving the Union." This is why Lincoln veneration is a characteristic of neoconservatism. Because the US wouldn't be able to police the world if it was a few loose confederacies and maybe a few small nation states. Of course I, as an authentic conservative, think that would be a good thing. But it horrifies nationalistic interventionists and neocons.
Derek Leaberry| 12.30.11 @ 9:20AM
The ideal size of a nation is something along the lines of Luxembourg, Wales, Cornwall, Brittany, Normandy or Scotland.
JimP| 12.29.11 @ 3:41PM
Oy vey, Dave! The right of secession was taught at the USMA/West Point right up to 1861 and it is a branch of the U.S. Government which remained part of the Union.
In 1848 while serving as a Congressman from Illinois, Lincoln in a session of the House said:
“Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable and most sacred right, a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world."
The DOI states: "When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation...."
The DOI is a secession document. The Confederate states stated their reasons for seceding. Nowhere in the DOI does it state that it was a one time and one time only deal. Whether one agrees with those reasons given by the CSA or not they were exercising their right to leave the Union.
Lincoln went to war to enforce the tariffs which were being and would continue to be needed to fund 'shovel ready' projects in the Northern states. In 1860 the South was paying 70+% of all federal taxes (tariffs) and 80% of the money collected was being spent on shovel ready crony capitalist government projects in the North. Lincoln was master politician who spoke out of both sides of his mouth with great eloquence and if you only look at some of the stuff he said you can get fooled into thinking alot of stuff about that war that is not true.
I hope this enlightened you a little and will prompt you to do more research and get the complete picture about that era and the war.
Claypoole| 12.29.11 @ 5:31PM
Master politician, indeed. The Civil War became a war about slavery when Lincoln started losing. Slavery became the bogeyman it was easy to hate, thus elevating Lincoln to the position of more moral than thou. Remind you of anyone?
JimP| 12.29.11 @ 5:33PM
Great point!
David T| 12.30.11 @ 1:18AM
Jim P--Sorry, but the Declaration talks about the "long train of abuses and usurpations" by George III that led the colonies to conclude that he was a despot and a tyrant. Lincoln didn't have time to abuse the southern states--he had barely assumed office when they revolted. The South simply feared and despised him because he believed that "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" applied to all men.
Tejano Jack| 12.30.11 @ 4:01PM
I agree with you David T as well as Mr. Mehan. Like many of the readers and commentors, my personal history library is chocked full of CW/WBTS/WNA literature. It's addictive. Moreover, in 1861, my ancestors had been here for 230 years, so they were scattered all over and fought for both sides, some quite notably.
Thankfully, some of the children and many of the grandchildren of those family CW vets were still alive and well, when I was a child, so I spent years listening to family CW stories and arguments over the causes. Eventually earned a degree in History and heavily studied CW & Reconstruction and even after reading 40+ authors only scratched the surface. Trite as it sounds, the CW is the defining event of US History. How could it not be? TJ
C Smith| 12.29.11 @ 11:47AM
I too am from a small town in Missouri, the site of a small but pivotal incursion of the Federalist/Unionists that helped keep an essentially Confederate state out of the Confederacy.
The Thirtieth Day of May
Still remember those quiet summer mornings of the thirtieth day of May. My brother and I jumped out of bed and run barefoot through dew covered grass to the bridge that stared up like two giant eyes from our valley. It was always covered with small pink roses on that day. We quickly cut them and placed them in water filled mason jars, sometimes the ones used for catching lighting bugs the night before. Next the ever-perennial tiger lilies that grew along the stone fence encompassing the front yard. Then the iris garden; loved the fragrance of the lavender. Finally the peonies with stems so long and blossoms so pretentious they required a bucket rather than a jar. And then we run upstairs to get mom and dad from bed for our annual “pilgrimage” to Forest Llewellyn.
Remember passing Memorial Park; so quiet the thirtieth day of May. Cumberland Academy with its towering steeple once stood within its confines. In earlier days, other than the court house, it was the city’s only place of worship. Here, the godly Joseph Baldwin first conducted his Normal School, and the less than godly Union Colonel John McNeil situated his artillery on that mount, savaging a largely unarmed contingent of the Confederacy during the Battle of Kirksville. Sadly, something more than history was lost when Cumberland Academy eventually burned to the ground. An obelisk, flanked by mute ordnances, later inherited the tranquil solitude. Although inscribed with the names of those who never returned from the war to end all wars, more names were added as years went by, replacing the remembrance of those forgotten. Here restless tumult had been replaced by silence, interrupted only by the sound of a mourning dove or the laughter of children on the thirtieth day of May...
Before returning, my brother and I sometimes visited a mass grave on the Forest side. One of my father’s early memories was of an honor guard firing a volley in remembrance of Twenty-Six Confederate soldiers. And of he and his brother, oblivious to the significance of the occasion, gleefully running to pick up shell casings. Pearl Harbor and Buna all too soon altered that innocence.
In recent years, a second monument appeared revealing a truth long latent in that trench. The day after the battle, by order of Colonel John McNeil, fifteen captives were tried, convicted, and shot where the old Wabash Depot once stood. And on the third day, Colonel Frisby McCullough was court-martialed on contrived charges, found guilty, sentenced to be shot, and with the apparent consent of McNeil, “paraded up and down the streets of Kirksville amid the jeers and shouts of joy of the Federals.” However, at his request as an officer, he was given one concession, to conduct his own execution: “What I have done, I have done as a principle of right. Aim at the heart. Fire!” However, his executioners failed to comply. And as a second volley was being prepared, he continued from the ground: “May God forgive you this barbarous murder.”
