Civil War Thread

Having the 19th century version of Donald Trump in charge of Reconstruction did not help matters.

 

Hahaha. "back then"

 

Yep, exactly. Johnson really was a fuckup.

 

I think over the years the conventional image of Lincoln The Merciful, the great conciliator, etc etc has created a mythology that Lincoln would have reacted to the rise of the Klan and guerrilla violence in the South with some simple minded Ghandi turn-the-other-cheek, thank-you-sir-may-I-have-another refusal to act.

IMO Lincoln's reaction would have been, "why the hell did we fight this war anyway, four years, 400,000 lives and tens of billions of dollars, just to let a bunch of fuckups in sheets burning crosses reverse the results?"

Plus in 1866-67-68, the South was on its knees, or maybe more like flat on its back. I think Lincoln would have said, "we're going to have to clean these fuckers out sooner or later anyway, we can do it now while the South is near comatose and barely functional, or we can wait 10-20 years until they recover, then we gotta fight a full fledged Civil War II."

 

My wife and I went on a cruise last year, and as part of my reading materials I went out and bought the book, "Gettysburg."

It was fascinating reading, full of interesting examples of how dramatically times have changed. Back then, if generals wanted to talk about battlefield strategy, they put a messenger on horseback, then had to wait a couple of days for the rider to return. The guns had such limited accuracy that enemy lines often were only yards apart.

We've all probably grown so accustomed to flipping to any one of our 24-hour news channels and seeing bombs blow up neighborhoods from controls manned on the other side of the world, we don't think about how close combat was in previous generations.

 

I started reading a book this week about Reconstruction titled, "After Lincoln," mostly because I find Reconstruction a little more relevant currently to figuring out how we got from there to here, and how the Confederacy has for so long been openly admired.

One thing I think is a big factor is that for a long time, and still in some respects, we have a tendency in this country (and maybe as humans) to view participation in war by Americans as honorable, independent of the underlying cause. Vietnam started to change that. Iraq clinched it. So here we are, finally getting around to re-examining the Civil War as an actual historical event in the not-so-distant past.

 

For a lot of Southern boys, especially those of us who grew up in areas with few or no African-Americans, the Civil War was an extension of playing cops and robbers or cowboys and Indians (itself now problematic). You didn't think of it in terms of subjugating another race. You just went back in time and daydreamed about whipping those Yankees, or how neat it would be to have your own country.

And in a place where it seemed like nothing exciting or important ever happened, you perked up in history class when suddenly the teacher was discussing events that happened right down the road from you, or just over the border in the state where you were born.

None of that makes it worth causing pain or humiliation or rage to other people of course. But when you're a young, dumb, sheltered kid you don't think about all that. And you seize on an opportunity to have some pride in being from a place that the rest of the world regularly tells you is a contemptible shithole.

 

But they hadn't done it up to 1861, so what was going to finally change their mind?

The South trailed the North in industry because the wealth in the South was invested in slaves. The Southern aristocrat looked down his nose at the wage laborers of the North, even as the industrial might of the North raced passed that of the South in the ante bellum era.

 

For a treatment of the entire war, Battle Cry is No. 1 in my book. Better than Foote, too.

 

The 'admiration' is paradoxical.
Personally I believe it is wrapped up within concepts of rebellion, self-determination and the belief in an extra-Constitutional right to secede.

In the first instance, the South is viewed through the lense of rebellion. It is viewed as anti-government and anti-establishment. The South's losing the war continues to fuel this view. The North and the government continue to be entities that must be internally, culturally and personally resisted.
The second instance is the crux of the paradox. There is a belief that states' rights include a very broad suite of self-determination, and that is a belief held widely, well beyond just the South. The paradox, of course, is that the culture, society and economy of the pre-war South was built upon the idea that a large swath of humanity had absolutely no right to self-determination. This is an element that seems lost on those who romanticize the South's right to self-govern.
The third instance is the stickiest to me, and one with which I philosophically wrestle. The foundational philosophy of the nation is the right to revolution against, rebellion against and secession from oppressive governance. Our Revolutionary War was not really a revolution but a rebellion and a war of secession. It goes to the very heart of the American idea.

 

The romanticism may be due to, in part, our country's tendency to root for the underdog, too.

 

One aspect of the Civil War that has captured my attention is the service of Irish Immigrants.

From guys like Thomas Francis Meagher, who was sentenced to death in his native Ireland for his role in the Irish Rebellion of 1848, and who later rose to prominence in America, to the thousands who fought on both sides of the conflict -- though mostly for the North -- Irish immigrants were prominent throughout the war, as generals, and as cannon fodder.

Meagher is now memorialized in a statue on the grounds of the Montana Capitol: