The Civil War Sucks

Spy Magazine ^ | March 1994 | Joe Queenan

[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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[Mr Ramsbotham]

The American Civil War was a war fought over taxation and tariffs.

They had three decades to secede over tariffs and taxation, so it's odd that they never got around to it until the second the party of abolition came into power.

[nathanbedford]

Yes that was Virginia as late as the '60s and in The Valley for sometime into the '70s. Now that culture is mostly gone with the wind.

Soon it will be only "King" day.

RE Lee, the noblest and sublimest American of them all.

[nathanbedford]

You might want to amend Gettysburg to Sharpsburg and perhaps also admit that slavery played a part, a large part, as a cause of the war.

[TexasCowboy]

"also admit that slavery played a part, a large part, as a cause of the war."

Never.

[mass55th]

A great number of the deaths during the Civil War came from disease and infection. Back in college I did a paper on medical technology during the Civil War. I was shocked to find out that the bulk of the deaths on both sides came not from the actual wounds, but from disease, and the resulting infections of those wounds. Chronic diarrhea, dysentery, etc. took their toll on soldiers on both sides.

One of the most used treatments for chronic diarrhea was opium in pill form. People talk about how the Vietnam War helped cause drug addiction among our troops, but I've always wondered just how many Civil War vets had come back hooked on opium pills, laudenum, etc. The unsanitary conditions of camps and hospitals during the first years of the war were a major cause of the spread of diseases among the troops. When William Hammond took over as Surgeon General, he introduced many new policies and treatments that helped reduce the number of disease-related deaths as the war progressed. Hammond and Stanton clashed over the red-tape involved in trying to get medical supplies for the troops. When he refused to back down from Stanton, he was fired.

The Sanitary Commission, which was organized by wealthy citizens in New York City, pushed for better camp and hospital conditions. They hoped to prevent the losses experienced during the Crimean War.

Here's a link to a web page pertaining to Civil War Medicine. Check it out if you're interested in learning more:

Civil War Medicine

[Squantos]

would hate to have to go through customs to visit it.....careful homeland security doesn't pick up on that idea.

Thanks for the tip on Footes history series on the CW . I'll go hit the B&N for a copy of the set.

Stay safe Sam !

[Capriole]

Just asking, do you consider Maryland a Southern state?

Maryland is not at all Southern in its more urbanized or suburbanized areas, like the area around Baltimore and Washington. But in the countryside you will see many Confederate flags flying from private residences, and the rural lifestyle is very Southern.

Anyway, I'm living here under duress. My heart and ancestry as well as all my living kin are in Virginia.

[Capriole]

. . .when she was speaking seriously it was always just the War, or if she was speaking to someone born after WWII, the Civil War.

I was brought up to refer to it as "The War," as if there had only been one, ever. But it's so close here that of course everyone understands that when one refers to "The War," the War Between the States, or the War of the Rebellion, is what is meant.

Yankees do not understand: when you can go to a kinsman's grave and see an inscription on his stone that says "June 6, 1862," that brings the War close. When you can go to the site of a family house that was burned by Phil Sheridan and pick up a blackened brick or two (and I have some of these bricks in my garage) it's even closer. When you can walk through the halls of family houses and see the marks of shot still there, it's hard to forget. The Yankees tell us to get over it, but as Faulkner noted, the past hasn't passed. It's around us all the time, still reverberating.

[Capriole]

Thank you.

[The KG9 Kid]

During the Civil War, all the smart people were out here where I live panning for free gold.

[CatoRenasci]

<>Yankees do not understand....

Mostly you're right, but where we live in New England, you can also go to the old church graveyards and find many graves from the Civil War and, in many cases, more from the Revolution. And, you'd be amazed how many towns still have their monuments to Union veterans, whether a particular local unit or the Grand Army of the Republic, in the town square or somewhere at what was a major intersection. I think the reason most yankees don't understand is that they're not really yankees, except by attitudinal assimilation: they feel no connection to The War because they have no connection to The War, their ancestors (or they themselves) having arrived anywhere from 25 to 140-odd years later. Remember, of the great ethnic immigrations to the US, only the Irish and the Germans arrived before The War. Both groups fought, often valiantly, for a cause they little understood, but associated with their own struggles in the Old Countries.

[stainlessbanner]

Well said, Capriole.

[CatoRenasci]

Well, except if you're black or poor white, it's a bit sad. I found the Valley charming and gracious in the mid-1960s, but there was a strong undercurrent of both racial and class discrimination. Growing up in California, I hadn't seen any of this. My grandmother and my mother did their best to warn me, but the reality was a shock. The racial stuff I expected to see, but the biggest surprise was what locals called 'poor white trash'. Lexington was the county seat, and on Saturdays you would see the poor farm and outlying village folk come into town. Rail thin men, either scrawny or obese women, barefoot children in overalls and all, gazing hungrily at candy in the store, looking like Dorothea Lang (?) photos from Appalachia during the Depression.