A remembrance of the City of Churches on the thirtieth day of May.
http://to-my-children.blogspot.....f-may.html
Red Phillips | 12.29.11 @ 10:09AM
Civil War is a misnomer. It was not a civil war in the usual meaning of that term. It was not a war between two factions for control of the whole. It was a war waged by one faction (region) to prevent the other faction (region) from leaving the whole. It was a war for independence.
The War Between the States is a good neutral name. The War for Southern Independence or more precisely the War to Prevent Southern Independence are more accurate.
ncatty| 12.29.11 @ 10:12AM
Agreed. Good luck changing the name now.
Zbigniew Mazurak| 12.29.11 @ 12:27PM
Here he is, Phillips again showing how ignorant he is. The War Between the States was NOT a "war for independence", so names like "the War for Southern Independence" or "The War to prevent Southern Independence" are inaccurate. The most accurate name would be "The War to Preserve Slavery and Expand It", or "The War of Southern Aggression".
The Confederates claimed they were defending states' rights. But Lincoln did not infringe them, and did not intend to. He accepted the institution of slavery where it was already legal. Yet, after secession, the Confederate Constitution PROHIBITED Confederate states to ban slavery, as did their respective state Constitutions (the 1861 Constitution of Texas even prohibited individual slave owners from freeing their slaves"). In other words, as VT's Civil War Studies Center Director of Programs William C. Davis rightly says, "To the old Union, they said it had no right to infringe with states' right to preserve slavery. To their new nation, they said states had no right to abolish slavery."
The Civil War was fought over the issue of slavery. Not states' rights, not the transcontinental railroad, not Lincoln, not tariffs, but SLAVERY. This was the central issue of the war, regardless of how badly neo-Confederates wish it wasn't. This will remain a fact despite Lost Cause mythology.
Red Phillips | 12.29.11 @ 2:59PM
ZM, the War to Prevent Southern Independence was most certainly a war for independence, the independence of the South. This is tautological, and if you disagree with it you are an ignorant fool who doesn't know the meaning of words. You may not agree with secession. You may wrongly think secession prohibited, but neither of those things matter when it come to the bare assertion that the South was fighting for its independence. This is a face obvious fact.
And yes Lincoln did infringe states' right. He invaded us and waged total war. What would it require in the dictionary that exists only in ZM's mind to amount to an infringement?
JimP| 12.29.11 @ 4:13PM
Wrong Zbig. Yes slavery was one issue that the CSA was fighting "for". The North was not fighting to end slavery.
Many people, mainly Northerners, are emotionally invested in the idea that the North was on the side of the angels and fought a righteous crusade to free the black slaves against the forces of evil, tyrannous bigots in the South who mercilessly and endlessly beat and abused the slaves. In their minds they are better people for being born outside the South or ‘siding’ with the Union. This may make people feel good about themselves, but it is NOT historically accurate. It is so inaccurate, as a matter of fact, that it turns the "Civil" War into a fairy tale.
In truth the North had slavery itself but couldn’t make it pay. When the North ended slavery in its states, they sold the vast majority of their slaves to Southern slave owners. Northern Black Codes were already in place relegating the free Northern Blacks to second class citizen status. Even after ending slavery in its states, the North was still deeply, and very willingly, involved in the continuation of slavery in the U.S., and the Western Hemisphere via the African slave trade which they continued right up to the beginning of the war. The bedrock of the New England economy from northern New Jersey north and east to Maine was the African slave trade. The fortunes that financed the industrial revolution were amassed from the slave trade. There were no Southern slave trading ships. Yes, the ‘enlightened’, ‘freedom loving’, ‘morally superior’ Northerners were only too happy to continue the slave trade for an additional 60+ years after the Revolution. A part of which included the infamous “middle passage” wherein 1/3 of the slaves perished- as an ‘acceptable’ cost of doing business. The 1860 Census shows that Southern Black slaves lived longer and were healthier with fewer diseases and deformities than free Northern Blacks. So, how awful must ‘freedom’ under the Yankees have been that a free Black person living in the North had a shorter life expectancy and was much less healthy than a Southern slave?! The Northerners- with their insensitivity about the slave trade, and to the brutality, horrors, and planned for and accepted loss of life in the “middle passage”, plus the shorter life expectancy for free Northern Blacks- don’t sound very enlightened or morally superior to me. Who are the evil, racist abusers in this tale again? I digress..............
In March 1861 Lincoln wrote a letter imploring the governor of Florida to rally political support for a constitutional amendment that would have legally enshrined slavery in the U.S. Constitution. Lincoln sent the same request to the governor of every state urging them all to support the amendment, which had already passed the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, that would have made southern slavery constitutionally "irrevocable." The amendment passed after the lower South had seceded, suggesting that it was passed with almost exclusively Northern votes. Lincoln, who said he would sign the amendment, and the entire North were perfectly willing to enshrine slavery, in all the states where slave holding still existed, forever in the Constitution if the Southern states would not secede.
Northern leaders- political, opinion making and economic- had agendas, motives and incentives, other than freeing slaves or saving the Union for patriotic reasons, to conduct the war. The North willingly reaped enormous financial benefits from the slave produced agricultural products of the South: and willingly tolerated the continuation of the New England slave trade, after it was outlawed by Congress in 1809, and reaped enormous financial benefits from it, as already stated.
