How civil rights black leaders like Martin Luther King effect our lives today?

Thanks for the trimester guys. It was a treat. Signing out.....Rusty.

Today's presentation pages can be found at (http://history.furman.edu/~benson/civwar/cw14.htm)

Edited by author 05-22-2002 02:48 PM
Directions to the Study Session
Home Phone: 828.859.2256
Cell Phone: 828.817.4400


We will be expecting you about 1:00 p.m. Although the weather is a little cool, we do have a pool and you are welcome to bring swimsuits along with your notebooks and appetites. We will have at least one non-cheese pizza for healthy eaters, and a couple of non-meat pizzas for you veggies.

How to get there:

Leave Furman North out of the front gate, up U.S. 25 toward Traveler's Rest and Asheville. Stay on 25 approximately 10-15 minutes, until you reach S.C. Highway 11. (You will see the overpass for the highway before you get to the turn. Turn right (east) onto 11, and head towards Gowansville.

Stay on 11 for about 20 minutes, until you get to the blinking red light in Gowensville. (Look for the new Sphinx gas station at the intersection. Turn left (northeast) onto highway 14, heading toward Landrum.

About 2 to 3 miles after the intersection, at the top of the second big hill, look for Blackstock road. There will be a church on the right. (if you miss this, just continue into Landrum and follow the same directions below). Take Blackstock left(north) until it ends, about 2 miles.

Turn left (northwest) on U.S. 176. Signs will point to Tryon.

Follow 176 into Tryon, approx. 3-5 minutes. Look for the IGA on the left, and Side Street Pizza on the right. Turn right, *immediately* after crossing the railroad tracks after Side Street. This will be New Market Road. If you passed the theatre you went to far.

Take New Market up the hill to the second street on the right. Turn right on "Broadway."

SLOW DOWN!!!!!! WATCH FOR THE KILLER SPEED BUMPS!!!!

Our house is the sixth house on the left. Look for the copper mailbox. The house is yellow with blue trim. Big roof, big columns.

Park in our parking lot or on the street.

Edited by author 05-21-2002 02:26 PM
Today was a little frustrating for me in the sense that, for a book that I enjoyed and thought gave me a lot to think about, I felt like I had remarkably little to say when it came time to fishbowl in class. Reading through the book, I guess I was having big time state and regional identity issues, since the Kentucky chapter turned out to be such a pleasant one. Of course my initial reaction to the portayal was, "oh great, we are not all big hicks . . . " (well, you get the idea), but I really wanted that not to be my initial gut reaction. I wondered if it was just a personal thing that I was so stuck on that chapter, as a particularly memorable one, but I was glad to see in class today that it didn't seem quite to be that way, since a lot of people mentioned that chapter. In closer scrutiny, I guess what I would have to say is that, while I wouldn't want to ever imagine something like the shooting happening, I can see how it could, in lots of places in KY (and probably lots of other places . . . as I got from what James had to say about Eastern NC, and other places). As far as people legitimizing their claim to the flag and what it means to them, I have often felt like KY and rural southern OH (yes, OH, that's even a "northern" state I'm talking about here) are two of the worst places, because unlike the "Cats of the Confederacy" or other groups in Horowitz's journey, their actions in putting out the flag, and what they say and do as far as beliefs very rarely seem to give though to one another, as the wife kept saying in the KY chapter, "it just made his truck look sharp." Most people in KY who are carrying around "their X" aren't doing so because they have 10 CS Veteran relatives way back in their family; I've had a lot of interesting convesations with my mom since I've been at Furman, because the concept of "old money" and lineage that people can be so concerned with down here don't even exist in eastern KY--there's coal money maybe, but not old money(Lexington and Louisville are another story, but I can guarentee Todd County is not a hotbed of generational confederate rememberers, as I think we all got from the striking portrayal of the people there . . . ). Compounding this miscommunication, then, is the fact that, unlike the AL and Miss. chapters, I don't think a lot of people are used to growing up racially separate, and it hasn't been my experience that people in the border state from which I hail separate themselves along racial lines in most any circumstances. So, like the kids who did the shooting, those who should be most offended by portrayals of the flag (and whatever it "represents") grow up right beside those who later take it on, and there is little or no communication about just how different those portrayals are, which leads to the sort of downward spiral which ended up with the shooting, I guess.

One other comment--when Dr. Benson mentioned today that Horowitz has been criticized, among other things, for his portrayal of the Kentucky section of the story, I have to wonder where exactly those criticisms came from. It was not my attempt to be one of those people who's gut reaction is to say "that's not what we really look like" when maybe some things an outside observer sees might be more true than we'd like to admit . . . however, I do think there's some creedence to the fact that, unlike other parts of the story, such as the crazy guy living in the trailor in Columbia with the cubbyholes of hate group literature, there wasn't much in the KY story to suggest that this could in any way be an isolated incident; that is the kind of criticism I think is more than valid, accusations against a blanket portrayal of a more complex set of associations.

And that's my diatribe for today, which probably wouldn't have been even nearly this concise, had I started in on this vein in class today . . .

The research strategies and bibliography information for the debate can be found at:

(http://history.furman.edu/~benson/civwar/R...tionResources02.htm)

I have posted some model essay outlines as an answer guide for our most recent exam. Look these over and let me know what questions I can answer as you prepare for the final.

The guide can be found at (http://history.furman.edu/~benson/civwar/ag1sp02.htm)

It does seem to me that the Redeemers began with good intentions, but we've seen that all too often. Even the most well-intentioned politicians have turned out to be self-seeking. It's the nature of the beast. If Honest Abe couldn't avoid seeking his party interests during the most crucial period of our nation's history, I doubt if some assuredly racist southern Democrats could have held out for long with their anti-corruption stance (note Alex's citation).
     The Jim Crow Laws were clearly a negation of every Reconstruction policy, but the reason they came into effect because the Republican government chose to swing to the other side of the Reconstruction dilemma. Military measures were an outrage to the South and very dangerous to northern men involved. Peace between the regions could only be reached at the expense of the black race. Grant's non-intervention was not necessarily a bad choice; it was simply what he thought was the lesser of two evils.

While i agree with Chris that not all politicians are scum sucking parasites i agree with James that it seems like most of the ones talked about in this section definitely were. The "Redeemers" said they wanted to form a govt. that would be aware of, "The interests of both blacks and whites for better government [and] would converge in the election of virtuous southern Democrats"(398). Well this was obviously a lie because as soon as the Redeemers got the least amount of power they started creating laws favoring whites and harming blacks.
Towards the end of the reading Republican Governor Chamberlain made a statement saying that because the government had withdrawn federal troops from the state, the state would be quickly overthrown. Another ex-Republican governor said, "The political death of the Negro will forever release the nation from the weariness of such 'political outbreaks'"(399). I agree with Guelzo that things would calm down for a short while but the stage had been set for another great uprising by the black community later in American history.

I don't really agree with James that it is a common truth that politicians are scum sucking parasites. It's true that the Republicans ended Reconstruction for political power, but I think its worth asking how much longer Reconstruction could have lasted had they not done so. Without that deal a democrat would have taken the presidential seat, and it is unlikely that the democrats would have continued helping the Reconstruction governments, which created a stronger base of support for the Republican party. Reconstruction was dying in any case by the late 1870's, and we shouldn't blame politicians alone for its death, but just realize that it had gone about as far as it could go by that time.

Bearing that in mind, it is still tragic that black civil rights had to degenerate in the south when reconstruction ended and that more wasn't done to safeguard them. It would take a long time for them to get what they fully deserved.

Last night's readings illustrate a common truth.... politicans are scum sucking parisites. In a nutshell, Republicans, the "champions" of the black cause in Reconstruction, sold them out for the Presidential seat. I disagree with Mike, in that the black population only got a taste of freedom, which is worse in my opion than laying a "foundation." The civil rights movement began in the 1960s; the movement initiated by the radical republicans teased the blacks with a hint of equality, only to bring them crashing back to the reality that the majority of the country loathed their existence. While Reconstruction began with good intentions, the betrayal in the 1876 election only made to evident that Republicans and Democrats alike had their own intersts in mind rather than the freedmen.

The readings for tonight wrapped up Reconstruction in the narrrow election of Hayes, elected after the corrupt rule of U.S. Grant. I agree with Mike that it appears that the radical reconstructionists did not get what they wanted in any way shape or form and the South emerged in a post-reconstruction atmosphere that is best described as stagnant. At least stagnant until the 1960's civil rights' movements. I think a lot of people view the civil rights movement as the definitive end to reconstruction. However I think it should be viewed as an ongoing progressive movement. We should not allow this opportunity for racial equality to become another point in history in which measures to preserve equality gradually become stagnant as they did in 1876 and on.
Another point, since according to the syllabus this is the last posting I will make. The Tony Horwitz book is incredible and should be required reading for all Southerners. It wraps up the course excellently, and keys in on many themes we have been exploring in the class. Namely why has the civil war continued to be such a driving force in American culture...

Just to quickly comment on what was said before the weekend... In looking at radical reconstruction, at least to me, it seems a lot like what happened in the south before the war, with the fire-eaters. A group of radicals were able to gain support around a “common” enemy and push their ideas into popular policy.

As for tonight’s readings, we are shown the final death of reconstruction. With the election of Hayes in 1876/77, reconstruction was over in the south (as announced by Grant). And for the most part, what the radical reconstructionist had hoped to stop was not stopped at all, the old guard seemed to come right back and restrict black rights. The “unfinished revolution” of black rights would at least get its foundation here, but would not end until the ending half of the 20th century.

i have to agree with Kelly- i found guelzo's "breakdown" of reconstruction very interesting... it helped me consolidate many ideas that have been floating around in my head about the post-war experience. in reading, it struck me that we as students of history, we like to catagorize history under some sort of genre. by that i mean, we say that "such and such event was good for the north but upseting to the south" for example-- this example shows a broad generalization about a historical event.... in reality, the event in question may have been beneficial to a majority of northerners, but certainly not all of them. do you see? we like neatly defined historical summaries that fit into our little comprehensive boxes... by filling these "boxes" we throw vital intricacies to the wayside. shame on us! those intricacies are key in truly understanding the issue at hand.... and in understanding the frustrations/concerns/elation of the people who faced the perplexing oddities and details of the time and event.
i found david's discussion to raise an interesting point, reagarding the nature of reconstruction as purely political. i agree with him in many ways.... but at what point do reconstruction measures shift from political/ideological plans to active/practical measures? in reality, who/what are the vehicles of this transition? could more applicable measures have been taken in early reconstruction that would have made the process more practically efficient than political measures are capable of? would this have really worked, or is the political/ideological state necessary before the practical can occur? hmm.... food for thought... alright, sadly i'm signing off from this, my last posting.... its been fun folks.... and academically stimulating...bye y'all.

   I found Guelzo's breakdown of Reconstruction and it's end to be very interesting. It showed both the pluses and minuses of Recon and allowed one to weigh the factors out for themselves. One thing that really stood out to me in the reading was how South Carolina's state debt jumped from $5.5 million to $25.7 million in only 3 years. That's an amazing amount but it makes sense if the legislators were paying for such frivolous things as a free bar and gambling debts. I really can't believe that such things were allowed to happen, but with no one to stop it, I guess it was inevitable. This made me wonder about how much money slips through the cracks these days.
   Guelzo's portrayal of Grant as being a "political nincompoop" and having a presidency that was a "miasma of corruption" was by far very different from his normal portrayal of historical figures. McClellan got it bad but I think Grant takes the cake. Poor guy..

