Posted on 07/11/2004 7:17:56 PM PDT by SamAdams76
The Civil War Sucks!
by Joe Queenan
(March 1994 Spy magazine)
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Admit it! It sucks!
You know the feeling: Some friends call and invite you down to their house in Charlottesville, Virginia. There'll be pecan pie, horseback riding and, of course, that old barn burner between Virginia and Virginia Tech. But the real lure - the bait they know you can't refuse - is a chance to visit some of the important landmarks of the War Between the States. Your friends, huge Civil War buffs, are real tight with this 103-year-old lady who just happens to be Stonewall Jackson's niece, and she'll be taking everyone on a guided tour of the battlefields of Fredericksburg, Richmond, Appomattox and, yes, even Bull Run. Sound like fun or what?
You can hardly suppress your enthusiasm. Ever since PBS ran that nine-part series about the Civil War three years ago, you can't get that titanic struggle for the nation's soul out of your thoughts. You positively love Civil War history - the War Between the States was the crucible in which this Mighty Union was forged, and that brother vs. brother imagery hits you right in the pit of your stomach every time. You adore Civil war films like Glory; your eyes get all misty whenever you hear "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" - particularly when it's sung by Mahalia Jackson - and one of your lifelong ambitions has been to free up enough time to read Shelby Foote's peerless, three-volume, 2,976 page history of the Civil War. Oh, yes, you'd love to visit Fredericksburg, Richmond, Appomattox and Bull Run with Stonewall Jackson's niece.
But then you remember: Your apartment needs a paint job, your car's been acting up lately, there's the new Laurie Anderson show at the Brooklyn Academy of Music this Friday, and, oh yeah, your mom's planning to come up for the weekend. So reluctantly, remorsefully, you beg off.
But after you put down the phone, you have to be honest with yourself and admit that the real reason you turned down that trip to Charlottesville isn't because of your apartment or your car or Laurie Anderson's new show or your mom. The real reason you backed out is because deep down inside, you harbor a dark secret that millions of Americans share with you but never, ever dare to admit in public.
The Civil War sucks.
Admit and you'll feel a whole lot better. Ever since you were a kid, you've despised the Civil War, an inglorious, unheroic and wretchedly downscale series of horrid massacres pitting scraggly gangs of racist, barefoot, poorly equipped Neanderthal rustics against a sea of inept but numerous urbanites in a pointless confrontation that schoolchildren are still taught to believe was fought for moral principles, when everyone knows it was fought over money. Ever since you were a little kid, you're dreaded words like Gettysburg and Chancellorsville, bland theme parks for the dead where Civil War-buff teachers used to drag you on class trips when you'd really rather have been in New York City, Disney World or even Asbury Park learning something useful. Ever since you were a little kid, you've had a niggling suspicion that, compared with the Peloponnesian War, Caesar's Gallic Wars, the Crusades, the Napoleonic Wars or World Wars I and II, the American Civil War was a hokey, small-time, ginsu-knife affair that would have been over in three months if the North's generals hadn't all been cowards, bunglers or drunks. The only reason people visit Gettysburg is because it's easier to get to than Waterloo, el-Alamein, Stalingrad or Hastings, battlefields were genuinely important historical events took place.
By every criterion imaginable, the Civil War is a hopeless failure. Certainly we are taught as impressionable schoolchildren to believe the Civil War was a noble crusade to free the slaves. But by the time we reach adulthood, most of us either are white people or have been around enough white people to know that white people just don't do things like that - it isn't in their DNA. And unlike other famous wars, which were suffused with brilliant strategic ploys such as Hannibal's sneaking over the Alps with his elephants or Nelson's slipping between the French fleet and the Egyptian shoreline at the Battle of the Nile, the Civil War was a dreary series of slogging hecatombs in which the Union expended vast amounts of manpower to defeat absurdly outnumbered, poorly equipped rebels who never really had a chance to win a war they had no business starting in the first place. The North vs. The South at Vicksburg was like a fistfight between you and your three-year-old niece Brittany - with Brittany blindfolded. Gettysburg involved about as much tactical genius as a contest between the Indianapolis Colts and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
If Americans were really honest with themselves, they would admit that few words in the entire English language inspires more pure dread than Civil War. What was the novel that tens of millions of Americans grew up loathing? The Red Badge of Courage. What's the movie that Aunt Emily always drools over? Gone With The Wind. What was that horrible song Elvis used to bring down the house with just before he died? "American Trilogy" - featuring "Dixie," "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" and "All My Trials," Cuisinarted together in one odious smorgasbord of patriotic twaddle. Gone With The Wind, indeed.
