Now that September is all but gone and fall is in the air, however, I’m finding the mental strength to write. It’s about time!
First, let me say that if you’ve never been to Gettysburg you owe it to yourself to go. The national park is well-preserved and the the new visitor’s center is grade A. When you add a wonderful bookstore specializing in Civil War Era American History, it’s hard to pass up.
Second, to answer my friends who wondered why a Christian pastor would take his children to a bloody battlefield, “Because something like Gettysburg ought never to be forgotten.” I wanted my kids to go to this place not out of some patriotic fervor or celebration of violence, but to remember the people who died in that place (all of whom thought their cause “just”) and experience something of the awful waste of war. While no one knew it at the time, the Battle of Gettysburg all but assured the continuation of the Union – but that continuation was bought with a price of insane proportions. The South was ruined in that war, and while many of us in Northern States might say, “Well and good, we didn’t try to leave,” the ramifications of that price continue to felt today in everything from race relations to current political loyalties. War saps humanity of it’s best and brightest, and not just during the battle – but for years afterward. To me, the monuments that mark the battlefield beautifully and mournfully communicate that.
I keep hearing words like “valor” and “bravery” when I discuss Gettysburg with people. I guess those are valid observations, the letters of participants that I’ve been able to read certainly use them. As I stood on top of Little Round Top, or in front of The Angle, however, those words didnt’ come to mind. All I could think of was the futility of climbing the throny earth in the sight of union guns, the horror of being ordered to stay put “against all hazards,” and the disciplined rows of soldiers in Picket’s division being mowed down as they pressed forward. See, I’ve read reports on the aftermath of the battle so other words come to mind when I think of the fighting itself: Disease, disfigurement, poverty, and stench. The North celebrated the Victory, but the town of Gettysburg was left holding the bill. Meade took the majority of the surgeons with him when he cautiously pursued Lee back into Virginia – and it was only groups like the US Christian Commission that were able to find the wounded, bury the dead, and prepare for ecological disaster. The wounded were everywhere, and so was their blood – on couches, on beds, on floors. The cries of the wounded and dying shook the town to it’s core. When I move through Gettysburg these are the things I think about – I’ll leave the celebration of the strategic importance of the Battle to my history books. It’s where it belongs.
I also keep hearing about the narrow victory at Gettysburg (I’m of the opinion that Sickles nearly blew the whole thing, brave or not) being God’s “providence” that the United States be preserved. I don’t find that the be a particularly compelling assertion of faith, to be honest. I find it to be more an assertion of certainty based on the fact that history turned out the way the one who utters the statement thinks it should have. Making assertions about God’s providence with the assumption of 20×20 hindsight is a dangerous prospect. Was it God’s providence that the Northern reaction to John Brown’s raid at Harper’s Ferry made the secessionists seem “sane” for the first time in the south? Was it providence that led Lincoln to act so rashly at the outset of the war that Virginia seceded in protest and joined the Confederacy (and a soldier named Robert E. Lee)? Was it providence that McClellan was so pompous that he didn’t bother to tell the President his real plan for the Peninsula campaign, thus slowing his progress and creating mistrust between him and the White House (a plan that might have ended the war years earlier)? Was it providence that Jefferson Davis had a sudden flash of sanity and placed Lee in Command of the forces around Richmond shortly before they were about to collapse utterly? Unless one is willing to say, “Yes” to all of these (and more), and also with the resulting death and destruction that came from them, then one should not speak of “providence.” Providence isn’t when something good happens to you, folks, it’s when something happens.
The thing is, both Lee and Lincoln could of perhaps embraced the above statements. Lee had a very simple faith that God ordered all things. This meant that he would do his best in everything becaus that’s simply who he was, but in the end he trusted that all things were ultimately in God’s hands. Lincoln had a much more confused spirituality, but even he came to believe that the Civil War was punishment on both north and south because neither was willing to really deal with the issue of slavery. Thus the losing General and the “victorious” leader were able to embrace both good and bad – one of whom transparently referred to such things as “providence.” Thus, I have respect for these two men in a way that I cannot respect a modern who glibly claims “providence” because something good happened to them, or bad happened to their enemies.
Gettysburg happened and became a pivot point upon which much of American History now revolves. Was it God’s “providence” that it happened the way it it? Perhaps , but if it was that act of God’s providence doesn’t exist to pat me on the back and say, “Hey, your side won, congratulations!” Rather, I think, if anything, it’s a warning about how suffering leads to suffering, and to brake the cycle calls for a lot of blood. Celebrating the “win,” might lead us to miss the actual message.
Oh, and would the history teachers and parents out there please spend some time in the civil war era, I grow tired of high school students asking, “Whaever happened in Gettysburg?
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Nice reflections.
Gettysburg…um…wait. Isn’t that where Lincoln lived? You know, his Gettysburg address? 😉
Seriously, though, I don’t have a whole lot to say about the War itself. It was bloody, it was a tragedy in our nation’s history, and it continues to be. I recall my GA History professor once likening the South to an abused wife. She tries to leave, and her husband (the Union) finds her, drags her back home and beats her so that she’ll never try to leave again, and, eventually, she just gives up and goes along with it.