As this is my last posting for the year, I feel it appropriate to reflect upon the weeks that we have spent toiling over the nuances and subtleties of this greatest American conflict. On entering this course, I knew only the basics of Civil War treatment: the North beat the South; the war was caused by slavery; slaves got freed in the end. Our inquiries into causes, effects, decisions,etc. al. have turned this was into quite a formidable force. I now feel able to see parts of almost any aspect of everyday life--any question that is relevant or important today--in the issues that characterized 1860's America. Dr. Benson's teaching style only makes learning that much easier. His passion and sincerity give the aura of a friendly conversation--a heated chat with a friend--rather than a "professor lecturing a student" atmosphere. I must admit that I had mixed feelings about the idea of reading numerous historical novels, but I must say that "Killer Angels" goes down as one of the best books that I have ever read (and I am not just limiting this ranking to historical books). As finals approach, the tendency is to feel apprehensive and "nervous". I would simply say this: look how far we have come. Who would have though that he or she would be writing essays about Lincoln's suspension of habeus corpus or Lee's decision to fight at Antietam with such confidence? It is truly remarkable to see how much knowledge has been gained from these soon-to-be 12 weeks. Maybe we will each take something permanent--something with staying power--from this class. The Civil War Era...every single idiosynchracy of life encompassed in a handful of years...wow.

I agree that the voice of the radicals is only as loud as their loudest leader. The presence of Sumner seems like a large driving force, however. He is pretty tough on Grant. I can admire Blaine's moderate view. "... it is too late to debate it. It has gone by." He goes on to say that even if he had a strong opinion it probably wouldn't be worth it to bring it out.

That view goes along with my major thought of this reconstruction time. It was so very political. Things really hadn't changed all that much because of the war. There were still these great chasms between parties and regions.

To answer Neal's question, it seems that the Radicals were only as strong as their leaders. Before the war, during the war, and immediately following the war the radicals were a small minorty with very vocal leaders. It was only through Johnson's actions that the radical wing collected new members. With the loss of the vocal leaders the 'radicals' came back towards the middle. It seems as though the Radicals were just a small minority, but because they were so outspoken and took up against Johnson, the moderates decided to join them and upon the loss of this outspoken few, no longer were these radical views held so the former radicals took their original stance as moderates.

Also talking about the Radicals, it didnt seem many people believed in the radical policies passed during their tenure. Congress is passing the laws, but no one is enforcing the laws. Grant will not use the army to put down violence, the Freedman's Bureau is disbanded, the Supreme Court finds ways to not up hold the legislation.

Although this really doesnt have to do with the readings I thought I might throw it in anyway. When I read in Guelzo about the corruption in the Buchanan administration I thought about something I learned earlier this week. Three members of the US House of Representatives are presumed to have been deliberately poisoned at a banquet during the inauguration of President James Buchanan. I found this to be quite odd, that at an inauguration, 3 members of Congress would be poisoned.

Reading Guelzo makes me rethink some notions that I had earlier, and that most people have even now. I was talking with Dr. Benson the other day and he made the comment, if you were to ask someone if blacks voted in the 1870s they'd say of course not. In the reading today we see it was more than voting, but political offices too. If you asked someone if a Mississippi Senator, LA governor pro tem, and so on in the 1870s were black, well of course they'd say no. For some reason no one knows about the blacks voting or the blacks involved in politics in this day. It makes me wonder why we are so uninformed about this.

Is it through Reconstruction that we can judge and measure the true ideals of Northerners and of Republicans in the areas of blacks' rights and postwar intentions? In Abbot's piece, the tone changed from an idea that the Radicals were doing right to Republicans basing decision on sectional advantages.

Guelzo may be right that the loss of the Radical leaders like Stevens and Sumner wore the radical ideals away from the Republican Congress. Or, were they just a minority with significant influence during the war and immediate postwar? The Northerner's true intentions are evident in ignoring southern pleas of monetary funds for the Southern Republicans, tax relief, redistribution of national currency, federal aid for education, and other southern internal improvements.

Through today's readings, I question the true intentions of Northerners and of Republicans. I find that the radicals and the abolitionists were few in number with influence during the war. After the war, however, Northern and Republican ideals surfaced. "Northern Republicans, for the most part, were no more enthusiastic about their black allies in the South than they were about their white supporters. The party only reluctantly endorsed Negro suffrage in the South." (p417). This quasi hypocrisy also is seen in the presidential election of 1876. The Northern Republicans traded military rule in three southern states for Hayes to be president.

One also needs to remember the difficulty the Republicans faced, though. How do you integrate black voters with white northern voters who also have the same bias and racism? How do you set up a political base in the South? Or, should you even try since you have control and can win "without the South"?

Like Janna, Sara, and Austin, the most recent readings challenged some of my preconceived notions about Reconstruction. I was particularly surprised by the Benedict essay, which portrayed Republicans as far less Radical than I would have imagined. Also, I might have suspected that carpetbaggers and Southerners alike were more than just "bloodsucking lawyers" or "lazy, racist, grumpy kind of people," but the Powell and Nordhoff essays really made that clear. So I wonder, how did the fairly hesitant Republicans become "radical" in popular opinion, and how did the educated, generally well-intentioned Northerners become vile carpetbaggers? One answer might be found in the actions of Jefferson Davis after the war, rewriting history to make it appear that states rights was his primary motivation. In a similar fashion, instead of the victors writing the history of the war, those who lost gave their own version in a conscious effort to elevate themselves. So given this rewriting of history and the resistance to confiscation, it certainly seems that the old aristocrats didn't get the punishment they deserve.

I have to agree with Janna. It seems like all other history classes I've taken have just skimmed over Reconstruction too. Who knew it was so complex? The readings in major problems were very interesting. However, I'd rather react to the discussion in class yesterday. Whose property is it, anyway? Should the people who have actually been working the land for two hundred years be allowed to finally have what they have been working all along? Or should we give it right back to the white plantation owners? Don't they deserve SOME punishment for the war? I just have this urge to put the plantation owners in their place for once. They have ruled the land for far too long. I'm not sure this would help matters any, but it seems like it would be good. Doesn't it?

I remember learning about the Civil War in high school and hurrying through Reconstruction as quickly as possible so that we could get on to the next (more interesting) topic. What a shame! Reconstruction, it seems, is just as significant-if not more significant- than the actual battles and wartime policies because its laws and policies have (directly and indirectly) shaped the nation we live in today! The problem of rebuilding an entire culture is certainly an interesting and vexing one and I have found our discussions on Reconstruction very interesting so far. Anyway, the readings for Wednesday (this is late, i know...sorry!), provided a new perspective on the whole issue. Michael Les Benedict claimed that Republican Reconstructionists were not the radicals we often consider them to be...rather, they were conservatives who attempted to carry out reconstruction with the least amount of national govt. intervention possible. Thaddeus Stevens, one such Republican, claimed that "This doctrine [of "negro equality"] does not mean that a negro shall sit on the same seat or eat at the same table with a white man. This is a matter of taste which ever man must decide for himself. THE LAW HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH IT..." (major problems 316). Maybe even the "Radical" Republicans weren't so radical after all! Or maybe, like Shannon said, Stevens was merely "molding ideologies" to gain southern compliance??

To counter Austin's comment, where he used to think of carpetbaggers as "bloodsucking lawyers," when I thought of reconstruction (please don't be offended, this is a biased northern education typing here that has been proved wrong by this class and my classmates) I thought of white southerners a lazy, racist, grumpy kind of people. Grumpy is probably the closest thing to truth, seeing as how the south was taken charge of by the people who defeated them. But not necessarily lazy or racist, and I was happy to be wrong when reading Chapter 13. Nordhoff's idea on not antagonizing the blacks to help a party politically is a very modern point of view that probably didn't get into full effect until after the Civil Rights movement in the next century. I think that this proves that some kind of idealogical political reform atleast tried to happen in the south during reconstruction, even if reconstruction itself was not entirely a successful thing.

Edited by author 05-16-2002 08:00 AM
A thought on yesterday's discussion of land reform -- which ties into Shannon's comments on Thaddeus Stevens and his "guardianship" of the "more wise and the more virtuous": who guards the guardians? I think one can make a good case for Stevens as an anti-democratic force rather than a liberator, if his ideas are seen to be so utterly uncontestable in their planned implementation. (Or maybe I'm still thinking too much like Alexander Stephens ...)

This comment leads into the question of legal title to land. Even if the law has its origins in fraud, theft, violence, etc., the rule of law is (I think) preferable to disorder. If Congressional Reconstructionists had begun large-scale land redistribution (aided by the destruction of large numbers of Southern land records in the war), how would they again have "fixed" the title? Would land ownership be left in a perpetual state of flux? Who would farm land if he -- white or black -- couldn't be certain that he would own the land tomorrow? The undermining of the faith of the people in legal title might have been beneficial for the freedmen in the very short term, but I wonder how one gets the genie back in the bottle.

Doh! I hit the wrong button, or combination of buttons, and my entire post, right when I was about to post, was deleted. So I'll try again...

To me, Powell's essay on carpetbaggers was enlightening; I used to think of carpetbaggers as bloodsucking lawyers coming down from the North to take all the South's money. Well, this essay throws some facts at me and offers some good explanations of who the carpetbaggers were and why they came. Powell makes it clear that they were neither "penniless adventurers" nor the bloodsucking lawyers that I'd thought they were. They were, for the most part, educated people with a chance to make some money in a fairly legitimate manner: going to the South to help reconstruct. Sounds like a good idea, but as usual, the implementation was harder in actuality than it sounded on paper. I think that where the carpetbaggers and their constituencies were on good terms with each other, Southern society had a good chance of slowly but surely developing. To me, it's not a question of who were the bad guys and who were the bad guys; rather, it's a question of how well these people worked together to rebuild the South after the ravages of the Civil War left it badly wounded.

Just wanted to begin by saying that judging from the reactions in class today, I think it is easy to see how the different problems of Reconstruction (especially land confiscation) could get very ugly very easily. I was at first more convinced by the argument on behalf of the "contractual" owners of the land (however immoral their claim may have been), if for no other reason than I am somehow convinced by their "legally" justified claim to the land. Delving more deeply into how those lands had been acquired in the first place, however, kind of throws the whole picture into jeopardy for me; to be honest, even with the benefit perspective, I am not quite sure what to make of the whole situation.

With respect to the views expressed in the readings for Wednesday, I tend to second Stephanie's acceptance of Sherman's need for caution; it may well be true that the only way in which to fully render the verdict of the war was by harsh control and, sometimes, punishment, but the spirit of personal retribution and "scores to be settled" was rampant, and I believe caution was the only possible way to make sure this sentiment didn't override legitimate attempts at recreating civil society. To sort of combine what Stephanie and Sean have said, also, barring certain groups from voting would definately have brought about resentment, a powerful force (as we saw vividly portrayed in the Ash book); however, keeping former Confederates out of positions of power (as outlined by the 14th Amendment) was a pretty workable solution to keep down the possibility of another "hijacking" of the progress of Reconstruction. One other thing I just wanted to note: I find it interesting the way leaders during the time (as in all times, probably) molded ideologies to fit whatever they needed them to do--i.e. Thaddeus Stevens says "the rebel states . . . should be made republican in spirit, and placed under the guardianship of loyal men." (Major Problems 315). In order for this plan to work, spirit is the only realm in which republicanism could exist, because the concept of guardianship as a political form basically precludes the full extension of the republican form of government, because power is controlled by those "more wise and more virtuous" than the common set of people. In viewing full force the contradiction in terms which existed at this point, I am almost amazed to be living in the world I do today.

The chapter on "Southern Republicans and the Problems of Reconstruction" gives the reader different views on Reconstruction and Federal intervention in the South. Each article demonstrates the various feelings of americans depending on where they are living. James Orr touches upon the idea of the newly freedman in society. He also discusses blacks in government and if it is possible that the governemnt can work while their are mixed races within. Lamar talks about his feelings towards Northerners. Lamar distastes the North as the Federal Government is taking over the local and state governemnts and replacing the old with the North. These new people in office are trying to impose laws and regulations that are not befitting to the South. Lastly, White talks about the violence towards those, mainly Northerners, who are trying to change the South. Consequently, brutal murders are taking place as bands of men are trying to expel the North. It was interesting to me that I have not been taught much about these bands of men in the South who were committing crimes to get rid of Northerners and those not from the South.