Lincoln went to war to enforce the tariffs. Not to free the slaves. The Morrill Tariff would have tripled taxes on 1/4-1/3 of the population (the South). Four of the Confederate States (VA, NC, TN, AR) didn’t secede until Lincoln called for volunteers to invade the original seven Confederate states to collect the taxes. The South at that time- prior to enactment of the Morrill Tariff- was already paying 70+% of all Federal taxes, yet 80% of the taxes collected were spent on ‘Shovel Ready Projects’ in the North. If the South was allowed to secede, the tax base to fund the GOP’s mercantilist/shovel ready project plans would disappear, and in addition, the North’s economy would be devastated if its economic hegemony ceased to exist- which it would have- over an independent South with much lower taxes.
In January 1863 Lincoln came up with the cynical political ploy of The Emancipation Proclamation as a means of dissuading Great Britain from recognizing the Confederacy and thus aiding the Southern cause, and as a means to undermine the Confederate war effort. The Proclamation only ‘freed’ slaves in Confederate States and only in those areas still controlled by the Confederacy. No slaves in border states (MD, KY, WV, DE, MO) were freed.
At the Hampton Roads Peace Conference of February 1865, which was initiated by Lincoln, he stated that the Proclamation was only a war measure and as soon as (if) the war ceased, it would have no operation for the future. Thus leaving those slaves still in bondage, in bondage: and also making suckers out of those very few Northerners who were actually fighting to free the slaves. So much for the righteous crusade.
Additionally, Lincoln said that the slave owners would likely be compensated for the slaves that had already been freed. So why didn’t Lincoln and Northerners make this payment offer before 1861 if they were really so in favor of ending slavery? Also, Lincoln never gave up on the idea of deporting ALL Black people back to Africa or Central America or the Carribean or wherever, just anywhere but here after the war.
Paul Windels| 12.29.11 @ 4:51PM
Jim -- Lincoln strongly hints at a buy-out type of proposal in his first inaugural and had publicly spoken in favor of one beforehand. By the ti9me of his inaugural, however, the Deep South states had seceded, and he was not about to bargain with them except in the context of their being part of the Union.
In terms of the Emancipation Proclamation, which was first published in September 1862 immediately after the Battle of Antietam, you are correct that a principal purpose of that proclamation was to keep Britain and Fance out of the war. That, in and of itself, was a good reason to publish it at that time. It can hardly be termed cynical -- far more cynical was Yalta, for example. And it should be noted that the CSA constitution made slaveholding a fundamental right and required all member states to (a) have legal slavery and (b) have and enforce fugitive slave laws. So much for states' rights within the CSA.
There is a very good explanation as to why the Proclamation only had effect on states within the Confederacy. The Proclamation was a military order published in the military Gazette. It could therefore only have effect in areas subject to martial law -- i.e. the seceding states. Lincoln needed to use his power as Commander in Chief because he needed to take an action that would have immediate effect in order to impress Britain and France; had he proposed legislation or a constitutional amendment, which he would have been legally required to do with respect to the States that remained in the Union, the legislation would have had to be debated in Congress, with no certainty as to when it would become law, much less whether and in what form. Furthermore, by limiting it to the areas in rebellion, Lincoln protected the Proclamation from attacks in the courts -- including the malevolent presence of Roger Brooke Taney and the rest of the Dred Scott Supreme Court. A citizen of Maryland, Kentucky, or Delaware would have no standing to sue since the Proclamation did not affect him, whereas there were no US Courts in the seceding states where suit could be brought.
As a realist who wanted to see the end to slavery, Lincoln was willing to do as much as he could at any one point in time to reduce it. he was also willing to take any steps he considered would help the process, such as the buyout proposal made to Kentucky during the war.
Cheers! P.
JimP| 12.29.11 @ 5:50PM
No offense Paul, but that's spin. Reread the line about the Hampton Roads Peace Conference of February 1865. That is the bottom line. It was only two months before Lincoln was assasinated. "Hints" about buyouts don't count. Noting that the South was fighting to preserve slavery- among other reasons- and that the Southern states seceded before Lincoln et al could do whatever is irrelevant. The issue in my comment is 'What was the North fighting for'? Why? Because the North and Northerners ever since the war have claimed 'the mantle of moral superiority' for alleging they fought a righteous crusade to free the slaves. The claim is false, as I have pointed out. As the evidence- not hints, penumbras, reading a dead man's mind or whatever- shows, the North/Lincoln was NOT fighting to end slavery. All the other issues you presented amount to a smoke screen to, I guess, distract from the truth I presented about why the North actually fought the war. Sure, there is anecdotal evidence of some Northerners fighting to free the slaves as their motivation, but the numbers who did so are insignificant and it was not Linoln's or his supporters reason. Just like anecdotal evidence that not all Southerners were pro slavery is irrelevant to why the South was fighting because slavery was an issue for which the CSA was fighting. I know this is blunt. I don't mean to be rude to you, but I have limited time and facts are facts.
Best regards,
Jim
Paul Windels| 12.29.11 @ 6:14PM
Jim -- The war wouldn't have happened without the abolition movement. A large proportion of the Union Army was abolitionist, especially in the west, although the officers of the Army of the Potomac were largely not, including McClellan and Meade. The CSA was founded on slavery -- slavery was established under the CSA constitution, which required all member states to have slavery and enforce fugitive states laws (so much for states' rights) -- although I'd agree that many who fought for the Confederacy did so on account of states' rights rather than slavery. Lincoln had every intention of addressing the slavery issue as President and said so in his first inaugural.