One of my best friends still lives in the horse country just east of Winchester. The suburbs approach, but for now, their farm (with a house Sheridan used for is headquarters briefly -- don't worry it's been fumigated) is a haven of graciousness. Her husband's family has been in the county since before the Revolution, good solid county people: the sort who've sent their sons to Virginia or Washington & Lee since Mr. Jefferson's time and their daughters to Sweet Briar or Randoph-Macon Women's College since The War, masters of the hounds for generations, someone in every generation taking their turn as masters of the hunt, two or three Cinncinati memberships in the family. You know people like this, you probably are people like this.

[Chewbacca]

"You might want to amend Gettysburg to Sharpsburg and perhaps also admit that slavery played a part, a large part, as a cause of the war."

Slavery didn't CAUSE the war. It was one of the reasons that the South seceded. The southern States knew that slavery was not going to be widely accepted for any new State entering into the Union, and that sooner or later the southern States influence over the issue in Congress would be overthrown. The southern States had successfully seceded for a couple of months and it really wasn't much of a big deal overall. The war started when the South fired on Fort Sumter. Fort Sumter was in a strategic location to control trade up and down the river. It was also a Federal Tax collection point. The southern troops chased the Federal troops off the fort on the Virginia side of the river. Those troops fled to Fort Sumter, and were still an unwelcome presence. Lincoln had actually sent a ship to withdraw the troops from the fort, but it didn't arrive before the southern troops fired at the fort. There is some historians who say that the ship was deliberately late in hopes of actually provoking a fight. Slavery wasn't what caused the war. Shooting at a Federal Tax outpost was. Slavery was a primary issue for the secession and animosity toward the northern States. After Gettysburg is when Lincoln issued his Proclamation freeing slaves in the southern States, but if you read the document it says nothing about any slaves in the northern States (i.e. Missouri, Kentucky, West Virginia).

[Cincinatus]

As a RevWar guy, I have ALWAYS hated the (un)Civil War

The "RevWar" (by which I assume that you mean the American Revolution) was just as much a "civil war" as the War Between the States -- more American Tories were killed in combat than British regulars. The staggering efficiency of the butcher's bill in the later war merely reflects the ongoing march of technological progress in killing people.

[carton253]

Actually the Emancipation Proclamation came after the draw at Sharpsburg/Antietam.

[joebuck]

"My favorite Civil War history, by the way, is Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, a four volume collection of first hand accounts colleced and edited by The Century Magazine. Sadly, it's out of print, but used copies are avaiable on the Am**on Marketplace."

I too have always liked this work but was always unable to find a copy for my library. A few months I found a one volumne condensed version at Borders bookstore. This version is currently in print.

I would have to say that the best one volumne work of memoirs regarding the WBS is Edward Porter Alexander's "Fighting for the Confederacy". Alexander was the best artillary commander on either side during the war and fought in virtually every major battle in the Eastern theater of operations. The book is written in a narrative fashion and is very readable - Alexander doesn't focus on detailed orders of battle, rather he describes what he saw during the battles and also provides countless anecdotes of day to day life as a Southern soldier. I strongly recommend this book to any Civil War buff who has not read it.

[Protagoras]

Personally I am just glad that the Union is back together again as I love the Southland and would hate to have to go through customs to visit it.

At least 600,000 people died to keep people from going through customs. Seems fair to me.

[KevinDavis]

I happen to agree.. I hope another Civil War does not happen.. One was enough..

[Capriole]

Of course, Cato, you are quite right about the presence of graves and monuments in the Northeast. But they are really the only striking reminders of the War up there. In the North no lasting economic damage was done, no buildings (except a few in Gettysburg and Chambersburg) are associated with battles, and there are no daily reminders. In the South the reminders are still there, to be seen daily. Here are all but one of the battlefields; here are vast tracts of land that have never recovered economically from the War; here there are reenactments often played out at the scene of Civil War battles; here are the Civil War Trails programs, thousands of crossroads and houses associated with the War; here are continual fights over presevation of War-related sites.

And here, too, are people who can still see the results of the War in their own lives. When you can drive past the wreckage of a great house that once belonged to your family and know that it would have belonged to your children but for the War--this realization brings the War close, too. In some cases the house is a burned wreck (I have a few bricks from one of my family's burned wrecks, and thank you General Sheridan) while others have been preserved to show us the beauties of the past.

Now, in the North you have a lot of these things, too. The North also has thousands of historic structures, sites, battlefields, museums,and reenactments. But the orientation is not toward the Civil War at all, since it wasn't fought in Connecticut. The concentration of the North is, as you remark, on the Revolution. People in the North lost sons and brothers, but they didn't lose a lot of real estate so there are no ongoing reminders of the Civil War for people to obsess over.

Remember, I used to live quite near you, in Westchester, and my village wsa the site of a Revulationary War battle. While I lived there I was a passionate student of the Revolution, because that was what was available to study.