The movie we should really be paying attention to is The Miracle Worker. About halfway through this inspirational classic, the Keller family is sitting around the dinner table chatting when suddenly the deaf, dumb and blind Helen, played by Patty Duke, throws an unbelievable fit and starts breaking all the furniture in the house. Why would she unexpectedly explode in such a fit of rage? Easy. She threw a fit because her dad was discussing Ulysses S. Grant's siege strategy at the Battle of Vicksburg. Even though the kid is deaf, dumb and blind, she can sense that another idiotic conversation about the War Between the States, conducted by a pair of pedantic Civil War buffs, is taking place a few feet away. So she loses it.
Don't we all feel some of Helen Keller's rage deep down inside? Thanks to Civil War buffs, we've got mind-numbing board games with names like Gettysburg and Chancellorsville, in which geeky teachers' pets manipulate a bunch of cardboard armies in a prepubescent effort to recreate the great one-sided battles of the past. Thanks to Civil War buffs, we've got Raymond Massey as Young Abe Lincoln, Henry Fonda as Young Abe Lincoln, Sam Waterston as Young Abe Lincoln.
Thanks to Civil War buffs, we've got unreadable crap like Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All and washed-up first basemen like Keith Hernandez who would rather talk about the silence at Appomattox in 1865 than the silence at Shea Stadium in 1987. Thanks to Civil War buffs, the Disney Company's perfectly wonderful plan to build an amusement park that normal people might actually enjoy a few miles down the road from Manassas Battlefield may now be deep-sixed. Thanks a lot, Civil War buffs. Thanks for books like The Outlaw Josey Wales, written by a redneck fascist, that make redneck fascists seem like heroes. Thanks for all that horrible Walt Whitman poetry. Thanks for "O Captain, My Captain." Thanks for "Sic semper tyrannis" or "Sic semper fidelis" or whatever it was that screwy #!@#!! was hollering while leaping from the balcony at Ford's Theatre. Thanks for Confederate flags that bikers can wrap around their foreheads. Thanks for movies like The Birth of a Nation that the Ku Klux Klan used as recruiting films. Thanks for expressions like "You ain't just whistlin' Dixie.'"
Let's face it: The only good thing that ever came out of the Civil War was the remark "Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?" And Mrs. Lincoln, a retard, probably didn't get the joke.
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Yeah there might be a few vestigages left of its Southern heritage. But too many Northerners came in and changed the demographics. The same thing happened to Fairfax where I live.
Northern Virginia, my own abode, is not Southern anymore--to any extent--one has to get down near Richmond to feel like you're in the true South really.
Manassas, Faquier, and Front Royal are a little still. Personally when my parents made me move here when I was three I would have rather moved there then the liberal hell hole of Fairfax. But at least it beats Chicago.
I am astonished that Lincoln could even find the battlefied at Manasas to deliver his famous address.
"We'll just have to agree to disagree on this one. (which is one of the things that makes debating history so much fun.)"
Hey, we agree on THAT!.....LOL!
As for Fredericsburg.....there wasn't an alternative for placing of the guns, any 2nd year West Point grad would have seen that. After walking the ground myself....I don't know that was a sign of ability, or just competency.
That "chicken" quote was accurate, and remains one of the more famous in a war full of them.
The fact remains the CSA had a curious ability to overshoot their targets. Perhaps it was due to poor manufacturing from gunpowder to fuses to the shells themselves. But in my mind, the CSA artillery was inferior to the Union's in most battles both in the Eastern and Western theaters.
A very good example is Gettysburg. ON day one, six horse artillery pieces fought to a virtual standstill an entire division worth of artillery from around 11 AM til the "rout" began back through the streets of the town.
On the second day, the Union Artillery performed very well by all accounts, with the CSA artillery contributing little if anything to that days events.
Both of the above are highly debatable, btw.
What can't be debated is the performance of CSA artillery on that famous third day. The "box barrage" as envisioned by Lee overshot the point of attack by more than 100 yards, causing significant damage among the Union's trains and "reserve artillery" but missing almost completely the aim point for Two Hours.
Alexander was a good artilleryman, no doubt about it. But lets not overlook how the CSA came to rely on a 28 year old (his age at Gettysburg). It was because they had no viable alternative to him. Alexander was no Henry Hunt on this score in my opinion.
I will say this. Alexander forever will be known as the man that formed the last line of battle for the CSA. That alone makes him special.