This passage shows how badly the Republican party suffered during Reconstruction in the late 1870's. Many people in the South had problems with Reconstruction. The book states that the Republican party could have been the reason why Reconstruction failed. It seems that in these years, the southern people and the former slaves reversed roles. The South felt oppressed like the slaves did before the war. These ideas are shown in Lamar's excert. Lamar is upset because he said that they came to the South and took control of their governments, and confiscated their lands. Other problems in the South included trying to control groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and the White League of Louisiana. The Kellog letters were interesting because you never really hear about small incidents such as this. This whole reading for tonight was interesting because the Southerners were put in the slaves positions(although not nearly as bad) and they thought that the government was taking away all their rights. What were the whites doing to the blacks before the war?

I agree with most of what Hunter said concerning the rights position of the blacks in the South. They appeared to have no rights, or even less than the did before the war. But I don't agree that the war set them back. Of course now they were subject to all of the whites scrutiny and hate, yet they were still givin the opportuinty towards upward mobility, something they had never had in the previous 200 years of slavery. I think if you ask any of the freedmen, they would tell you that life may have been tougher free (without the stability of meals every day and a roof over their heads), but they would still much rather have the free life, where there is the potential for change. There is always that threat, of complete failure, but the hope of a better life prevails and spurns the freedmen to fight on through the persecution.

I disagree with Sherman in his views on reconstruction. He had a right to be cautious with the South, but keeping them from office is a great idea. Those positions of office and influence are what got the nation into this mess, therefore the federal governemtn should avoid making a fatal mistake, that could lead to another rebellion. I agree with Stephanie in that pressing down the rich, white southerners could potentially be dangerious, but I think that danger is much less of a factor when those men are not in a position of power. It may widen the division in the short term, but that division would only occur in the minds of the radicals, consisting of a very small faction of the South. Rather the average southerner would see the light and come to understand that every man is created equal and deserves equal rights. Keeping the elite landowners out keeps the brainwashing out, letting the reconstruction process move along without hinderance.

The readings today just emphasized how controversial Reconstruction was and how difficult it was for the government to form policies that pleased everyone. Thaddeus Stevens was adamant about keeping control away from the states and letting freed blacks vote in southern states. I think he echoes the thinking of many when he says, "Have not loyal blacks quite as good a right to choose rulers and make laws as rebel whites?". I was surprised that he admitted to having ulterior motives to boost the Union party. Although he says it is the only way to ensure a strong nation I can understand how his opponents accused him of being power-hungry. In this selection he sounds like he thinks a good reason for blacks to vote would be to keep "rebels" out of the national government. I tend to agree with Sherman when he urges caution in creating Reconstruction policies. I do think that the rebellious states should face some kind of consequences, but keeping them from voting and holding office could only cause resentment and hostility. Furthermore, it simply widens the division between the two sections of the country. I think Sherman had the right idea when he said, "after providing all necessary safeguards for white and black, let us reconstruct society in the rebel states on the broad basis of universal suffrage".

After reading todays selections, the overriding theme was the continuing distrust and hatred of blacks by uncompromising Southern men. Charles Nordhoff spoke of Mississippi politics "in melancholy condition," just because the state had a colored majority in the vote. I think they were sweating because they knew that blacks were gaining the power to get back at the Southern oppressors who enslaved them for hundreds of years. It was scary, yet not at all ironic to read Governor Adelbert Ames' account of the riot in Clinton Mississippi September 1875. During the war, guerillas rode around terrorizing and killing blacks and Unionists, and the Clinton riot was just another chapter added to the racist violence. It's crazy to think that 'white liners' just rode up to a barbeque and started shooting down black men, women and children. The war might have been a step backward for blacks because they were more in the spotlight and whites had more of a reason to hate and commit violence against them.
     Representative Lamar's assailment of Reconstruction and the problems with it can only be blamed on Southerners themselves. He called Northern politicians in the South "completely insulated from the traditions, the feelings, the interests..." of the South. As we all know, the South brought their plight on themselves and deserved to deal with whatever the victorious Union felt inclined to make them do. They should have thought about the consequences before they entered the war, so they should have just sucked it up and dealt with it. It is my opinion that they got off to easily. I would have enslaved them for awhile to see how they like that horrible lifestyle.

Edited by author 05-15-2002 05:26 PM
Debate Successes and Challenges

As I indicated in class, both the successes and challenges of the group project can tell us a great deal about unit cohesion and leadership challenges in the war, and the process of community formation afterwards. There is also a great deal of contextual information to be derived from the presence or absence of accessible and relevant sources about specific characters and their views.


COOLEST THINGS IN OUR GROUP
*Was group dynamics - pulling together to formulate our characters platform and reconstruction stance.
*Learning how well the rest of my group "knew their stuff and got into character.
*I got to work with people that I didn't really know and it was interesting to watch the group dynamics and see how everything fell into place. In the end, I think it turned out well.
*A delightful harmony of academic philosophies.
*The coolest part of the debates was preparing a formal opening speech which would catch the attention of all other groups. Wording the statement so it would not be able to be turned around on the group and get across the ideas that we believe in.
*The debate itself was really interesting.
*Coolest thing in getting group to debate: putting everything together in a Quicktopic board; doing opposition research (being the "mole").
*Sharing ideas on how to carry out the debate. Trying to change into the persons of our character.
*My group tried to get me to dress up as gvt. Person - the coolest part was that it didn't work out.
*Discussing the true nature of our character. Deciding which members of the opposition to attack.
*The coolest thing was looking at so many ideological constitutionally based arguments in the case of Anthony's trial for voting which went back to the idea of the experiment of republicanism, but also could be changed to apply to so many different situations. It really showed the fine line of constitutional interpretation
*The best thing in preparing for the debate was learning about the various viewpoints of leaders during the time of Reconstruction.
*Progressively uncovering tidbits of information about our character and stumbling over things that made us say, "Oh! We can use that."
*I guess it was finding some really good source material (in the forms of letters and books) and being able to use that in the debate so that we could use his language when speaking.
*We prepared for ways our opponents would try to attack us and ways they'd agree with us. We tried to come up with ways to divert the debate to issues we were strong in.
*Finding ways to undermine the opponents arguments.
*One coolest thing was that I think despite being toward the end of the year our group has tried to be innovative in the way we approach the debate. For example we were going to dress up a member of our group in clothes representing our character.
**** was willing to wear a dress. . . but he didn't.
*Listening/discussing different interpretations of virtually the same material - everybody brought his/her own perspective to the group.
*Trying to figure out how our character would interact with/react to other characters in the debate (making inferences).
*Learning about the intimacies of the character's personality and the role in the Civil War and Reconstruction.
*The best thing was that although there was not information now available, he was a typical radical and it was easy to find information on them as a group.


GREATEST CHALLENGES IN OUR GROUP
*Was finding my character's precise/specific reconstruction views - (e.g. on womens' civil/pol. Rights) -
*limited amount of information available.
*Finding time to do research, finding the books at the eleventh hour.
*Getting together to organize our information and coming up with questions for the opposition.
*Getting the project prepared over beach weekend.
*Our greatest challenge for our group , Andrew Johnson, was preparing a debate that would stay away from Johnson's beliefs against the 14th amend. And Civil Rights Acts, and focus not so much on equality but states rights.
*Trying to keep certain issues about our representative from coming up during the debate.
*Getting everyone excited about participating in the actual debate (ie, deciding speaking parts).
*Trying to change into the person of our character.
*To argue that Susan B. Anthony had ideas that were applicable to the debate - it seems we were the delegate that no one really cared much about.
*The wealth of information, and sorting through it all. *Deciding what questions to ask in such a short time.
*The greatest challenge was finding specifics about things like land redistribution, because women's rights was so much more a key issue for Anthony.
*Acting like my character would in a Congressional debate against people he would disagree with for various ideological differences.
*Simulating our character's responses to the views of the other debate members without entering our own thoughts or created nations; also, trying to take on the attitude that we had the best view (this technique makes debates much easier).
*Time. It was difficult to find a time when we could all meet. We had to do a lot of research on our own and then only have one meeting to put it all together.
*The greatest challenge was trying to defend a plan that we didn't necessarily agree with. We had to highlight the positive parts of our plan.
*Finding adequate information on our character and anticipating how he would respond in a given situation.
*Our biggest challenge was to get all members of our group motivated and a direction and a goal to follow. This was because we were unsure of how the debates would go and because it was right around beach weekend.
*Motivation
*Finding opposition research
*We were all pretty tired and were late to get started. The lack of opposition research was not encouraging either.
*Finding information about characters that allowed us to infer (accurately) how they'd act/react.
*Disagreements about character stories.
*Finding alliances and arguments to pose towards other debaters.
*One of the hardest things was that it was hard to find information on our guy. Unlike the other members of the debate our guy was not very prominent and did not have many books on him.

I would just like to comment on how interesting and informative yesterday's debate was and it helped me clear up points of the Reconstruction period for my paper. I was a little shocked because I believed, as did my group, that Andrew Johnson would have recieved more heat and questions during the debate, since there were three or four radical republicans that were against democrats. The questions seemed to be spread out among the different people. In response to Ali, I take the side with MAtthew about the reason why not many questions were asked to Robert Elliot due to his race. Whites did not trust and believe in what blacks did or thought about many issues. Therefore, Robert Elliot is not questioned and the white politicians are beacause back then they were suppossed to be more intelligent and educated about the issues. The opinion of white politicans is taken more to heart than a black mans during that period.

Just remember that it was Alexander Stephens who was doing much of the questioning of Thadeus Stevens. Stephens thinks that blacks are lazy, dumb, and pretty much worthless, so of course he would not degrade himself to talk to the likes of a black man.

Hey - just had an observation - Speaking as Robert Brown Elliot, i thought it was interesting that "I" was questioned only once during the debate today. Seeing as how I am the only black man in the room, one would think that my opinion on the subject of reconstruction and how it affects my people would be valuable information. The fact that Thaddeus, for example, who holds many of the same opinions as myself was questioned rather than me, is indicative of the fact that blacks are not being asked what they need. My opinion is seemingly not as important and does not hold as much authority as thadeus's. Why is that? If there is not even an ideology of COMPLETE equality in actions and in mind, at this high level, how can we expect is at the state level? Here I am, representing all people, and blacks in particular, and no one is asking me to give my argument. Unbelievable!

It was interesting to see how quickly it became apparant that freedom created new problems. Freedom is of course much better than slavery, but it also is far more complicated. Education is definatly the only solution to the matter. But making the education of black people a priority for the whites is a difficult task compared to getting them to make emancipation a priority. The plight of black men after the war demonstrates how whites were fighting to end an evil institution, not to protect a race of people.

i have to disagree with you guys when you say that the black women were "imitating" white women by being lazy and ladylike. I don't think they were trying to "be" like white women in as much as they were simply exercising their freedom to fulfill their domestic duties and put family first like white women had always done instead of the needs of planters first for example. It seems that you're buying into somewhat the same notion that the white had. Jones is saying that there was a double standard. The definition of work changed accordeing to race. The double standard affected the men as well, who were criticized if their wives stayed home, this indicating that she must have some dominance over him. Still, however, at no time did black women seem to sit back and simply "enjoy the sweets of emancipation." As Jones points out, womens' actions were very complicated. Just b/c some satyed at home, doesn't mean life was easy. And I enjoyed learning about the different reasons they did stay home. I hadn't though about thr fact that white employers would still abuse the freedwomen, and that any protest on the part of the husabnd could have serious repercussions. Keeping a woman out of the fields to avoid such situations must have been reason enough.So no, I don;t think lack of ambition, or lazines, or an effort to emulate white ladies had much at all to do with the freedwomens' actions. maybe this isn't what you meant, so sorry if i misinterpreted. But that's what is sounded like.