I think, when I consider the “sides,” I will always side with the South because, despite her warts, I think she was well within her rights to leave, and I think doing so was true to the American spirit. I do consider the Union to be the usurper in this case.
However, especially in the Civil War, there is always the person in that uniform, the father, brother, son, husband, the man who, despite the fact that he is currently on the front lines has a life at home that is not really much different from the life of the other man he is trying to kill. In many, many cases in this War, these were not even professional soldiers, who voluntarily joined an army and made the army their livelyhood. In the Union, there were those drafted in, for example. In the South, there were normal men and women, much like ourselves, who went to war to defend their homes. IIRC, on both sides were slaves hoping to earn their freedom.
It is all too easy when discussing wars to forget the human element, to get caught up in the strategy and tactics, in the maneuvering of troops and so on. To see war in the abstract.
And I think the more modern war has gotten, the worse. When you can kill a man while sitting safe in a bunker 100 miles away, something very, very serious is lost. I think Robert E. Lee, in the movie Gods and Generals (I don’t know whether he said this in real life) summed up well what is lost when he said, “It is good that war is so terrible, lest we should grow too fond of it.”
See, I’ll always go with the Union. After reading a biography of Lee it seems that the secession and subsequent war were caused by feuding children who caught the whole family up in their squabble – but at least the petulant child in the North wanted to stay in the family.
Secession wasn’t a new idea, Connecticut threatened to secede during the War of 1812 and Virginia threatened it the aftermath of the election of 1800. The Federal government couldn’t allow it to happy, or it would have no authority whatsoever.
Sadly the result of the war was that everyone actually lost. The federated democracy was gone, and the federal government became top-heavy to compensate. But the spatting children got their way and were able to draw lines and duke it out. Yay for them.
And, oh look, similar lines are being drawn today. Hopefully this time cooler heads with prevail.
It has always bummed me out that you learn about the civil war so early and then only learn about “modern” history (aka anything in the 20th century) in highschool. I remember being rather bored with the civil war early on and frustrated that as a 5-8th graded I wasn’t learning about WWII which no one talks about until 10th or so grade. And by that point the discussion was more about the political arena from the US standpoint then a good look at that war in general.
This ties into my general theory of how we need to teach history differently in schools anyway…
Mel, I mostly agree. Schools are so blitzed by tring to pass the tests that history is almost an add-on to the curriculum anymore. I also think, however, the every parent who communicates to their child that history is boring or pointless should be smacked upside the head. History is important, and screw the tests – I’m tired of having students who can regurgitate facts but can’t THINK.
I also can’t believe the number of middle school students around here who didn’t even know why anyone would be compelled to go to Gettysburg. “What happened in Gettysburg?” Sigh.
I suspect part of the “What happened in Gettysburg” question has to do with location. In the South, the Civil War is not just history, and I’m not talking about those guys driving around with Confederate Flags and shouting “The South shall rise again!”
What I mean is that the Civil War is still an important part of our cultural identity. This is less true, perhaps, in younger generations, and particularly in areas that have been heavily influenced by “transplants,” but it’s still there. Flannery O’Conner wrote about it once:
In addition (and probably part of the reason the War continues in our cultural consciousness), the Civil War was fought in our own backyards, in many cases, literally. It seems like just about anywhere you go around the South, you’re likely to find a historical marker noting some battle that occurred or that a particular building (perhaps no longer even standing) was used for a particular purpose, etc.
As an example, there is a house that sits at a busy intersection that I drive through every other week. In all respects, the house looks like a normal, older, but still-occupied house, well-maintained, etc. It doesn’t look like anything remarkable, but there is an official historical marker in the front yard that, when I have had a chance to read it, notes that a particular general used this very house as a headquarters during the Atlanta campaign. Such markers are all over the place.
You have to take a vacation to travel to a Civil War battleground. I can visit one 15 minutes away from where I work. One of the places we considered having our wedding reception was a house that happens to be one of the few surviving structures that survived the burning of Atlanta, and in the front room of the house (it was rather small, which was why we didn’t choose it), there was a couch that a Confederate general died on.
Of course, I also know of at least one relative of mine who fought in the War (though I’m not sure on which side).
Anyway, this is not so much the case up North, since the fighting never even got as far as DC. In addition, the North never suffered Reconstruction, which, along with all else it did, cemented the memory of the War in the Southern consciousness. It’s one thing to lose a war; it’s another to have the loss rubbed in your face for the next few decades (and, honestly, it still gets rubbed in our faces from time to time).
I suspect these attitudes affect how schools treat the matter, as well. Similarly to how the American Revolution is largely an unimportant point in British education, I suspect the Civil War in Northern education receives nowhere near the emphasis that it does (or did when I was in school) in Southern education. Heck, we could go on field trips to see the battlegrounds!