The fact that he did not immediately declare or propose abolition does not change this. He was someone who (a) believed in abolition but (b) was willing to take what he could at any point of the way -- just like William Wilberforce. At the outset, he couldn't do much because he needed to keep Ky., Md., and Del. in the Union and wanted to try to keep Va., N.C., and possibly Tenn. in as well. When the lines solidified, and when he thought he had the de facto as well as the de jure authority to do so, and when he considered it necessary to keep Britain and France from recognizing the Confederacy, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which was necessarily limited as explained previously. Late in the war, a buyout was offered to Ky., which rejected it and got the XIII Amendment instead. Saying Lincoln wasn't fighting to end slavery because he did not declare that purpose at the outset and didn't move to abolish it in 1861 splits hairs, when he was abolitionist and the war was being fought because the southern states seceded rather than have an abolitionist President. It's a bit like saying Reagan wasn't really out to abolish communism because he didn't get the job done in '81.
Cheers. P.
Frank Natoli| 12.30.11 @ 10:59PM
Of course a large part of the Union Army was abolitionist. When I was watching Reagan's funeral in the national cathedral, and the choir began singing the Battle Hymn of the Republic, the anthem of the Union Army, I wondered if they would single the fourth stanza, with the words "In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea, with a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me, as He died to make men holy, LET US DIE TO MAKE MEN FREE, while God is marching on", and to my great shock, they did. It was extraordinary.
Red Phillips | 12.29.11 @ 8:47PM
"he was not about to bargain with them except in the context of their being part of the Union."
Well isn't that convenient? He wouldn't bargain with them until they agreed with him first. That's a pretty sweet set up don't you think?
Red Phillips | 12.29.11 @ 8:47PM
"he was not about to bargain with them except in the context of their being part of the Union."
Well isn't that convenient? He wouldn't bargain with them until they agreed with him first. That's a pretty sweet set up don't you think?
C Smith| 12.29.11 @ 1:42PM
"War of Northern Aggression" is more accurate!
Quartermaster| 12.29.11 @ 2:32PM
The mid-South did not secede until Lincoln made his call for troops to put down the "rebellion." The north invaded the south, not the other way around.
Lincoln held the union antedated the states. Rottsa ruck with that idea as King George signed the Treaty of Paris with 13 independent states, naming each in turn.
Slavery had already reached its geographic limits in the 1840s or earlier. Chattel slavery was uneconomic in 1860 and would have died out without a war, as it did in the rest of western civilization, within 20 years.
War of Northern Aggression is accurate as a name.
McPherson is the Dean of conformist historians on the war. He grinds how own leftist axes in his book and multitudinous articles. A real historian, he is not.
oldfart| 12.29.11 @ 2:51PM
Thats what my father called it!! The North was not only brutal in war but had the heal of the tyrant on the necks of all Southern people for decades.
RCV| 12.29.11 @ 5:23PM
But not long enough to prevent them from continuing to brutalize black human beings for another 75 years.
oldfart| 12.29.11 @ 6:00PM
Who? The former slave owners or the Northern Liberals who said "Your free - go forth" without providing an education and a trade to support themselves?
RCV| 1.2.12 @ 10:51PM
The southern bigots who ran a brutal Jim Crow system after political deals ended Reconstruction early, that's who.
Frank Natoli| 12.30.11 @ 11:02PM
Mr. F: "brutal". Do you take issue with Tecumseh Sherman's "war is cruelty, you cannot refine it"?
Occam's Tool| 12.29.11 @ 7:53PM
Dear Red:
How about "the late Unpleasantness," which is my personal favorite. You do know that when Alabama seceeded, the County of Winston, with Haleyville as its largest town, seceeded from Alabama, don't you? (As the husband of a descendant of that second secesh, I do.)
Where do you draw the flinkin' line? And how do we maintain any form of government without the rods and axe? This is where Libertarian thinking drifts close to anarchy.
Louis Jenkins| 12.29.11 @ 10:22AM
Dear Mr. Mehan:
I fail to grasp the significance of your article, other than there's been a heck of a lot of books written about the war. While it may be history to a lot of Americans, it is still current in many respects. It did more to influence the USA than we will ever know, and lot of the influence is bad. I'll not go into the long list here, but we are still living with the outcome. More so, now, more than ever.
JA| 12.29.11 @ 10:24AM
The civil war produced one good outcome - eliminations of slavery - and one bad outcome; an over-reaching, tyrannical federal govt. that is inexorably eliminating the rights of individuals and individual states. We are literally governed today by an unelected bureacracy and judicial system that answers to no one and ignores the US Constitution. The Civil War has removed the ability of individual states from adequately resisting the tyranny of the federal govt. The only hope we have to curb the illegal and tyrannical federal govt actions- unfortunately - is for individual states once again to threaten secession. I see no other way.
Vern Crisler | 12.29.11 @ 11:50AM
The Civil War did not produce an over-reaching, tyrannical federal government. That was an invention of the Progressives.
Quartermaster| 12.29.11 @ 2:34PM
Sorry, but Lincoln re-founded the country and destroyed the old constitutional republic. In it's place rose a unitary FedGov that made evil men such as Wilson, FDR, Johnson, Nixon, Carter, Bush I & II, Clinton, and now Obama, possible. The spirit of Lincoln still walks the corridors of power in DC.
Vern Crisler | 12.29.11 @ 4:58PM
This is just neo-confederate swill. Why do you think Lincoln only declared slaves free in the rebel states? Because he knew he'd have to have a Constitutional amendment to remove slavery in all the states. He freed the slaves in the Southern states only through military necessity.
In short, he wanted to act in accordance with the Constitution. Shades of Ron Paul! Would that our elected leaders were as concerned about constitutional government as Lincoln was.
RCV| 12.29.11 @ 5:24PM
Sorry, but it was the American people who worked to forge a single nation out of disparate states after watching their country bleed to death for 5 years.