These readings were on the rebuilding of an entire part of our nation, the South, and some of the necessary changes that came with it. The black community seemed to be impacted the most by such changes, on paper at least, because males were given the right to vote. I thought it was interesting that oin the South Carolina Demands piece the author was asking simply to, "Be governed by the same laws that control other men". But at the time this was a revolutionary stance and would take almost a hundred years to fully be realized. Also, like Nicholas I found the Curtis piece interesting because it depicts how blacks after emancipation were often times not any better off, in terms of economics, than they were before it. Now granted there is much more to the issue of slavery and freedom than economics, but it seems to me that for many slaves the emancipation proclamation gave them more troubles right away then it did solutions.
Also, King's descriptions of the decline of plantations after the war was interesting because it brought to light the labor issues that the Curtis piece had indirectly talked about. King definitely had the right idea when, at the end of his piece, he talked about how the only way he could forsee the South growing back into a power would be the education of the black men. He thinks this is integral to the reconstruction process because when the black man becomes educated he will also have, "Ambition, foresight, and a desire to acquire a competence lawfully and laboriously".
Reconstruction was a period of trying to bring the North and the South back together again and it strained the society of the time but was a necessary step in the progress of our nation.

tonight's reading was a look into reconstruction in the south and the effects it had on the people. it covered the plight of the african american community in a changing world. the reading basically said that although black people were technically free after the war was brought to an end, they were not any better off. "freedom ain't give us notin' but pickled hoss meat an' dirty crackers an' not half enough of dat." i think that black person was tryin to say she wasn't really enjoying her freedom. the role of black women in the postwar period is covered quite thoroughly in the reading. the way they tried to emulate white women by being lazy and "lady-like." this contributed, in the eyes of some historians, to decreased production in the south. the jones essay closed with an interesting description of black families. black households, containing both kin and community, were the opposite of the typical northern household in terms of making a living. in northern society, making a living and family life were distanced from each other. black people, on the other hand, tended to stay in large familiar communities while they were making a living.

Like Matthew, I thought the essay on black women was particularly interesting because of its look at them adopting the values of white women, or at least trying to. It is interesting to see the prejudice in the words of white people during this time, when they refer to white non-working women as proper, while referring to black non-working women as lazy.

Also, I enjoyed the article by King. Specifically I think he echoed some sentiments as the writer of "Three Month" when he said that the system of southern dependence on import would continue as long as there was "negro ignorance." Education was the cure in the south.

Lastly, I thought it interesting that freedmen wanted nothing that even resembled slave life to be a part of their life anymore. Such as the idea of being placed back into the quarters for a living space. Even if it was tough for them to find housing they still would rather work harder that be put into anything that resembled the old way.

The readings for today on the issue of the freedmen was extrememly interesting and gave many varied perspectives. The first document about the african american demands seemed very educated and to display a sense of insightfulness I would not have expected to be present in a recently freed slave from South Carolina. I think these articles portray the immense challenge of bringing an entire race of people out of shackles and to equality was much more comlex than anyone thought at the time. The system of sharecropping that emerged seems good but very much an appeasement to the black people and the rich planters who hired them. It seems like not much really changed, because the planters did not want it to and the freedmen didn't have any power to make it change. The essay on the black family gave insight into the plight of the black woman especially well. I found it interesting that when black women tried to act prim and proper by imitating white women they were shunned.
Another interesting point I found in the reading last night was the shortest document which was my favorite for other reasons besides it being really short. I thought it was interesting that the woman did so much work and when she tried to take her cotton to market she was too nervous or proud or fearful to ask anyone where the market was. These documents shed much light on the extreme poverty and sadness that gripped the african american community in the postbellum period.

well, i forgot to post by this morning... but i'm here now!

along with kelly and some of the others, i really enjoyed reading a first person account of reconstruction times... however, i think janna raised an interesting question in class this morning when she asked who exactly the author was. i think it would be helpful to "consider the source" when reading such an account... was the writer from upper, middle or lower middle class? had he traveled in the south previously (as a standard to compare this visit to)? where in the north was he from? why was he traveling in the south? etc. etc. etc. it seems to me that these questions would shed some light on the context of these written perceptions of the south.

something struck me immediately upon reading this "3 months" article-- the author says that northerners could speak more liberally and freely with upper class southerners than middle or lower class southerners. if this observation is truly accurate, i think it speaks volumes about the idea of a "rich man's war, but a poor man's battle." certainly the poor and middle class citizens of the confederacy would be more hestitant to embrace a northerner in their territory, because the last four years of their lives had been dictated by warfare and bloodshed. some of the upper class southerners had paid for replacements or had supported the war financially, not with their own sweat and blood. they were likely more emotionally detached from the war than the middle class citizens who had embraced the role of confederate soldier. it is no wonder then that the author felt more freedom to speak with upper class southerners-- they typically had less emotional baggage from the war that might keep them from associating with northerners.

i was slighty confused at one point in the reading-- the author makes the case that until the southern caste system is broken, liberties and union cannot be truly appreciated or enjoyed. this implies that the north was without class divisions and social mobility was prominent. how accurate is this perception to the times? what did the north look like socially during the time of reconstruction-- how rigid were class divisions? just a few thoughts to make you guys think....
one other thing struck me-- he argues that reconstruction should embrace genuine loyalty coming from the south, not forced submission. but then he precedes to talk about all the ways changes should be forced on southern sociey (the break down of caste system, establishment of educational system, etc.)-- it seems to me that the authors ideas for reconstruction WITHOUT great RESISTANCE from the south are great in ideal form, but lofty in reality. while the changes mentioned did need to be addressed, the south also simply needed TIME to recover from the blow their pride had received, before redefining their socity and way of life.

Additional Resources
You may want to investigate the Freedmen and Southern Society Project website (http://www.inform.umd.edu/ARHU/Depts/History/Freedman/home.html), Documenting the American South (http://docsouth.unc.edu/) and the PBS "Africans in America" site (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/).

  I always seem to enjoy articles written from an "outside looking in" standpoint, mainly because they seem to bring up ideas that are usually different from the preconceived norm. The Northerner in "Three Months Among the Reconstructionists" paints a picture of the South that, as he says in the article, only a Northerner that has experienced the South can convey or begin to understand. I can only imagine what Northerners thought of the South after reading this. I'm sure they already thought of the South as being backward and barbaric, but this probably sealed the deal.
  To add my two cents in on the education discussion, I would argue that the lack of interest in education probably derived from both the agricultural society that the South was a part of and straight out opposition to anything the North proposed. Like Neal said, the South was focused on farming and at this time, thought they had no need for "learning." In a way, this makes sense. The South had lost so much and it would have been impractical to send the children to school when they were greatly needed to work on the farms for their family's livelihood. The straight out opposition of the South towards the North reminds me of a parent with a teenage child. No matter what the parent says, the teenager automatically disagrees.
   I found the author's reason for why it's hard to build nationality in SC to be quite interesting. He see's it's "haughty state pride" as the main factor standing in the way. I found this interesting because I think this brand of state pride is still evident to this day. For example, the state flag is plastered all over the place, from license plates, to t-shirts, to keychains and I would venture to say that Texas would probably be another state where "haughty state pride" runs rampant. Don't get me wrong, I am by no means knocking the great stat of SC. I guess I found this interesting because I'm guilty of this too(I'll admit, I've purchased the items listed above) and had never really thought of it as getting in the way of nationalism.

Hi Guys. Sorry for posting late again...I have two papers due this week, and I haven't had much time for anything else. I'd like to start be disagreeing with Ryan that Johnson had everyone fooled. While he may have led them to believe their ideals were safe, I think it was they who didn't question him enough to secure his true agenda in reconstruction. It is also unbelievable that Lincoln would choose such a man to be his running mate. They must have talked about the subject in depth, and Johnson's plans of paying back the hated Southern Aristocracy must have been evident. He even went as far as to say "Damn the Negros." I agree with Megan that it is ridiculous to give power back to the Confederates and punishing them so little or not at all after a bloody war that lasted four years and took thousands of lives. Johnson pardoned Confederate officers instead of hanging them and allowed them to serve in state governments. It is hard to believe that state governments could fall into old Confederate hands so easily and that the surrender and reinstatement of governments could be allowed without full emancipation and rights to blacks.

I agree Neal's discussion of education. I was pretty surprised to see how resistant they were to it. I suppose it had never really been a part of their lives and they continued to see their way of life continuing to slip out of their grip. Part of me wonders, however, if they refused it just because it was offered or suggested by the North.
I agree with Rusty's paragraph about what Southerners had to return to. It is a very suffocating thing to think about. They had given up their lives for a cause and now they had to return to what they had fought against and they were in a worse position actually. It is no surprise that Southerners didn't really accept blacks as equals. That is something that I've always taken for granted but one has to realize that the African Americans were still walking around the south and working with the whites. They were an-ever present reminder that the South was to be changed. It could not be forgotten.
The paper is pretty pro-northern, at least in that it tends to criticize the Southerners who were realizing how dependant they were on the blacks. Guelzo made that point the other night saying something like the whites were horrified to realize that they needed the blacks a lot more than they were needed by the blacks.
I am intrigued by his suggestion (in 3 months...) to "make haste slowly in the work of reconstruction."

I, in accordance with Matt Heathman, feel that the "Three Months" essay was very informative and enjoyable. The sections concerning Southern distaste for education were perplexing. I really found myself subscribing to the old "We work the old-fashioned way; we don't need none of that education, fancy-pantsy stuff" notion of the South.

As far as the hatred shown towards"damned Yankess" by Southerners, I was not surprised at all. The CSA had just been defeated, meaning their entire cause--their entire effort--was a bust. Moreover, they had to go crawling back to the very government they had seceded from. Even MOREover, that old federal government would be able to dictate the rebuilding of Southern politics and civil society. BLACK MEN GET TO VOTE AND HAVE RIGHTS!?!?!?!? Who is going to pick the crops??? Nooooooo. See the reasons for resentment and spiteful hatred? They are blatantly obvious (and maybe not unreasonable).

Just one more thought...I like the way the writer seemed to suggest that white Southerners failed to see black rights as being merely equal to those of their own; they naturally assumed that blacks would somehow take over control of all society and dominate every aspect of life. However, blacks were simply gaining the very rights enjoyed by whites--the rights that had long been withheld from them. It isn't like they were getting some sort of special treatment...

Reconstruction may be just as interesting and exciting as the War. After all, how do you put something that is completely broken back together again--and how do you expect to make it respect and abide by the laws of the very entity that it saw as its "breaker"???

I feel I should cut and paste Matthew's comments on the 3 Months essay because I agree with everything he wrote. Rather than cut and paste, though, I'll try to add.

Education to us, modern Americans, seem not only important but essential in our way of life. We must go to college to be able to obtain a job, etc. The South, however, did not have that need in the nineteenth century and we must remember this. A person lacking in "schooling" did not have the negative connation of today. In fact, one could argue the learning of book skills vs. practical skills (farming). Which one is important in an agricultural society? A Southerner didn't need the newspaper ("had never taken a newspaper in his life") or a public school when his family's true need was to tend the field for the day.

To continue with Matthew's thoughts on why Reconstuctionist Southerners hated the yankees, I would add to the reasons: raising the black status to at least a poor white status, northern military rule ("I shall not vote till you take away the military."), the loyalty to the state, the impact of casualties from yankees in the war, northerners taking land and economically competing in the south, and the "ideals" of the North to be industrialists, etc. All of these contributed to the hatred of yankees. The murders of Union men and sentiments of "No Yankee stops in this house!" all result from the dislike between northerner and southerner.

