The War America Can't Forget
It was 150 years ago in April, that the American Civil War began, and it was in April, four years later, that the war ended, with Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendering to General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox.
Six days later President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, with murder attempts also intended for Secretary of State William Seward and Vice President Andrew Johnson – not by a Confederate conspiracy, but by a bunch of soreheads epitomized by Lincoln’s assassin, actor John Wilkes Booth.
In a special edition marking the 150th anniversary, USA Today notes that two of every three Americans have an ancestor who lived through the civil war – the struggle that shaped what America was to become, and made the “United States” be regarded as a singular entity, and not in the plural.
Of the 66% of Americans whose ancestors lived in Civil War times, 17% (18 million) have ancestors who fought in that war, on one side or the other. The blood of 620,000 soldiers was shed on American soil – roughly the total killed in all of America’s other wars combined. Two-thirds of the dead died from disease; one-third from battle.
Times have changed. Arguably the most aggressively “American” of all U.S. states are the same southern ones, which provide so many of America’s volunteer army – North and South Carolina, Georgia, Texas.
Notable descendants of Civil War heroes include Robert E. Lee V, athletic director at Potomac School in Washington; Ulysses S. Grant VI, great-great-grandson of the second Republican president and who is a gay Democrat in a same-sex marriage. J.E.B. Stuart V, great-great-great-grandson of Lee’s colorful cavalry general, is an orthopedic surgeon in Richmond. Va.; Stonewall Jackson’s great-great-grandson, Henry Shaffner, is a song-writer in Philadelphia.
The “miracle” of the U.S. Civil War is that when Lee surrendered with dignity and grace, Gen. Grant was equally as dignified and graceful, with neither vengeance nor acrimony. Grant permitted the Confederate army to disband, with chits authorizing rations for Confederate soldiers heading home, and officers being allowed to keep their side arms. Union troops even saluted the defeated Confederates at their surrender.
In subsequent years, Union and Confederate veterans of Gettysburg, would gather on that battlefield every July 1, camp out, and relive that three-day battle that saved Washington from Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. Camaraderie reigned.
Of all the books written about the Civil Car, perhaps Shelby Foote’s three-volume history is the most vivid and accurate. The U.S. Civil War is the most analyzed in history.
The Civil War exerts a mystical hold on those who study it. Politics and ideology aside, it’s pretty hard not to identify with the Confederate side. Always the underdog, the Confederates won most of the battles, but really never had a chance of winning the war. The Union had too much depth, too many resources.
In the 1990s, my wife Yvonne and I toured the eastern battlefields by bicycle. We tried to do it chronologically, starting at Fort Sumter, S.C, where the war began on April 12, 1861. We did Bull Run, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, the Wilderness, Petersburg, and points in between -- ending at Appomattox where Lee surrendered April 9, 1865.
One of the imponderables of the Civil War is why Lee ordered the frontal attack at Gettysburg by Gen. George Pickett, which made little tactical sense. When you visit the battle sites chronologically, you begin to understand Lee’s thinking: He broke so many conventional rules in his campaign, and won, that likely he felt invulnerable.
At Antietam, Lee divided his force, and got away with it. At Fredericksburg, Union General Burnside’s assault across open ground from the river, was suicide for his troops. At Chancellorsville, the march of Stonewall Jackson’s 2nd Corps across the Union front to attack on the flank, was a high risk that succeeded.
Had Jackson not been mortally wounded at Chancellorsville, and been available on the first day of Gettysburg, that battle might well have been won by Lee. Jackson’s successor, Gen. Richard Ewell, was less daring, and halted his attack at nightfall when Union forces were whipped. Jackson would never have stopped when victory beckoned.
The only realistic hope the Confederates had in winning the Civil War, was if Lee’s constant attacks forced a negotiated peace, which Britain advocated.
President Lincoln’s dilemma was finding a Union general who would pursue the enemy. After every battle, the Union generals delayed – until Grant. After Gettysburg, when Lee’s army was in retreat, General George Meade’s Army of the Potomac hesitated, and Lee’s army escaped. Lincoln promptly fired Meade.
General Grant won, because he realized if he kept the pressure on, he could lose more men than Lee, even lose the battles, but by attrition would win the war. Which he did. In a way, he was like a World War I general. Willing to sacrifice his men, of which he had more than did the enemy.
Yet most of the colorful generals were on the southern side. Flamboyant J.E.B. Stuart’s cavalry circumnavigated the whole Union army at Richmond – then disappeared at Gettysburg when Lee needed the intelligence it had gathered.
Col. John Mosby’s raiders, whom Union forces could never catch, eventually negotiated a separate peace with Washington. The inspired leadership of Bedford Forrest who was semi-literate but a natural leader and an intuitive cavalry commander, rarely lost a battle.
Names like Longstreet, A.P. Hill, Stonewall Jackson, outshone the succession of Union generals who regularly disappointed the president and were replaced -- until Ulysses S. Grant emerged as a fighting Union general who would not quit.
Although acrimony over the Civil War has lasted in some quarters to this day, it also unified the country – encouraged by re-enactors who annually relive Civil War battles with a mood of friendly rivalry and mutual respect.
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