Occam's Tool| 12.29.11 @ 7:56PM
Oh, so Andy Jackson of "The Cherokee Trail of Tears" wasn't capable of evil, huh? And Old Kinderhhok wasn't a sharp operator. And James K Polk wasn't capable of an expansionist foreign policy that would horrify Ron Paul? (By the way---I LIKE Polk. A Lot. I wish he was Prez today. No more Iranian problem. A more focused and ruthless man never sat upon the chair in the Oval Office.)
RCV| 1.2.12 @ 10:53PM
I'm a Polk fan myself; not so much Andrew Jackson.
oldfart| 12.29.11 @ 2:55PM
Did the un-civil war free those in economic bondage to the Northern industrial tyrants whose greed caused them to so brutalize their works that we went through decades of a low grade conflict was workers, through unions, attempted to free themselves from economic bondage?
Opps - we cannot talk about that.
C Smith| 12.29.11 @ 4:07PM
Regarding Northern Industrial Tyrants, the following should have been suitable admonition:
"Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye" (Matthew 7:5)
Big Tony| 12.29.11 @ 10:33AM
Mr. Mehan's assertion that Shelly Foote was slightly Pro-South is absurd. If anything Mr. Foote was Pro-North and in my opinion not slightly so. Mr. Mehan must have only heard Mr. Foote's southern accent and was biased because of that accent (a typical attitude of people in these United States) additionally Mr. Mehan apparently failed to listen to the words Mr. Foote actually spoke.
G. Tracy Mehan, III| 12.29.11 @ 10:44AM
Mr. Acworth, thanks for catching the typo re "1965." We will fix that.
cicero| 12.29.11 @ 11:03AM
It has alwsays been my opinion that we approach is study of the Civil War on too narrow a basis. I have read Foote, as well as many others, and consider Foote's work to be a worthwhile acquisition, as a reference book as well as for its own sake.
The War , I believe, should be studied as the culmination of 8000 years of Western thought. From the dawn of history, slavery was the norm. Beginning with the Quakers in England and the American colonies, the fact of slavery came into question. The American Constitution addressed the isssue, and due to political expediency, allowed 20 years for its demise. It was kept alive (the institution, not the trade) thereafter through various political machinations in the Congress. The War settled it finally.
The American Constitution (along with British parliamentary action, backed up by the British and American navies) sounded the death knell of slavery in the Western world, as it spread throughout Europe and the Americas. By the end of the 19th Century, after almost 8000 years, it was ended.
The Civil War should be studied in this light. It was more than just a romantic venture on the part of the South, and a power grab by the North.
Franco| 12.29.11 @ 12:53PM
That is probably the wisest, putting-things-in-perspective interpretation of the war that I have ever come across. But this is only of you accept the fact (as I do) that the war was primarily about slavery. But if you do....
Dan| 12.29.11 @ 1:42PM
Yes, and no.
It was right to view the war in a spectrum, but wrong to place it in the spectrum of "Western thought."
It needs to be understood in the overarching history of Christianity.
Greeks had problems with Spartans making slaves of fellow Greeks, not outsiders. That aspect of forcing fellow Greeks to be helots was problematic.
But the incarnation of Christ universalized the problem of slavery. "Do unto others ..." inexorably was going to collide with the right of slave owners.
Whether that issue needed to be settled by carnage is quite another issue altogether.
Paul Windels| 12.29.11 @ 5:00PM
Well put all around. I'd add that the force of the abolition movement both here and in Britain came from the Calvinist branches of the Christian faith -- for whom there was no earthly power of absolution. Uncle Tom's Cabin is a Calvinist allegory written by the sister of the foremost Calvinist and abolitionist preacher of the day, Henry Ward Beecher. The anthem of the movement was the hymn "Once to Every Man and Nation" -- a hymn that was stricken from the modern Episcopal hymnal presumably because of its Calvinist message. In Britain, William Wilberforce was a devout Evangelical-cum-Methodist, who was deeply influenced by the Calvinist John Newton (author of "Amazing Grace").
Vern Crisler | 12.29.11 @ 11:58AM
One of the problems with this article is that it doesn't really say who was right or wrong. Who was really upholding the founder's vision, and who was undermining it? Was the Declaration of Independence the ultimate presupposition of America, or was it a mere 18th century document, having no bearing on mid-19th century politics?
Granted, the story of heroes is always fascinating, but at some point the question of right and wrong must be answered. How one answers that will tell us a lot about what they think of the founding fathers.
Dick Simmons| 12.29.11 @ 12:12PM
I would heartily reccommend some of the books now being published on the "small action" events, in particular, the first year of the war when both sides were stumbling to grasp the enormity of the horror beginning to grow and envelop them. Just because these small fights involve only a few hundred or few thousand combatants on either force make them no less compelling. In particular the opening collisions in the border states of Kentucky, Missouri, and what would become West Virginia make compelling reading. "Rebels At The Gates" by author W. Hunter Lesser describes a nightmare campaign in the high mountains of the Alleghenies in the winter of 1861-62 with snow and sub-zero temperatures, men and horses both freezing, totally unprepared to wage war in such conditions. That any fighting was managed at all- and it was- is amazing. The suffering recounted in this book is just a taste of what was to come.
As to the political-ideological turmoil over the war, I was around for the 100th anniversery commemorations. The usual "states-rights" and "let's-call-it-War Between-the-States" stuff gets trotted out without fail. It will ever be thus: my grandmother, who as a young girl growing up in Kentucky, was strictly told NEVER to mention the War in public company as there were many still living who had backed one side or the other. Too much had happened and there were still hard feelings. Perhaps too much to be discussed ever, and maybe because we as a nation refused to do so, the rancid problem of race relations and Jim Crow would haunt us for the next 100 years.