The 3 months essay shows some interesting problems during Reconstruction that are at the base of Southern society. Class conflict is very important, not just white and black but also between white and white. The conflict is easier seen between the white and the black because it is more open and encouraged. For example, if a black desires to be idle and not work it is horrible and degrading to the race, yet if a white doesnt work it is ok, because labor is debasing. So in other words, its alright for a white to be lazy and not alright if a black is lazy. And yet blacks are the ones who are known for being lazy. As for white and white, the planter class of whites are more sophisicated than the lower class, compared to the 'barbarians' of the country. The writer doesnt exactly say this, but infers that the upper class whites hold the lower class whites down. He says white slavery takes place in the south. Its sort of like Serfdom, but where there is a lower class than serfs, that of the blacks. Lower class whites accept this because it gives them something to strive for, to be that upper class white, but it also makes them feel above someone, the blacks. This is more than likely why the common class of Southerns hate yankees, because it was the yankees who made the blacks their equals. The planter class does not care, because it doesnt really affect them, they are still the highest class in the south, the only difference now is that they have to minimally pay workers. Rich man's war, poor man's fight, the poor man gave all he had, including their lives in this war, and yet they lost everything, they are now even with the blacks, in their eyes, they have been knocked down, not the blacks raised up.

Something I found quite interesting in the reading was that none of the Southerners really wanted education. I'm wondering if this backlash against the yankees, because Southerners see them as educated or if it is because Southerners feel they dont need it, education is not needed in farming, reading, writing, and arithmatic wont do alot of good for you in the farming industry.

Sorry, I forgot to post last night.

Reading my group's messages and Guelzo made me remember High School and Freshman American Studies. I think we spent at least two weeks on "The Nails in Andrew Johnson's Coffin", or what he did wrong leading up to his impeachment. I think the moves Johnson made during reconstruction could be considered one of those nails, seeing as how he disappointed the Radical Republicans with only wanting to take revenge, as Megan said.

I also found it interesting how the Ironbacks originally had an agenda on the circumstances of the newly freed slaves and their place in society, that did not pass in the 1870's but resurfaced in the 1960's during the Civil Rights movement. It creates a whole list of "what ifs" that makes one wonder how much would have been different if Lincoln hadn't been killed, or if Johnson had been more radical. Would 90 years of racial oppression been wiped away? Would there have been a struggle for blacks?

Having studied Reconstruction more than once I am always struck by the unwillingness of the people in power to take this great opportunity to provid rights to people who have been disenfranchised for so long. Guelzo depicts this unwillingness very well. It's just so hard to believe that after four years of fighting a war people are going to let the country go back to the way it was before the war. I think it's so ironic that the Radical Republicans first had so much faith in Johnson and his ability as President. However, they were sorely disappointed when they learned that he only wanted to exact revenge on the white aristocratic Southerners. I just think it's so sad that this great opportunity to better our country was missed. I suppose, though, that they didn't think giving blacks rights would better our country.

This reading was very confusing trying to figure out Andrew Johnson's actual stance on Reconstruction policy. I agree with Austin when he said that Johnson had everyone fooled. He was like Lincoln in that he was politically motivated. Johnson's "presidential Reconstruction" was seen as generous and reasonable to most people. This system could always be undercut by things such as "black codes" in Mississippi. When I was reading the passage, i was thinking: What would have happened if Lincoln hadn't been killed? Would his reconstruction policy be similar to that of Johnson's? This struggle over which reconstruction policy to choose is confusing, but I think that the debates on Monday will give us a good idea on everyone's stance on the issue.

By the way, I liked that comic that Dr. Benson put up on the board. Mr T is the kind of guy Starfleet would have arrested for contaminating the timeline!

The impression I get from Guelzo's pages this time is that Andrew Johnson was almost as politically adept as his predecessor, Lincoln. He had the Radical Republicans fooled into thinking he would actually pursue civil rights for the freedmen, when in fact, Johnson, as admitted by his private secretary, "exhibited a morbid distress and feeling against the negroes." (383) In this way, he really does remind me of Andrew Jackson, as Guelzo mentions. Jackson got elected because he ran "for the people," and he was determined to fight the white aristocracy for the white middle- and lower-class. In the same way, Johnson advocated white government while keeping the blacks disfranchised, no matter how "free" they supposedly were. I wonder if this president would have issued an emancipation proclamation had Lincoln somehow been assassinated before January 1863.

Today's reading I found interesting in that Guelzo explained the Radical groups towards the end of the Civil War and reconstruction period. What I found most interesting was that the strongest support for the Radicals came from the freed slaves. They were working towards voting rights for blacks as they established the Freedmon's Bureau which worked towards educating and getting blacks back on their feet. What stood out in the reading was that Secretary of War Stanton and Andrew Johnson both had the concept of military governors to ensure black civil rights. Furthermore, Johnson focused more on fighting the white plantation owners and their riches than a central focus on civil rights of blacks. This plan was called " Presidential Reconstruction." and I look forward to learning more about Andrew Johnson and reconstruction policy as we eneter into our debates.

Edited by author 05-06-2002 04:45 PM
And now for the lighter side of Lincoln's assassination: http://www.angelfire.com/80s/mrtvsjwb/index.html

By Popular Demand: Secession Convention Reinactment

[From the NCSouth e-newsletter, 5/4/2002]:

We would like to remind you of this upcoming event.
1861 Secession Experiences
Date: Saturday, May 18, 2002
Time: 10:00AM - 4:00PM EDT (GMT-04:00)

A Confederate troop encampment will take place on the grounds of the North Carolina State Capitol in downtown Raleigh, and dramas will be performed inside the Capitol to portray events and feelings in Raleigh when the legislature voted to secede from the Union and to enter the War for Southern Independence. Performances will begin on the hour, and reservations are recommended. For further details or directions, please contact the Capitol Visitor Center at (919) 733-3456, or by e-mail at state.capitol@ncmail.net

The Confederate situation was pretty desperate in April 1865, and surrender would seem like the prudent to do. Still, we know that the soldiers who were in it at that point were the diehard veterans, of the sort who would march all the way to North Carolina to join what was clearly a losing battle. We also know all about Lee’s personal reluctance and misgivings about secession, not to mention the fact that he was well aware that the end was fast approaching. Knowing that he still had something to work with was certainly a factor in Lee’s decision not to surrender earlier in April, but perhaps there was something more. I think part of Lee’s decision to keep going was to do it for the sake of the men. They were determined to fight on anyway; the least he could do was to stay and provide the military and moral leadership the soldiers needed. Otherwise, they might fall into haphazard guerilla fighting, only to be picked off piece by piece by the Federal army. At least at the head of the army, Lee could lead the men to a glorious, if futile, battle.

We’ve said that Lincoln and the Ironbacks were pretty close in terms of their goals, but differed in their methods. Fast and relatively painless is how Guezlo characterizes Lincoln’s view of Reconstruction. I wonder, had he lived, whether Lincoln would have come into anything like the troubles Andrew Johnson had with Congress. Would Lincoln have acquiesced to the Ironbacks rather than push his own plan, as Johnson did? From the reading, Lincoln seems to be setting his own path to Reconstruction, so conflict with the Ironbacks was inevitable. After winning the war, would Lincoln have the clout to push his views on Reconstruction? Interesting.

In regard to the just war theory: I agree with what everyone has said so far about the needless deaths and the futility of fighting a losing cause, Stephanie makes a good point that the soldiers knew the war was over way before April. Stephanie talks about how the soldier were dropping by the side of the road during the last march, but I wonder if Lee was simply trying to make it to a town to surrender with the least amount of deaths. With the Union in hot pursuit and constantly attacking his rear guard, I think Lee might have been simply trying to reach safety and avoid being slaughtered. Again, I don’t know what the Yankees would have done if the Rebs just stopped marching in the middle of the road, but I think it would have been worse than anything Lee did in leading them to Appomattox.

I also want to comment on the Lincoln section in Guelzo, when he talks about his dreams and fears. Guelzo seems to put a lot of merit on Lincoln’s dreams and fears about assassination, as if Lincoln could see the future, but realistically, wouldn’t any president at war with his own country have these fears? If this section were all that we knew about Lincoln (putting aside his image of a hero and one of the greatest presidents ever), I would think he is crazy. He sees things in mirrors, has a crazy guard sleep outside his door, and he can’t even communicate to his top generals on what he wants to do when Lee and Johnston surrender. Not what is to be expected from our commanding general at the end of a war and the beginning of a critical social, political, and economic period in our nations history.

Re: the Just War theory, I am inclined to take Stephanie's persective that so many died needlessly in the last days of the war, though Lee was probably doing what he thought best (or, at any rate, they only thing he thought he could do). I personally am more inclined to go with the 'the soldiers couldn't/wouldn't have surrendered and gone home until they had been beaten several times over and there was ABSOLUTELY nothing else left that they could do' theory. Even down in the last, most desperate moments (and perhaps most then of all times) no one wants to admit that they are giving up everything they have been fighting so hard for for the last four years.

One other specific comment regarding the reading for Monday. When discussing the idea of what lay ahead for the Union after CSA surrender (aka: reconstruction, etc), Guelzo mentions that Lincoln was "reluctant to risk the appearance of tampering with the Constitution" (371) in working towards new amendments to safegaurd his wartime gains. As we have discussed, this period is one so much different from what we know of warfare today, and I think this reading also gives us what a different political feel it must have had. Not to say that constitutional amendments are any less of a big deal today, but the Civil War came in a period when so few changes had been made, and, really, so many were outstanding (including the 13th, 14th, and 15th) in actually working our way through the experiment of republicanism, to a fully consolidated democracy.

Edited by author 05-05-2002 09:47 PM
Austin, your interjection was well-timed, but if you'd really like to put your three words into broader practice, I'll arrange for you to visit a cozy little corner of the West Bank ... or perhaps the former Yugoslavia.

Back to the Civil War. Stephanie and Janna (et al.) reserved their criticism for Marse Robert, but what about Jeff Davis? How could he have the best interests of the Confederate states in mind when he refused a remarkably lenient peace initiative in February 1865? Lincoln offered *in person* partial compensation for the immense Confederate war debt and the possibility of gradual emancipation at Hampton Roads, and Davis turned him down (CAR 373). What the ...? When Joe Johnston can't even assemble a speed bump against Sherman in the Carolinas, Davis is talking about raising new Confederate armies! (From boys under 16 and old men?) Perhaps the Southern states should have tried Davis as a war criminal before the U.S. could go after him for treason.

It's a pity that Guelzo doesn't give us Booth's parting words in Ford's Theater (which I think Jeff Davis deserves): "Sic semper tyrannis!"

This is in response to the Reuters article: I'd like to be blunt here because this issue really irks me. I agree with Mr. Werfelman: the US ended slavery about 150 years ago. I don't think that many of us modern people would endorse the use of slavery, but for heaven's sake, this was a century and a half ago! One may as well sue Germany as "reparations" for the descendants and survivors of the Holocaust; Israel may as well sue Egypt for benefitting off the use of Hebrew slaves 3000 years ago; and I may as well be sued for my great-great grandfather's owning of a handful of slaves, because I can say that my family, however indirectly, has somehow benefitted from the labor of those few slaves. I'm not proud of it, but the past is the past, and no one can change it, and I have only three words for those complaining about what happened so long ago: --Get Over It--

Edited by author 05-05-2002 07:18 PM
The whole idea of a "just war" seems like a contradiction to me. Friday's reading described Lee's soldiers marching toward Amelia Court House and dropping by the side of the road from hunger and fatigue. In my eyes, this is the point where Lee should have known that enough was enough. I think that Janna makes a good point about Lee's devotion to his soldiers and the Confederacy and I suppose that the soldiers would not give up until they were thoroughly defeated, but it seems like so many men died needlessly in the last days of the war. Of course, I'm not Lee and I don't think like a war general, but I don't understand how he could let so many of his men die in his quest for rations. I think that taking chances is necessary in war and Lee certainly benefitted from many of the chances he took, but this devotion to the Confederate cause seems almost fanatical. Lee loved Virginia and his homeland above all else; however, he sacrificed many lives in order to try to protect it to the last. Since hindsight is 20/20 I guess it's easy for us to look back and condemn his actions in April 1865, but ulitimately Lee acted in the way that he thought best until defeat could not be denied.

