Posted on 08/07/2006 8:54:36 AM PDT by Republicanprofessor
I was not a Civil War history buff; my nine-year-old son John was the motivation for our tour of southern battlefields this summer. This essay is about how that trip to twenty Civil War battlefields in ten southern states changed my view of the Civil War and, in more subtle ways, my life
We drove 6,000 miles, from New England down to Maryland and Virginia south to Atlanta, Vicksburg, Shiloh and back to the north again. Throughout the trip, I listened to almost twenty-four hours of Civil War history from Prof. Gary Gallagher of UVA (through the Teaching Company CDs). My son constantly quizzed me from his Civil War cards. I gained an idea of how each battle was planned, but my knowledge is shallow; I do not know which division from which state was where. I admired the monuments from many companies and states that line the battlefield routes at Gettysburg and Vicksburg and others. I know a fraction of what there is to know of the Civil War. I respect all of those who have studied much more than I, and I hope to hear from them in reply to this essay. My approach to this essay is more as an artist than as an historian; please forgive me the liberties I take here.
Hearing dry history is one thing; walking the very fields where the soldiers fought and died is quite another. It took me a little time to really feel the power of these battlefields. I think I was overwhelmed in Gettysburg. We had arranged to be there for the re-enactment July 1, but due to the torrential rains of late June, the re-enactment was postponed for a week, so we missed it. But there were many in uniform that weekend, and it was still an exciting time to be in Gettysburg.
Perhaps my emotional turning point in this trip was at Stonewall Jacksons shrine. It is in Fredericksburg, a bit down Guinea Station Road, seemingly centuries away from the nth development of shopping centers and new home construction in that area.
In fact, Yankee that I am back generation upon generation, I wondered if I could feel anything for the enemy Jackson who had died May 10 in that white frame building after being shot by his own men, the 18th North Carolina. Whether it was the wise tour guide, or the effective simplicity of the small white building, then a farm office on the Chandler plantation called "Fairfield near Fredericksburg (around which four major battles raged, two in 1862, two in 1864), I did indeed develop a deep empathy for this great hero shot by friendly fire. (He had been ahead of his troops on an evening rally on May 2, about 9:00 p.m. when the North Carolina 18th regiment fired upon him and others on horses. Despite the cries of Dont shoot your own men, Jackson was shot in hand, arm, and shoulder. His arm was amputated, but then he fell ill of pneumonia and died within a few days, but not before his saw his baby daughter for just the second time.)
It is indeed moving to see the bed and room in which he died. (The bed had been stored for several decades down the road in the plantation B&B in which we were staying.) The setting was so simple: the Fairfield plantation home torn down decades ago, just a few plain buildings beside meadows and railroad tracks. I had truly begun the emotional journey of the Civil War.
Fredericksburg was near the beginning of our trip, after Gettysburg, Antietam, and Harpers Ferry. I was only just beginning to see how each visitors center handled their information. We got our itinerary down pat: at each battlefield, the first stop is the Visitors Center. Then we saw the movie, often about twenty minutes. Then we checked the canons and monuments near the center, before heading out for the battlefield auto tour. In many parks, there were bike trails that one could ride. Often horses were welcome.
These battlefields are beautiful places. The contrast is striking between the blood of the past and the present appearance of rolling hills, stretching meadows, or beautiful woods. Perhaps a couple of the more affecting places were the Wilderness and Cold Harbor, where the very trenches of hand to hand combat of 1864, rose on either side of us. It was almost eerie; we could easily imagine the combat around us as we walked. By the end of the trip, I could almost hear the men loading their guns or cannon or stabbing at the enemy with their bayonets or rifle butts.
Sometimes it is the smaller areas that were more affecting, perhaps because they were more intimate. Franklin, Tennesee had two areas of battle importance: the Carter home where one could still see extensive bullet damage, and the Carnton Plantation. At the Carter home, the guide brought the battle to life with his commentary, but what remains of the battlefield has been limited (by city development) to just a few acres around the house.
The nearby Carnton Plantation had been used as a field hospital, and beside it was a small Confederate cemetery. Small rectangular stones were neatly laid out, row after row of unknown soldiers. A few larger monuments said 18 killed at Franklin Louisian 6 killed at Franklin Kentucky. No names were known, just their courage. (Later, at Cold Harbor, soldiers would write their names on paper and pin it to their uniforms, so they would not buried as unknown soldiers.)
At the Carter home visitors center, there were photographs of those killed. Young faces look out from old photographs; a generation of men who never married, never had children, and yet who marched into battle beside their brothers to defend their homeland (most of these Confederate soldiers did not own slaves.) There is a new book of fiction about the Carnton plantation and about its mistress, Carrie McGavock, who cared for the wounded then; she later oversaw the moving of the confederate dead to the plantations private cemetery, which she cared for daily until her death in 1905. Although it is a novel, it uses fact to capture the death, waste, and valor of the Civil War. It is called Widow of the South by Robert Hicks.