Big Tony| 12.29.11 @ 12:42PM
I think the war was also fought partially on a beggar thy neighbor attitude that's still on exibit today especially on the part of the people in the northeast. Because their alledged concern for the condition of the former slaves apparently evaporated after the war was over until LBJ started the Great Society because the formers slaves were simply left to their fate which in many cases was arguably worse or much worse after they were freed. Huge numbers of them were forced into prison work gangs after the war. A slave owner has an interest in the health and welfare of his slave(s) but once the various governments took over and started the practice of farming out "prisoners" to whom ever wished to purchase forced labor from the prison system any interest in the health and welfare of the "prisoner" disappeared because more "prisoners" could at little or no cost easily replace the prisoners that died. Meanwhile the northerns simply congradulated themselves for "saving the union" and freeing the slaves, then they washed their hands and walked away from the problem they created.
Al Adab| 12.29.11 @ 12:51PM
If you will allow the insights of an outsider, your American Civil War- yes, war between the states is better; more accurate- it is the great irony of American history that The South was right in the wrong cause while The North was wrong for the right reasons.
The survival of the American Union was critical to the future of the world as it remains to this day. The rights of the States to define themselves is a central feature of the Federal system the Constitution established. The tension between the two is critical to American self-government and the economic success The United States have enjoyed.
I fully believe that the election of 2012 is just as cricial to our future and the future of liberty in the world as the Civil War in retrospect became. This in fact may be the current crises of liberty just as WWII and the Civil War were themselves. This is the crisis of out time, the hill on which to stand. May we not be found wanting when History demands our all.
Louis Jenkins| 12.29.11 @ 3:50PM
Dear Al Adab
Truth. It is a time that is just as important. A hill, a pass, it is a crisis in which we may stand or fail, depending.
Vern Crisler | 12.29.11 @ 5:04PM
The North was right for the right reasons. The States did not under the Constitution have an absolute right to define themselves. If that had been the case, there would have been no federal system in the first place.
The South rebelled and broke away from the Union because of the election of a president they didn't like. Civil War is the right term.
RCV| 12.29.11 @ 5:26PM
I'm with you, Vern
Cris| 12.29.11 @ 12:57PM
Thanks for the review. As a native Chicagoan I am proud to note that at the First Battle of Lexington, Mo (also known as the Battle of the Hemp Bales, September 13 to September 20, 1861), members of an Illinois volunteer regiment from Chicago took time to loot the Farmer's Bank of $15,000. Today, at the local and national level, Chicagoans continue that proud tradition.
Dan| 12.29.11 @ 1:46PM
Chicago has a great deal to answer for right about now, as does the Illinois..................
Your fellow Americans are sickened, thoroughly sickened at the level of corruption that pervades Cook County, Chicago and the entirety of Illinois politics.
JimBob7| 12.29.11 @ 2:00PM
You need to look at Chicago as more than just corrupt, although it is certainly is corrupt (Thanks, Daley Crime Family!), but look at it as "The Peoples Soviet of Northern Illinois."
Claypoole| 12.29.11 @ 3:22PM
Not just Illinois politics, not anymore. Obama, himself utterly corrupt, brought Chicago corruption to Washington. The major players of his administration--think Eric Holder or Carol Browner--are filthy.
Occam's Tool| 12.29.11 @ 7:58PM
Thanks, Cris. On a more serious note---go to the Vicksburg National Park and enter the Memorial to the Illinois Dead. If it doesn't send chills up your spine from awe, you are not alive.
Ron| 12.29.11 @ 1:40PM
One of my favourite books when I was young (I read voraciously, but liked the pictures) was Fletcher Pratt's series about the Civil War in pictures. I remember vividly the book for 1865, and the sheer horror depicted on the faces of the Union Soldiers shown in the painting illustration of Andersoneville Prison. of course, it was not until much later that I learned the union prisons were just as bad, maybe worse, with deliberate starvation of Confederate prisoners (the Union had plenty of foodstuffs) versus the CSA which had trouble feeding it's own population. Of course, no one ever said that Lincoln was callous for letting the Union prisoners sit out the war in overcrowded, underfed, unsanitary prisons because he had the manpower to spare. Also, I am surprised at the few books covering the enlistment of black troops by the CSA.
Vern Crisler | 12.29.11 @ 5:13PM
Where did you get the idea that Northern prisons were just as bad or worse than Southern prisons. See:
http://www.cincinnaticwrt.org/.....nville.htm
Vern Crisler | 12.29.11 @ 5:14PM
Also:
http://books.google.com/books?.....age&q=were northern prisons as bad as confederate prisons?&f=false
Occam's Tool| 12.29.11 @ 7:59PM
Ron. Defense of 1 man = Offense of 2 men in the Civil War. It was Grant who ended the exchanges, and Lincoln accepted the logic.
C Smith| 12.29.11 @ 1:46PM
William Tecumseh Sherman, a name that cannot so much as be mentioned without the somber recollection of the "March to the Sea," the final nail driven into the coffin of States' rights. Others remember more:
In 1867 General William Tecumseh Sherman said, "We must act with vindictive earnestness against the Lakota's, known to whites as the Sioux, even to their extermination, men, women and children." ( Historian Ward Churchill, A LITTLE MATTER OF GENOCIDE; HOLOCAUST AND DENIAL IN THE AMERICAS, 1492 TO THE PRESENT (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1997). ISBN 0-87286-323-9. pg.240)
oldfart| 12.29.11 @ 3:02PM
It started earlier than that with the 'Trail of Tears' where a tyrant President ordered peaceful, productive Cherokee off their lands. Jackson set a good example for Lincoln on how to brutalize a people.