Edited by author 05-04-2002 05:37 PM
in class we've discussed the "just war" theory and pondered at what point fighting becomes immoral. i'll lay aside my personal belief that war is pretty immoral from the beginning and ponder about what lee's soldiers must have thought. as we've discussed, surely they knew that they were fighting a losing battle long before april 1865...but (in monday's readings), guelzo points out that after lee surrendered to grant, "the men all ran down to the road and surrounded him, everyone trying to shake hands with him, many of them in tears..."(376). i know that we touched on this in class, but i really think that for lee, the war was "just" as long as his men remained devoted to it. the men who were left fighting for the confederacy in the spring of 1865 (those who hadn't deserted, been wounded, or killed) were devoted to the confederacy in a way that i cannot personally imagine. the men would rather have died for the confederate cause than have quit early in the game. certainly this devotion stemmed from the devotion that lee himself had for the confederacy.
another point worth mentioning, i think, is the one guelzo makes about lincoln's feelings at the end of the war and the way he expressed them to the nation. lincoln didn't blame the south; rather, he claimed the war had been "a strange and inexplicable movement of god" (372). in addition to this forgiving attitude about the war, lincoln portrayed (accidentally?) "a willingness...to negotiate about the actual political outcome of the war" (374). i think that lincoln's perceived attitude about the war perhaps made reconstruction more difficult that it would have been if lincoln had been "harder" about it--if he hadn't seemed so lax about his postwar policies from the outset...

Wednesday May 1, 5:25 PM EDT

NEWARK, N.J., May 1 (Reuters) - A class action lawsuit was filed on Wednesday against three U.S. companies demanding reparations for the decendents of black American slaves from firms that benefitted from the slave trade.

New York Life Insurance Co., Wall St. investment firm Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. and Norfolk Southern Corp. (NSC) were named in the suit filed in federal court in Newark on behalf of Richard E. Barber Sr., a former deputy executive director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

"This is just another step in a series of upcoming political and legal moves that will address the issue of reparations for American slave descendants," said plaintiff attorney Edward Fagan, who was involved in reaching recent Holocaust settlements with German companies and Swiss banks.

"Similar suits will be filed all over the country in the coming months," Fagan added.

Last month Aetna Inc. (AET), CSX Corp. (CSX) and FleetBoston Financial Corp. (FBF) were named in a lawsuit filed by the same group of attorneys in Brooklyn federal court on behalf of a 36-year-old black activist.

Barber, who served as regional administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration in the Carter administration, described the suit as "a debt owed to the descendants of slaves."

"Certain corporations benefited from the use of stolen labor and built their profits and wealth on the backs of enslaved Africans," he said. "It is finally time for them to account for these historical injustices and to pay back the monies unjustly acquired by their actions."

The lawsuit demanded an accounting by the companies for monies derived from the slave trade and that unjust profits be turned over. It also wanted production of corporate documents and the establishment of a humanitarian fund to benefit the black community, lawyer Roger Wareham said.

Fagan said the black American reparation suits were similar to Holocaust suits in demanding an accounting of slave labor profits in the same way corporations were required to account for their profiteering from Jewish slave labor during World War Two.

Courts also allowed descendents of Holocaust survivors to benefit, which is necessary in the slave cases as none still are alive.

According to the suit, one third of the first 1,000 life insurance policies written by New York Life predecessor Nautilus Insurance Co. between 1846 and 1847 were on the lives of slaves.

New York Life, one of the largest U.S. life insurers, did not comment on the merits of the suit but issued a statement saying it would provide company records for examination.

"Any lawsuits about events 150 years ago face huge legal hurdles, and we believe it is far more appropriate to judge a company by its values and actions today," said William Werfelman, a spokesman for 157-year-old New York Life.

"We profoundly regret that our predecessor company was associated with slavery in any way, for even a brief period of time," Werfelman told Reuters. "The fact that slavery was legal in certain parts of the United States at the time doesn't make it any less repugnant."

James and William Brown, founders of Brown Brothers Harriman, built their fortunes earning commissions on arranging shipments of cotton grown on plantations that used slaves to England, as well as loaning money to plantation owners for the purpose of buying slaves, the suit said.

It suit said that Louisiana records from the 1840s showed the Browns used 346 slaves on their two plantations.

A company statement said, "We abhor that slavery ever existed in this country or any other country and have no direct knowledge about the activities of the time as being questioned, nor do we have any records."

The suit said Norfolk Southern was successor-in-interest to numerous railroads allegedly constructed or operated in part by slaves.

©2002 Reuters Limited.

Sorry to post so late. After the discussion in class I would have to say that Lee was no longer fighting a "just war." But that doesn't mean that he was a murderer. Perhaps he saw submission as a greater evil than death. That kind of mentality was present at the start of the war, and I don't think it ever really left Lee's mind, even if it left the many who deserted. Many times in history we have looked up to those who continued to fight for liberty and such things, even though there was no hope of victory. Now, I don't think the Confederacy was fighting for those principals even if they claimed they were. But I think it is significant enough that they believed they were fighting for those things and because of that we shouldn't accuse the generals of murder. It was foolish and unnecessary for Lee to continue the fight, but there is still something admirable about it.

I would like to add to today's discussion. I don't think Lee should have or even could have surrendered until he was surrounded. Even surrounded, if there was a chance to escape, Lee had reason to continue. He and his war horse, Longstreet, was of the opinion "not yet". This is not "murder" to continue fighting any more so than Lincoln declaring war in the first place. I think rather than questioning the decision on when to surrender, it is more important to view Grant's decision to get ahead of Lee's army and put an end to the war. Grant's decision to finalize the war is much more important than Lee's decision to continue the war. Without Grant's decision, I don't think Lee had to even consider surrender - he didn't have to for the past three or four years.

I think I feel a similar admiration for Lee. We can look back with rational minds, but we cannot reflect with passionate or distraught or determined hearts. Lee's commitment to his men, his sense of honor, his determination while starving himself (I lose determination after skipping a meal)-these things awaken some sort of admiration in all of us. The audacity of calling for Grant's surrender is the stuff movies are made of. It all brings to the question of looking at history subjectively. Should Grant have surrendered? Yes, if you mean that it would have prevented loss of life, if you mean that it was the rational thing to do. But war isn't based solely on rational thinking; every decision is made with the heart as well as the head. I believe that people aren't supposed to be objective, and if you look at Lee's actions, perhaps his subjectivity turned out to be most fulfilling for his men, for himself, and for future readers who look for heroism and honor in a day where it is lost.

As the author points out, "the distinction between military genius and reckless insanity was often measured by the razor-thin line of success". So we can sit here all day long and criticize Lee for not giving up when the situation appeared too difficult, but I agree with Ali that after many years of hard fighting no one wanted to simply give up because of a lack of food. Confederate soldiers morale was always extremely high despite the adversities they faced. And even in this long march to escape the fury of Grant's army all it took was Lee riding through the ranks waving the flag to get his soldiers ready for another day of marching and fighting even though many of them were literally starving to death. Lee knew how to get every ounce of energy and fight out of his men and I think he should be looked at as a genius in motivation of his soldiers if nothing else.

looking back it is easy to say lee should have surrendered. but like the article said, wars can tuen on such minor things, and if you'd been fighting for a cause you truly believed in for several years, it would be hard to admit defeat no matter what the odds were against. Lee is human after all. James, you said Lee had an obligation to surrender, etc... but what about the sodliers themselves. The fact that they pushed on despite, starvation, etc.. surely indicates the extent to which they were internally driven. Lee "would not be denied," but I don' think the soldiers would be either.Alexander said that the men were not ready to surrender. But then again, I'm a little suspicious of Winink. I think he seems to have a tendency to emphasize the heroic, etc.. qualities about Lee. Should we admire Lee after reading about this event? I think Winik wants us to. But what about Alexander. When Lee turned is council into a discussion of surrender, it was Alexander who offered the third option of guerrilla warfare, not Lee. Anyway, overall i think Lee should be questioned and applauded.

This was an interesting reading. I agree with James that Lee should have surrendered, especially as Winik portrays it. Lee does not seem to have anything left to fight with. This goes along with what we talked about in class today. When should a general surrender? When does war become just murder?

The way the book shows it, Lee's men were done, no hope for food, or supplies, and they were up against a well-supplied army. Lee's only option was retreat into a barren land. In a way I understand that Lee was thinking if he could only hold them off long enough he could regroup and continue, but it at the time of Grant’s letter, it looked pretty hopeless.

The reserve readings for tonight were extremely interesting. The psycological struggle between Lee and Grant was intense and the reading really gave you the feeling of being in Lee's army. The fact that the Army of Northern Virginia endured so many grueling days marching without eating, is incredible. Lee's desperation can be questioned and applauded at the same time. It seems that Lee had taken over command over all of his army by the time of surrender and none of the generals really seemed to play a major role. The coorespondence between Lee and Grant was extremely interesting and portrays Lee's desperation and Grant's respect for Lee's decision making ability.

The reading on Lee's retreat was very interesting, as it showed the final days of the Army of Northern Virginia. I can't understand the vigor the Confederates still had for a cause that seemed so hopelessly lost, and I even began to question Lee's motives for undertaking such a campaign. From what Winik describes, the soldiers of the CSA had no buisness carrying on war when they were no longer provided for, and I think that Lee had an obligation to surrender to save what was left of his army.

The reading also paints Grant as the supurb commander that he was, never letting up in his pursuit of Lee. Earlier commanders would have faultered and let Lee get the jump on them, but Grant demonstrates his military prowess in his unrelenting chase.

Finally, I think the book shows that one of the major reason's Lee lost this campaign was that most of his great generals were dead. The death's of men like AP Hill, Jackson, and Stewart all contributed to the disorganization in the retreat, while Grant had men like Sheridan and others that had become great commanders during the war. The lack of leadership took a horrific toll on the CSA at the end of the war.

  I agree with David's take on the rules of war. The concept just doesn't make that much sense. It's as if war is a huge game that must be played a certain way. I think it is rather pointless that so much time is devoted to outlining the "rules," such as in Lieber's Code, when you never really know if the other side is going to play "fair" or not or if they are abiding by the same set of rules that you are. This situation becomes evident with Sherman's usage of total war. Lieber's Code and the rules of war seemed to have been thrown out the window. I enjoyed Grimsley's evaluation of Sherman and the Union's path from a conciliatory policy to that of total war. I also found it interesting in how he related the civil war and the idea of total war to other wars in military history. Neely's view of total war as the break down of the distinction between soldier and civilian is very insightful. I had never really thought of total war in that light but it makes perfect sense. It also makes sense when applied to Sherman and the fact that under this guideline, he did not inflict total war. Even if this may be the case, I would much rather view Sherman as the ruthless character of Southern lore who inflicted so much pain and destruction. I guess the 'ole Southern grandmothers did a good job instilling their Sherman hating myths!

I find the correspondence between Hood and Sherman to be quite interesting. First of all they both end the letters with something like "I am, with respect, your obedient servant," I find it surprising that correspondence between Generals of opposing sides will close with sincerely your obedient servant. This closing is not alone to Sherman and Hood, it is used by most generals when writing each other. Also, these letters seem to show Sherman not as violently natured as many tend to believe. The south wants someone to blame for all the destruction that was caused during the Civil War and it is all thrown on Sherman. He does deserve quite a bit, but it seems from the letters that he was not as vicious as many think. It looks like he genuinually cared for the citizens saftey. The letters change from a nice gentleman like exchange to a bash the other one exchange. The letters are at first cordial, but the generals begin to call each other out for different things and instead of just simplying sticking with trying to get the civilians out they begin to really hack at each other. I think this might come from Hood's character. By this point he probably doesnt like the Union very much. He's lost a ton of men plus an arm and a leg. He literally gave an arm and a leg to the cause. If one knew nothing of these two characters before hand and read the exchange it would seem that Hood was the barbarian, not Sherman. Where as popular opinion, at least in the South, has that role reversed.