We saw many battlefields, each of them unique in terms of strategy and terrain; each of them heartrending for all the young who marched into war. We had a relative killed in Cold Harbor, and we sought his named grave outside of Richmond
From Manassas to Fredericksburg, from Vicksburg to Shiloh, from Chattanooga to Kennesaw Mountain, there is a minefield of history to learn and feel about the Civil War. Most of all we feel the courage of these men, young and old alike, who were so dedicated to their cause. Yes, some deserted; and more died from disease and dysentery in camp than on the battlefield. And yet they came when called, they fought and died for what they believed in. And you can see where they fought: the places where Chamberlain turned the flanks for a bayonet charge on Little Round Top at Gettysburg (even more exciting after one has seen the movie), the Bloody Angle at Spotsylvania, the cornfield of Antietam. It is indeed quite stirring to walk through these heroic sites of history.
Little Round Top, Gettysburg and the Bloody Angle
Nowadays, there is a new battle going on in Fredericksburg: a battle between those who love and respect history and those who instead value commerce and development.. They are building shopping centers and housing developments where the battlefields have been. They already have neon strips on route 3, but now they need more malls only a few miles away on route 1 (the Jefferson Davis highway). People are moving from the city hassles of Washington D.C. to get away from it all in the country. But they are making the beautiful fields into what they are trying to get away from.
I am not against a few shopping centers. But how many malls does one city need? Perhaps when ones life is defined by shopping centers to the detriment of other values, we need to look again. In other locations (Vicksburg, Antietam, etc.), the battlefields were beautiful parks: with bicycling, hiking, and walking in addition to their historical value. I believe that several years ago there was a similar fight to save the Manassas battlefields from developers, and I believe that commerce won. All I know is that we saw very little as we drove through Manassas to Washington.
Perhaps nowadays we value comfort and convenience too highly. When we returned from our trip in early August, we were in the midst of another heat waves moving across the country. Temperatures in the nineties are rare for northern New England, but I was as hot after my return from the south as I was walking through any of those battlefields. In the south, air conditioning is ubiquitous; not so in northern New England. We have fans to cool us down for the few hot weeks per year. But I was most amused in late July when we visited a zoo south of Nashville, TN. I overheard one young boy complain that he was sweating. ! Is this what our lives have become, when we visit a zoo in the south in July with temps in the high eighties, and we complain because we sweat? Are we that sheltered that we are reluctant to sweat, or to work hard, or to struggle for what we believe is right?
During this trip, my son often wore a newly-purchased wool confederate jacket and hat. I was sweltering, but he wanted to feel what the soldiers felt during their battles, rattling off the temperatures and dates of battle. Perhaps we all need an impetus to become aware of the true sacrifices that have been made for our country. Perhaps we all need to visit a few battlefields. During the Civil War, 620,000 men were killed, from a population of 31 million. During Gettsburgs three day battle, 51,000 men were killed. In Vietnam, 58,000 were killed during the fourteen years that we were involved.
The men and women who fought in the Civil War gave their all for their beliefs. Who would do that today? Which of our politicians is so firm in basic values that they would rather die than renounce their values (as did Socrates in 399 B.C.)? I think of our brave men in Iraq and Afghanistan, and I thank them for their dedication and sacrifice. I fear that too few Americans value such loyalty today, and I think that we can all learn more about courage and devotion to principle by visiting a few battlefields of the Civil War.
a DAMNyankee is a person, born in the north, who is filled with HATRED for the south/southerners. DYs are LOUD-mouthed, ignorant, arrogant, sanctimonious & SELF-righteous, BIGOTS. (THANKFULLY only about 10-15% of northerners are DAMNyankees.)
if they weren't so busy HATING the southland, our CSA flags, our memorials to our HONORED dead, our "final resting places",our southern culture & our wonderful dixie PEOPLE, they would be some other sort of BIGOT!
fwiw, DAMNyankees are NOT born that way;they have a LEARNED prejudice, which is NO different than RACISM.
btw, every child, born in dixie by the age of 8, KNOWS the difference in a "northerner" & a DAMNyankee.
free dixie,sw
If anyone has ideas of where to submit this as an essay to be published, let me know. I don't have much luck publishing, perhaps because I am such a generalist.
That's why I love FR. People seem to appreciate what I write here, and I can have the utmost freedom in subject matter.
BTW, it is assumed that many Freepers do value the loyalty and dedication of our soldiers that I mention in the last paragraph. It is others of whom I think when I write that many do not value those things.
We spent a night in Atlanta with friends, and she was very interested in Kennesaw Mtn. and the Cyclorama, neither of which had she visited before. We did not otherwise explore Atlanta much (other than the High Museum, which I had to see). We'll have to go back to see the things you note.
I think one of the coolest battlefields to visit is Point Park, south of Chattanooga, TN, if you go up the incline. What a cool experience that was. The incline is really even more fun than the battlefield, but all battlefields have meaning.