The Federal power grab continue with the educated idiots, Wilson, FDR and now Obama.
AUTHOR: Benjamin Franklin (1706–90)
QUOTATION: “Well, Doctor, what have we got—a Republic or a Monarchy?”
“A Republic, if you can keep it.”
ATTRIBUTION: The response is attributed to BENJAMIN FRANKLIN—at the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, when queried as he left Independence Hall on the final day of deliberation—in the notes of Dr. James McHenry, one of Maryland’s delegates to the Convention.
Well folks – it looks like Obama is putting the final nails in the coffin of the American Republic to create the American Empire. Congress seems to have as much power as the Roman Senate after Julius Caesar took over.
Vern Crisler | 12.29.11 @ 5:16PM
Ward Churchill? Hah! Try again....
RCV| 12.29.11 @ 5:39PM
There is nothing Ward Churchill could write on which I would rely absent two other citations by respected historians.
Occam's Tool| 12.29.11 @ 8:00PM
Ward Churchill? Ward Churchill? Please. Look up his scholarly background, please.
Petronius| 12.29.11 @ 3:32PM
I had to wait until the usual suspects weighed in. According to Look Away, a History of the Confederacy, the south was doomed out of the starting gate due to the political infighting at their first Congress and the disunity continued through the surrender. Given that the Confederate Government was an ad-hocracy, the early military advances and victories were remarkable accomplishments. The Achilles heels were the ongoing disunity and inability to supply their army for want of industry, finances, and over the last two years famine and deprivation nationwide.
But the real nut has always been the origin of the conflict. So I will explain this once more. Follow the MONEY. Shipping tariffs were 20-35% in the northeast and only 10% in ports bordering the Gulf of Mexico. Yankee politicians wanted to get their hooks on the millions accumulated by Southern planters who were shipping their raw cotton to Lancashire mills in British bottoms. The shipping magnates from Baltimore to Boston were left holding their thumbs and wetting their britches in rage over it. Slavery became unacceptable to the Yankees when they were no longer getting their cut. Naturally, Yankees refuse to hear it, as they view the war only through their custom ground lens of detestation for Rednecks along with commanding their subjugation and public demands that Southerners renounce their Identity. At the end, the South was in utter desolation and total ruin.
I have no tie to the Confederacy, and no brief for or against it. To the Liberal prigs who constantly demand that we all condemn its existence I say this. General Grant's triumph is Not Yours. And clothing yourselves in his legacy as a motive for persecuting and harassing White middle class Americans who refuse to surrender Our desires for true independence from Your Government is beyond the pale in every respect. I hereby claim the Right to live by and for myself without hindrance from anyone. The soldiers who fought and bled for the Confederacy who had nothing to their names wanted no more than that.
That is All.
Al Adab| 12.29.11 @ 4:59PM
Petronius:
One other item of injterest is the method by which the South attempted to leave the federal union. Instead the Constitution remarks that states may not enter into treaties or confederations "without the consent of Congress". In 1861 Southern states had the votes (with the help of some northerners who later became known as "copperheads") to have passed a bill giving them the result they sought. Instead they walked out of Congress and attempted to enforce their decision on their own. How different had they followed a Constitutional path to independence.
Paul Windels| 12.29.11 @ 5:08PM
You do a good job summarizing the modern general histories. I would submit, however, that anyone interested in the War should also delve into the primary and/or secondary sources to get the full flavor. From whichever side, they convey the high quality of soldier on both sides. I'd recommend Grant's Memoirs (the prose is truly amazing), Horace Porter's Campaigning with Grant (he has an amazing gift of giving different speakers individual voices), Jubal Early's Memoirs (the often sardonic wit is inimitable) as a few possibilities. Great secondary works include Henderson's bio of Stonewall Jackson, Freeman's Lee and Lee's Lieutenants, and the 10 volume photographic history published by the Review of Reviews to mark the 50th anniversary of the War.
Frank Natoli| 12.30.11 @ 10:42PM
Paul: after reading Mehan's piece I wanted to make the same point about Southall Freeman, but you did the honors first. And of course Southall Freeman frequently cites Henderson.
My favorite passage in Southall Freeman was in the dedication or introduction to his first volume of "Lee's Lieutenants" where, from my memory, he states that his purpose in writing was to revive the memory of some men whom history appeared about to forget. He wrote something on the order of "I feared they had all ridden too far toward the horizon of oblivion to be called back, but I hope with this history you can sense their company around the campfire, their conversation, and know the man".
Nobody writes like that no moh!
And I thought Henderson, in his epilogue, provided the single best answer to the ultimate Civil War question, "could the Confederacy have ever prevailed", when he recounted the unveiling of a statue, I believe in Baton Rouge, overseen by an Episcopal bishop, who had been an ordinary chaplain in Taylor's regiment. Just before the unveiling, the bishop said to the crowd "when in thine divine writ it was ordained that the Confederacy must fail, it became necessary for Thee to remove thine servant Stonewall", and of course the statue was revealed to be of Jackson. Thus the bishop, and implicitly Henderson, pointed to the aftermath of Chancellorsville as the fundamental turning point of the war for the South.
Paul Windels| 12.31.11 @ 10:21AM
Frank -- Great story. I think the Confederacy could have prevailed simply based on Lincoln's "Blind Memorandum". Do you live anywhere near NYC? We have a great CW club that meets monthly -- you'd enjoy. Website is www.cwfmny.org. Best. P.