I like David's comment about rules of war. The 'civilized' countries have seem to adopted certian rules of war that they must abide by, which does seem kind of strange that two sides trying to kill each other would have some sort of rules they stick to. And when one side breaks these understood rules they are considered dishonorable, sneaky, and barbaric. It is funny how hyprocritical Americans are on this issue. In the French and Indian war Americans were upset with the Indians because they would hide behind trees and ambush troops and not line up in straight lines across open fields as the rules of war at that time called for. Yet when it comes to American independence, Americans do just that thing, they embrace guerilla warfare. Today we are even redefining the rules of war as we fight terrorism, because terrorists do not abide by these rules, targeting civilians and the such.

honestly guys, i'm a little torn on the issue of whether or not Sherman's ravaging tactics were exclusively out of malicious hatred or out of desperation for an end to the war. i tend to see his march to the sea as a balance between these two ideas.... obviously his march was premeditated and calculated (it is warfare after all!). and it did have malicious effects on civilians and soldiers alike. still, i can't quite dismiss the idea that his brutal approach to warfare was born out of an intense desire to end the war, and therefore end further death and destruction.
i found two things to be particularly interesting in the Grimsley essay. first, he points out the interesting and crucial shift from the civil war as a strictly military battle, to a war also waged against civilian morale and economic way of life. he sheds light on the complexity of warfare here. it makes me wonder though.... if the civil war had not become a battle aimed at psychological effects and economic stability, but rather had remained strictly a war of formal military tactics-- well then, how much longer would the civil war have dragged on? how much longer could the south resist the north and cling to their independence?
secondly, i found the shift of the south's self-perceptions in the wake of union raids, to be interesting. to justify their lost sense of invincibility, they degraded the union in order to salvage their morale. for instance, they explained their loss by saying that the union had more brute force.... as if to say that if the union "played by the rules," the south would have had enough "military art" to possibly defeat the federals. this seems so self-deluded to me....bottom line, the confederacy was weaker than their counterpart, and they could only hold off the union for so long.

It is interesting reading David's and Rusty's post tonight. Before reading their post, my first line was going to read, "I enjoyed the sparring between Hood and Sherman, each discussing the wrongs of the other and the violation of rules governed by God and humanity." David and Rusty, however, approached the Hood-Sherman correspondence as cordial. I had to retake a look at the exchanges. I disagree with the description of these notes as cordial. In fact, the second set of letters between the two are far from it excepting the salutations. Each accuses the other of acts of cruelty, personally attacks the other, and mocks the other. "You plunged a peaceful nation into war, dark and cruel (war)," said Sherman to Hood. Hood charged Sherman of being inhumane by firing into civilians since the Union's artillery did not miss by miles. Then, Sherman defended himself by attacking Hood for having defensive lines near civilians.

I agree with David that Sherman's strategy to war allows us to understand him more so than simply thinking of him as a heartless, destructive general that crippled the South. His strategy and reasoning do not persuade me though that he "did not want to ravage" or that his strategy was a justifiable means to an end. Sherman did want to ravage, he did want to subject civilians to war - "War is cruelty and you cannot refine it, and those who brought war deserve all the curses a people can pour out."

I agree that the writing of these letters seems somewhat cordial and "un-war-like", at least the first few. THe more I read about Sherman the more my perception changes. I think that before this class Sherman was a Northern general who got out of hand. I figured there were a few bad apples in every bunch and he was a big one for the North. My only real basis for this was that I didn't admire the things I heard about him. (Something that contributed to my "bad apple theory" was that scene in Glory where Broderick's character is ordered to have that town torched and he has to comply.) I am beginning to see, however, that Sherman wasn't a violence-loving lunatic who was extremely cruel. I am starting to see his reasons for his actions. He wanted a decisive display of force because he believed it would end the war sooner. It makes me wonder what would have happened if he and Grant had been in charge in the beginning of the war when McClellan was running around. Would the war have been much shorter? Or was Sherman's tactics a product of the war being so drawn out? As the Grimsley article suggests, the war was changing. Perhaps Sherman was the right man at the right time.

As for the rules of war, I have never understood that concept. I've obviously never been to war so I can not fully understand but the concept always vexes me. How can you worry about breaking a rule when you are already both trying to kill one another? I don't really understand old-school battle and perhaps Sherman did ring in the new era of war, one that is much more ruthless and somewhat less structured.

A brief note on tonight's reading...I find it quite interesting that generals (Sherman and Hood) actually sent such cordial letters regarding plans and the removal of "noncombatants" from future sights of invasion. This exchange shed a bit of positive light on the usually negative-reputed Sherman. I do not feel that he wanted to ravage everything and everyone he came across; he simply saw this as the only way to end the war and convince what he saw as "polluted minds" that they needed to "get right."

Now, a post-discussion note on the Ash book...I considered the book very well-written. I think Ash did a good job at considering different perspectives and different situations of people in varying locations. My only quibble with the book was that Ash seems to present every piece of information, every individual idea or assertion, would unconvincingly equal importance. For example, he constantly mentions the way in which Union soldiers made it a point to protect Unionists in occupied regions. The problem, I think, is that Ash almost makes it sound like this duty was seen as equally important to fighting actual battles. Granted, the soldiers probably wanted to protect their supporters; however, I find it hard to believe that such things as protecting Unionists and being spited by women were AS important or influential as fighting battles and suppressing dissent. Silencing the enemy always superceeds protecting the allies.

Edited by author 05-01-2002 04:37 PM
Hey Guys. Sorry I didn't get this in on time or make it to the discussion, it was my 21st and it was a long one. I do have a couple of questions though.
1.) What was the lasting impact of guerilla warfare, why didn't they use it more, and did it have a major influence on the war?
2.)What were the benifits of Southerners abandoning their towns, and what was done with the property they left behind?
3.)How great an influence were blacks as guides to the invading Union army?
4.)Was the Chrittenden Resolution truthful, or did the Union try to opress Southerners? If so, was it directly through actions, or indirectly through reform?
5.)What was the effect of increased rebel desertion on the Confederate army and in the Confederate towns and cities?

Edited by author 05-01-2002 08:20 AM
I'm baaaack. Got another idea:
Compare what Ash remarks about Southern civilian women to Faust's essay on Southern women. Are there differences? Similarities? What kind of picture does Ash paint of Southern Women? Do you think it's accurate?

I didn't know we had to have multiple questions... :)
So here's my one (albeit, a bit long) question:
Ash tells us that the extra suffering of Confederate civilians living in the "no-man's land" surrounding occupied cities is due to the high frequency of Union raiding parties there. Do you agree with this, and what would you add in terms of the consequences on Confederate morale (both military and civilian) and Union occupation policy?

I found the Ash book very interesting in that it gave me a different perspective on the different views by Southerners on ANorthern troops. It was intriguing how the views and feeling of southerners changed as the was progressed and what actions they took in protecting themselves. Here are a few review questions:
1) Were men or women more likely to flee as Union forces advanced into their towns? Why did some flee and some stay?
2) What was the importance of the "River Police"
3)In July 1861 Congress passed the Crittednden Resolution, what did it declare?
4)Who were the guerrillas? Who were the Partisan Rangers? What is the difference between the two and what were their main objectives or goals?

Edited by author 04-30-2002 10:43 PM
I got some ideas as I was reading and I wanted to post them, be warned I may return with more ideas!

Ash mentions the preconceived ideas and stereotypes of both the Southern Citizens and Union Army. What were these ideas? Were they proven or disproven (are those words? is it actually proved or disproved? Take your pick)to each group? How so?

What were the causes of guerilla warfare in the Confederacy and how was guerilla warfare sustained? Who were the guerilla soldiers? What was the result of their raids? What were the consequences of guerilla warfare, or what was the Union Army's reaction?

The Ash book was very interesting. It gives the reader a different perspective on the war. It shows that there was the actual war and the war at home. The book gives many different opinions of the southern people from a variety of southern states. My disscussion questions:

1. It is known that Lincoln's war aims were to preserve the Union whether that meant freeing the slaves or not. Did the Union army that occupied southern towns do as Lincoln wanted?
2. Northern people viewed the South as rugged and uncivilized. Did the Union soliders feel the same way after being in the South?
3. What was the common southerner's view of the Union soliders?
4. How do you think Union occupation of the South effected it during and after the war?
5. Does this book give a good account of the Civil War, as oppossed to accounts of battles, officers, and politics?

A reminder that members of the Shamrock team will be leading Wednesday's discussion on the Ash book. Shamrockers will post questions here tonight for small group discussions in class.

Edited by author 04-30-2002 11:58 AM
I tend to disagree with Thomas (and Alexander Stephens) that the Confederate government's top priority should be to preserve loyalty. Judging by the readings, it seems like the government, national or state, would be in a losing situation no matter what it did (or, to put it another way, "damned if you do, damned if you don't"). Support conscription laws and the poor suffer more than the wealthy. Rely on volunteers and the war effort fails for lack of manpower, causing everyone to suffer. Seize goods to thwart speculation and people call it tyranny. Do nothing about speculators and people denounce it as swindling. No matter what the Confederates did, people were dissatisfied. A unified white society certainly was a myth.

But why were Southerners so hard to please? Perhaps an example from Harris offers insight. He describes the efforts to convince farmers to plant grain instead of cotton. That seems like a perfectly sensible plan, but, amazingly, many farmers defied it, simply because they refused to sign a pledge and lose some of their independence. From the readings, it appears that Southerners were far too stubborn and unrealistic. With those sensibilities, and no strong central government to unite people, the war was bound to go badly for the South. I'm reminded of a quote we read earlier, though I can't remember the source. A former Confederate state governor claimed that the South lost the war because they seceded with all the necessary institutions in place to form a government, so that it was in effect too easy to leave the Union. Instead, he argued that the Confederacy should have gone for a full-blown revolution, something very harsh, so that they would ultimately emerge as a stronger, more unified nation. Perhaps he was on to something.

Although Thomas may have a point in noting the importance of "loyalty and confidence" on the Confederate home front, we should recall that Jeff Davis faced no election in 1864, and Alex Stephens was no military commander. Supplies, as Stephens said, must be produced, but (I argue) not to the detriment of the mass of the armies in the field. Honestly, if the Confederate armed forces failed to reverse the tide of invasion and war -- now directed against the home front (e.g. Sherman, Sheridan [forthcoming]), the shortage of labor at home is a non-issue. Maybe I'm just reveling in martial glory, but the Confederacy's surest hope lay in keeping enough men in gray to slow Sherman before Atlanta, hold Grant at Peterburg, threaten Washington, thwart Banks and Butler, and perhaps even sail an ironclad out to defend Mobile. Supplies could and would be found ... and if Lincoln would just lose the election, Little Alec could have all the supplies and liberties he wanted in peacetime.

A final thought: did anyone else catch James Henry Hammond's Marxist moment? The Southern gentleman said, "The war is based upon ... the fact of of the inequality of mankind -- for policy we say *races*, in reality, all history shows it as the truth is *classes*." With talk like this, it's apparent that the South ain't rallying 'round the Bonnie Blue Flag anymore ... and if the CSA had persisted after 1865, it makes one wonder where how the class conflict among whites would have sorted itself out. A party of the poor whites? A national unity coalition? An opposition party like the N.C. "Conservatives"?

I get a much different picture of the Confederacy from tonight's readings that I do from watching Gone With the Wind. Janna mentioned Neely's phrase, "the myth of southern white society unified behind the war effort" - an idea that seems consitent with the readings, particularly the documents from the NC legislature and the NC standard. Clearly, there was nothing like a cohesive confederate unity in North Carolina. It seems like they feel that the Confederate government has undermined its cause and turned its back on the principles it was founded on. I tend to agree with Alexander Stephens that the Confederate government's first task should have been to preserve the loyalty and confidence of its constituency at any cost.