Kennesaw was a routing by Johnston. It's painful to think of the blue wave building up those earthworks and being pushed back each time, but that was the Union strategy.
"walking the very fields where the soldiers fought and died is quite another. It took me a little time to really feel the power of these battlefields."
I'm glad you mentioned this. I've walked Concord & Lexington and Custer Battlefield and others, but nothing gave me the feeling of being on hallowed ground like Gettysburg, Antietam, or Bull Run.
Every American family should take a week or two to visit the main battlefields, at least once.
Sorry we missed you on your swing through. If you come back this way again, I have a BUNCH of stuff to show your son, including letters from my gg grandfather and the cavalry saber he took off a dead Yankee at Chickamauga.
One of the best writers on the contrast you describe between the peaceful battlefields and their bloody past is Bruce Catton. He did a splendid series of books on the war, Mr. Lincoln's Army, Glory Road, and A Stillness at Appomattox. You may find more meticulous historians (Southall Freeman comes to mind), but you will find no better evocation of the atmosphere of the WBTS. Catton was a Yankee born and bred (a Michigander) but he was sympathetic and even-handed to the Confederacy and the Confederate soldier. Some of his writing is so beautiful it breaks your heart.
He was also the editor of American Heritage magazine for many years -- that magazine during his editorship and that of his successor, Oliver Jensen, was the best history magazine I have ever read (and I was a history major and wrote my thesis on the WBTS). It's fallen on evil days now, just a PC shadow of its former self, but if you can get hold of back numbers from 1953 to the early 70s, it's a treasure trove.
marker bump
How interesting!
Well, God Bless you! I really appreciate your write-up. My mother's family is from Henderson county, TN, about 60 miles north of Shiloh. Some of her ancestors used to tell about sitting on the front porch and hearing the rumble of the artillery. It was a HUGE battle.
I've spent a lot of time on the Shiloh battlefields, as my Mom and Grandparents used to take us kids there quite often.
And - you must have had the same tour guide we had at Franklin a couple of years ago. As you closed your eyes, he could make you hear the battle and the moans of the wounded. You could just see the bodies piled up like chord-wood on the porch of the Carter House. He did a GREAT job.
In response to your question about what if the South had won, I'd just like to say that I sure wish the cotton gin and other mechanization had shown up before the war. If we could have rid ourselves of slavery without the war, our original republic could have been preserved, instead of the huge mess of a Federal government we have now. I love this country, but I do believe that Washington needs to "uninvolve" itself with many things, and let the states decide.
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RP:
Welcome back. I am just in for lunch, will read this when I get back tonight. Looks interesting.
McVey
Spain would most definitely not have taken over either part of the country.
They were trying to govern a shrinking empire with an administration that had preserved a sixteenth-century management style. Just as oil producers tend to stagnate today, the silver and gold of the Americas had allowed them to keep a system that simply did not measure up to the far more advanced systems around her and here in America.
McVey
Thank you very much for sharing this with us! Very well-written essay!
Mrs. Reb and I took a week-long trip a while ago trying to follow the path of the Confederate artillery battery we portray as reenactors. Manassas, Petersburg, Harper's Ferry, Gettysburg... The names alone send a bit of a chill down my spine. It sounds like you had a similar experience. Did you visit Pamplin Historical Park in Petersburg? The Museum of the Civil War Soldier there is quite good and they put on excellent demonstrations.
I would encourage you to try to get to a larger reenactment if you can. I enjoy the smaller ones that allow a bit more interaction between reenactors and spectators, but the big ones give you a taste of what some of the big battles must have been like. You can find schedules and other information in Camp Chase Gazette (www.campchase.com) or The Civil War News (www.civilwarnews.com).
Very, very interesting and inspiring essay. I would dearly love to visit all the battlesites and other memorable places during this time of history. I, however, read up on it all first then briefly, oh so very briefly visited Gettysburg and Arlington, mostly due to time constraints and an impatient husband. However, I think he has seen the error of his ways and we will visit more places.
Regarding the mall and money hysteria, I think they only behave that way out of their own shame over these events. It was all incredibly unconstitutional and immoral and should never have occurred. But Lincoln sowed the wind, and we are reaping the whirlwind effects of his...wisdom????
There's a memorial to him in the old Methodist Church cemetery in Coosa, AL. . . "his body lies on the battlefield, lost and unknown . . . " gave me a shiver to read those words.
I don't know for sure because he died when my g grandmother Emma was pretty young, but I'm pretty sure that my gg grandfather on that side never did get over that battle (he was with his brother in law when he was killed.) He died of pneumonia at 57, he was living with Emma, his only surviving daughter. His wife had lost 2-3 children at birth and died laboring of twins, who died with her, during the War. She's buried with her babies over in Goshen AL . . . one of the lost rural towns. The cemetery is bigger than the little crossroads that's all that's left of the settlement.
Many's the childhood field trip I took to both of those places. I still go back from time to time. You might find it interesting that, as a child roaming the woods around my area, I would occasionally find an old minnie ball. I had quite a collection once.
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