Frank Natoli| 12.31.11 @ 1:03PM
I do. I live in NJ near the Delaware Water Gap. I'll try to make the January 18th meeting. Thanks.
Had to lookup the "Blind Memo". That reminded me of Eisenhower's memo admitting that the Normandy landings had failed and as many troops were being withdrawn from the invasion beaches as possible. Neither was actually necessary, eh?
Lincoln's worries about re-election reminds me of the 2000 election. At the time of the 1864 election, Lincoln arranged for field mobile voting centers for the Union Army troops. Even though a most famous and loved by the troops Union Army general was the Democrat candidate, campaigning on an "end the war" plank, which surely would have saved the lives of thousands of those same soldiers, virtually all of them marched from the battlefields, voted for Lincoln, and marched back to the battlefields.
Contrast that with the "high fives" that Al Gore's operatives were caught on camera giving each other after successfully disqualifying votes from active duty armed forces members because they weren't postmarked correctly or some other unforgivable sin.
A God fearing man should always be nervous when he becomes so convinced that he is on the side of right and "they" are on the side of wrong, but damn, "high fives" and smiles when disqualifying active duty armed forces members sure seems as contemptible behavior as can be imagined.
Occam's Tool| 12.29.11 @ 8:01PM
Yes, Grant is a great writer. This, by the way, also transferred to the clarity of his orders, which were much better than Lee's.
Paul Windels| 12.30.11 @ 9:30AM
Very true.
John - TMF| 12.29.11 @ 10:15PM
Has anyone ever noticed that the Paulbots are more often than not the same as the Confederate "Lost Causers"? (Wonder if they have any long abandoned John Birch lapel pins stashed in some old jewelery box waiting to be re-discovered?)
The American Civil War was fought because the free and fair election of Republican (and therefore Abolitionist) Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States presaged the end of their precious "peculiar" institution.
One need only read the Articles of Secession for each state to understand the root, proximate, and trigger cause of the war. All assertions to the contrary are people with agendas to fill, hatred to nurture, and venom to inject.
One need only study the long trail of bitter infighting and ever darker compromises on the issue to see the nature of the Southern power play. (1820's Missouri line, 1850's Fugitive Slave Act, 1854's Kansas-Nebraska Act - Bleeding Kansas and all....)
Abraham Lincoln was perhaps the greatest of American Presidents. He is probably only equaled by Washington, and few other humans will ever possess the God given Grace to triumph over such a national disaster.
I would ask that scholars not forget Professor Emeritus James I. Robertson, Jr. in their research. He has retired from active teaching, (My elder son had the great good fortune to attend his final class and lecture.) but his body of work, his dignity, love of his subject and his students will endure. If you ever get a chance to ask him what the cause of the American Civil War was; he would probably tell you, and the "Lost Causers" wouldn't like the answer.
R/John - TMF - B.A. History Virginia Tech '81
Paul Windels| 12.30.11 @ 12:50PM
Bud Robertson is a great historian and his bios of AP Hill and Stonewall Jackson belong in any CW library. I know more than a few Paulites who are Union men -- remember Grant was quite antiwar himself -- but there are no doubt alot of Lost Causers supporting him as well. Cheers. P.
POST American| 12.29.11 @ 10:55PM
--------------------BOTTOM LINE----------------------
-----Anyone interested in getting the WHOLE
story of the Civil War MUST CHECK OUT the
largely suppressed intel around Lincoln's
relationship with Tsar Alexander II.
------------MIND BLOWING.
Staggeringly relevant, even timely in 2012.
Paul Windels| 12.30.11 @ 9:34AM
By the way, alot of commenters here seem to have a keen interest and know a good deal about the war. Those in and around NYC should check out the Civil War Forum of Metropolitan NY (www.cwfmny.org). We meet once a month for a reasonably priced dinner and a talk and do two tours (one local, one long-range) each year. We have a lively group of Blues and Greys who can discuss things with good fellowship. Cheers all.
Liam Murphy| 12.30.11 @ 9:21PM
A brilliant article in all respects save one: referring to Ken Burns TV series "The Civil War" as "magisterial." It was dramatic, and held one's attention - through all five episodes; it was a marketing triumph; it re-launched a "new" industry of American Civil War scholarship and writing, etc. But, given its errors of fact, especially in having illustrations failing match the events being discussed (e.g., showing the Life Magazine picture of VMI Cadets at New Market in 1864 - "Youth's Hour of Glory" by tom Lovell, while talking about Hood's Texans at Gettysburg in 1863 - and then not even mentioning New Market when he did 1864), and given the producer's bias, had it been submitted as a research paper in any accredited university, the best that he could have hoped for was to be given the opportunity for a re-write. The more one learns about The War, the less one comes to like Ken Burns (in Burns' defense, many of his now fallen-away former fans might never have begun their own reading, but for his TV series - on the other hand, given that he did five years of work to present the story of a war that lasted four years, he might have done better).
The Killer Angels (both book and movie) is truly magnificent; as might also have been said of Gone With the Wind.
Joseph Andrew Settanni| 1.2.12 @ 1:59PM
For the nth time, two or more parties must contend for the control of the exactly same government in a country for a civil war to exist. It was, thus, by definition , NOT a civil war. The South wanted independence. These are the true facts, meaning the truth; you love the vile propaganda instead.
Porter Versfelt III | 1.4.12 @ 2:29AM
Peter Bonner - Author ... Historian ... Civil War & "Gone With The Wind" Expert, Historic Re-enactor - One Funny Storyteller. https://www.facebook.com/HistoricalandHystericalStories