"Yes, they had minor disagreements, but as for Jackson wanting to do lots of things and Lee just ignoring him or ordering him not to do... just not true."
The "pike" story comes to mind.....as in Jackson's ordering the commission of thousands of pikes for his infantry. At the end of the war, they were still in the same warehouses in Richmond where they were originally sent after being made.
"Suppose that I detested the Shaara triology?"
Then it comes down to do you want to explore alternatives as they relate to the Civil War.
I find it facinating. Especially if you first do the "homework" to understand what really happened.
Gingrich's books explore the most intriguing (to me anyway) aspect of Gettysburg....what if Lee had followed Longstreets suggested course of action? That Gingrich takes it to a new extreme, having the CSA move almost fifty miles, not just "swing around to the right" but perform a forced march ala Jackson's run to Pope's supply base at Second Manassas, is stunning.
The fact Gingrich then sets up Longstreet defending Meade's "pipecreek line" just adds to it, in my opinion.
But, if you "detest" the Sharaa books, you probably are best served avoiding these books.
Thanks to the Reconstruction Era.
Hey, I resemble that remark.
"Yes, they had minor disagreements, but as for Jackson wanting to do lots of things and Lee just ignoring him or ordering him not to do... just not true."
Something else just came to mind. Jackson wanted to order his troops forward at Fredericksburg to contest the Union's crossing. Lee had to order him not to do so, citing the very obvious fact of the Union artillery on the other side of the river.
Always fun to consider this stuff.....(grin)
Sheesh. I am getting my geography confused. I am at work and didn't have time to check a map and am quite busy at the moment.
I meant South Carolina.
There were a couple of Forts around the Charlston Bay with Fort Sumtor in the middle of the bay.
If I remember correctly Fort Johnson was a Federal tax collection location. (I may be wrong as it has been awhile since I read about battle in Civil War History Magazine.) The fort was abandoned by the Federal troops and the southern troops took control of the fort. The Federal troops sought refuge at Fort Sumtor.
"The Civil War was the last Napoloeonic war, and the first fully modern war dependent upon railroads, and telegraphs."
Good post from you.
The three major facilities in the Charleston area, other than the arsenal, were Fort Sumter, Fort Moultrie, and Castle Pinkney. There was (and still is) a large customs house on (if memory serves) East Bay Street, built near the warfs where the duties would be collected. The forts were merely military faciliteis and none of them served as customs houses.
If there was a disagreement between the two, it came because Jackson wanted to fight at Anna Creek. This line would give the Confederates room to maneuver. Jackson realized that they could win at Marye's Height but not gain any advantage from the victory. The Union Army would slip across the river without pursuit.
When Lee set the line at Marye's Heights, Jackson obeyed... again according to his nature.
Well, winners do get to write the history books. You may be interested in reading "The Lost Cause," a history book written very shortly after the war (1866) for a more contemporary view. The book is written by E.A. Pollard.
If it is true that the winners write the histories, then it is also undoubtably true that the losers write the myths. And nowhere is that more true than when dealing with the Civil War.
You may be interested in reading "The Lost Cause," a history book written very shortly after the war (1866) for a more contemporary view. The book is written by E.A. Pollard.
And you may enjoy reading "The Cause Lost: Myths and Realities of the Confederacy" by William C. Davis.
Actually, when the pikes were ordered they were necessary. The Confederacy lacked weapons. They lacked rifles. Many volunteers who showed up at Camp Lee (Camp Instruction) or at Harpers Ferry where Jackson was to train them didn't have rifles. The pikes were ordered as defensive weapons. They weren't used because the rifles did come either via running the blockade or through the tremendous amount of guns that Jackson captured as he triumphed through the Valley.
Queenan's just trolling.
The DVD's are much more superior. On Disc 1 of the DVD series, there is a special feature that shows how the original film was totally remastered using some pretty impressive technology. They showed side-by-side scenes from the old and new film and the difference is astounding. The sound was remastered as well. The original version wasn't even in stereo!
I'm in the middle of volume 1 of the Shelby Foote series and I am hooked. It is the best account of the Civil War I've ever read.
Been there, done that, have the book (and read it).
My memory tells me it is more like this:
Ten Thousand theiving Yankees lie dead in Southern dust.
WE got ten thousand of um afor they got to us.
They died of Rebel Fever, of Southern shot and shell.
Those dirty theiving Yankees are better off in Hell!
:) Either way, the sentiment is the same....
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