I really think that North Carolina is an interesting state to consider in the Civil War. Obviously North Carolinians were wary of the central government after Lincoln's call for troops and I agree with Janna that this was probably the deciding factor that drove them towards secession. On the other hand, I thought the Harris article had a unique point about the war in the South. He says, "Secession was justified in terms of the ideals of the white community...but free, autonomous, and independent men and communities were not necessarily the best material for a long and massive war." I had never really thought about things this way, but the ideals of the white community conflicted with the ideals of the working class. This goes back to the saying "A rich man's war and a poor man's fight." It is understandable that the poorer working class might be resentful of the domination by the men whose wealth and slves they were defending. The idea of independence also conflicts with war because the southern government was forced to restrict the lives of its citizens. Many people in the South advocated secession becasue they resented the interference and control of the federal government; however, the Confederate government was now enforcing the very things that its citizens had been trying to escape through secession. These states seceded only to be faced with the same type of problems in their newly created government. I guess that's just one of the strange ironies of war.

Janna's point regarding the inability for Confederate citizens to make any democratic outcry against Davis' six-year term is one issue I really hit on in tonight's readings. As Kruman brings out in his essay, ironically, the outbreak of war brought the full arm of the central government machine to many citizens of the southern states for the first time. As we have already discussed in class, there was a fundamental difference of ideology between the necessity of a centralized authority to run the CSA war machine and the states' rights doctrine by which many states had fallen under the CSA umbrella. When the southern states chose to succeed, they were doing so not to oppose democracy, but instaed to protect their version of it. However, once war became a consequence of their decision, they encountered a situation which was much less democratic than the one they had gone away from in the first place. The absence of a national two-party system (and with that a loyal opposition or a way to voice popular disapproval), as well as the various encroachments on civil liberties left southern citizens with a situation that was much more than they had bargained for. This situation was also tied in to their fundamental misunderstanding about the war they were getting themselves into, and these issues were undoubtedly central to the widely varying degrees of support for the southern cause which were present during the war period.

Tonight's readings remind me of the McPherson essay we read at the beginning of the term that stressed the differences between the northern and southern states prior to the war. Major Problems states that the "Confederate homefront...became qualitatively different from that of the North as time went on." Kruman more specifically claims that the nature of dissent in the Union was different than that of the Confederacy because Northern dissent was limited by a two-party system. Individuals who opposed Lincoln's policies often united with the Democratic party even if they didn't fully agree with the Democratic platform because voting for the opposition was a sure-fire way to thwart Lincoln's intentions. In contrast, southerners had no way to oust Davis from his six-year term.
Tonight's readings also remind me of the Neely's reference to the "myth of southern white society unified behind the war effort" in the exerpt we read last week (168). The dissent within North Carolina (discussed by Kruman) is significant and certainly supports Neely's claim. Individuals were seemingly scared to death that the freedoms for which that had fought in the American Revolution would be taken from them. Had Lincoln not called troops to Sumter in 1861, I don't think NC would have seceded at all. They were against the infringement of their liberties...they feared that they would become like their slaves, forced to submit to "the arbitrary will of another" (Major Problems, 226). I think the Civil War made southerners, perhaps for the first time, examine the institution of slavery and put themselves in the slaves' shoes. Once they realized the injustice of the institution, they began to fear that they could somehow be subjected to "the arbitrary will of another" and they fought even harder for their individual liberties...

A little late posting on the readings about Lincoln's re-election. I think the question that Matt and Chris rose about whether Lincoln would have been elected in the summer of 1864 is interesting, so much happened that affected political structures every month of the war. It seems although Lincoln was viewed by many radical republicans in Congress as a political novice, he was actually a political mastermind. He played the game very well and kept his political dealings secret. It is interesting that he moderated even his views, for instance his being on the side of radical abolition and racial equality was not reflected in his political moves.

I wonder alongside Chris if Lincoln would have been elected in summer 1864. I think I have greater doubts that he would have. Though a wartime president is always popular these days, Lincoln was dealing, on the one hand, with disgruntled citizens and Supreme Court justices of the pure democracy who felt violated by conscription and other such usurping of constitutional power. On the other hand, his lack of support with the Radicals like Sumner had him in it up to his neck with Congress. It is ironic to me that Lincoln's more moderate political stance was nearly his downfall. Stil, I think it was his unique stance of being a practicing moderate but a closet Radical that would have stayed his position, even in the summer of 1864. The election map shows a great number of counties with 100% voting for Lincoln. Support that consistent could not have completely turned around in five months. At the same time there is a surprising number of counties which held a vote of zerofor Lincoln. Could the scales have tipped the other way during the weak summer? I vote 55% no.

Davis pointed out the importance of protecting Washington - once again a decisive factor in military decisions. I thought that point to deserved to be emphasized - Chris said he thought it unlikely that lincoln could have lost the election. Guelzo stated, "But let the war end suddenly, or let his administration lose the upcoming election in November to a democratic peace candidate, and the military justification for emancipation would evaporate at the same moment.." Changing presidents while the war was still going on would have been harmful to the war effort. It is not surprising that Lincoln had the support of 78% of the soldiers in the election. And Guelxo also pointed out that the radicals were a disgruntled than opposing part of his republcan party. They saw Lincoln as an "ideological equal but not a practical one," therefore, they criticized not his principles but his application of them. This did not mean Lincoln did not have their support over another candidate. At the same time, however, I don't think Lincoln's reelection was ever inevitable. There were other factors like the democratic focus on emancipation and the harm it could cause to the working classes. That might have been a strong enough initiative for support of someone other than Lincoln. And then there was McClellan.. Not supporting Lincoln, some might have felt less guilty about not supporting Lincoln's war efforts if they voted for McClellan. The fact that McClellan spli the democratic party, things started going better for the north, etc.... just happened to occur at just the right moment.

the reading for tonight besically stresses the importance of some key northern victories. january to september of 1864 was a rough period for lincoln and the republican party. the war was dragging on and threatening to kill off lincoln as well. had it not been for the victory at mobile bay, the fall of atlanta, the sinking of the alabama, and the clearing of jubal early's cavalry in the shenandoah valley, it is conceivable that lincoln would not have been reelected. war was the nations top priority. the president in charge of the nation and the war must be successful at both. otherwise, people would have looked to alternatives. a nation unhappy with policies like emancipation (white workers beware) and conscription (white men beware) won't require much convincing to change a president. it is fortunate for lincoln that key northern victories occured and boosted the morale of a depressed nation.

Although the readings tonight show that Lincoln was in a weak position during the summer of 1864, I have to wonder if he really would have lost the election if it had been held then. I don't doubt that it might have been really close, but it seems unlikely to me that the North would have voted out a sitting war president. Although it is probable that he might have won without the majority of the popular votes.

It is often hard to remember when studying history that at the time the people involved did not know the outcome like we do. During this term I have often taken for granted the severity and importness of some events. For example, Guelzo points out that the summer of 1864 was looking very bad for President Lincoln because of stagnation of Grant's campaign, strong political opposition, and low Northern morale. It was not a certainty, or even a good chance in the summer of 1864, that Lincoln would win the Presidential election again. If he had not won again who knows what would have happened. From a very harsh, revengeful plan of reconstruction that the Radical Republicans advocated to just ending the war and letting the South be its own country. In the summer of 1864 it was all very much up in the air and that it vitally important to remember when reading and studying this time period.
Also, previously we talked about the civil rights violations by both Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, but it is also worth taking note of those by the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, created by Radical Republicans. They formed this committee to try and have a small hand in the war, and went so far as to arrest and imprison Brigadier General Stone, in 1862, for six months without ever charging him.

The first thing that struck me about the reading today was the first paragraph where we see the actions of Gen. Early. Early had little men but was able to cause a lot of trouble for the north. It got so bad that Gen. Grant had to disperse troops to stop him from attacking Washington. The part that caught me was Early’s treatment of northern towns. He held ransom on them, and if they didn’t pay (like Chambersburg) he would burn the town to the ground. I was surprised to see this cruel side of the confederate army. Usually when I hear people talking about Civil War atrocities, they tend to focus on the conduct of Sherman.

Second, I enjoyed the reading on Lincoln’s reelection. An interesting question is what if things had gone differently for the Union during the summer? What if Sherman lost? What if Mobile didn’t go well for the Union? What if McClellan hadn’t alienated part of his party and Fremont gained more support? What would have become of Lincoln? I think these questions are in a way posed to us when reading this section. I can only imagine what Lincoln went through during this time. Not only was he trying to reunite a nation, but also fighting off people from both sides the fence to do it. I guess this is the fate of most moderates during a time of crisis. Lincoln was slow to move when people wanted action, and thus he had both sides constantly attacking him.

Edited by author 04-26-2002 08:18 AM
  I just don't like Sherman. It seems as if he hit a mid-life crisis and decided to get back into the military for the fun and excitement of it. The military was his foreign sports car that he kept on upgrading as he made his way up the ranks. His campaign of desolation is extremely infuriating to me. His letter to Lincoln is amazing in the extent that he is willing to take his awful campaign. The amount of destruction he is willing to inflict is almost sickening and what is more sickening, is the fact that it doesn't seem to phase him. Granted, his approach was very effective and he knew this would shock the Confederates into his reality, but he shouldn't have burned so much down. I just don't see how anyone could burn Twelve Oaks to the ground leaving its staircase as the only identifying marks! What a waste of a perfectly good plantation!

I disagree with my group on the two main points of our reading for tonight. It seems to be a consensus that Hood as a replacement was a mistake and war is cruel (by Sherman's definitions). Hood was a logical and I believe right choice to face Sherman. I agree the outcome was not a successful one for the Confederacy but did Johnston's plan have a chance? Johnston is the same man who was the "consummate defender" during the Peninsula Campaign and the one who allowed rivalry to supercede the defense of Vicksburg. With Hood, the Confederacy at least had a general who would fight. Douglas Cater, a soldier, said the appointment of Hood "sounded the death knell for the CSA." To that, I would question Cater's ears. Did not already hear the bell ringing? Remember at this point, the CSA has lost at Gettysburg, Grant is at Richmnd's gates, and the West is Union's. To the consensus of admiration for Sherman and justification of his war's necessity is cruelty policy, I would wonder why a general would go by this philosophy of desolation to his own country other than for the sake of getting the war finished. Why finish war in a way to have lasting resentment? This reminds me of Shaara's book and Lee telling his courier that his troops will be "gentlemen". The war was between two armies. Why subject the civilian population especially considering the Union's wish to preserve the Union? I don't believe Sherman should have taken special care to protect the civilian population but I also don't believe he should have gone out of his way to punish them either. I do not admire such a man for simply ending the war quickly. The war was arguably on its last leg anyway.

Had the Union armies commanding generals like Sherman and Grant at the beginning of the war, the war would have been over a lot quicker. Sherman was a no nosense general who was willing to take risks and wanted to end the war quickly. Before we hit Hood to hard, we must remember the reason why he threw his army wrecklessly at Sherman. Davis put Hood in command at Atlanta to do exactly that, he was tired of Johnston retreating. Hood had a reputation under Longstreet to throw his Texans (a little shout out to Texans!) at the Federals in any postition. This wrecklessness was probably developed as a side effect early in the war. The Confederates could not be beaten in the Eastern Theater and as we know the rebel commanders became over confident and wreckless. Davis wanted the Federals to be expelled from Tennessee and he knew that Johnston would not go on the offensive. Hood was unfortunately in the same position that Burnside was in at Fredricksburg. Politics began inflitrating military decisions, when politics begin dictating the military, the smartest move will not always be made. See Fredricksburg or Yorktown at the American Revolution. Needlessly to say, Hood had his back to the wall with Davis and needed to attack Sherman, and somehow out of all this Hood almost had a chance to do some major damage when he made it back up to TN. He was nearly able to knock out an army under Thomas and then could have caused further damage to Thomas while his forces were split if Hood had been a little smarter at this point, his down fall was that he had the same mindset always, he did not change his philosophy when the situation warrented it.

I agree that Sherman is a pretty interesting character. I think so far in this class we have been aluding to his character. We have talked about already about how Grant was building Sherman up and giving him a lot of confidence. Though his savage style is controversial it is a good point that it is better to get it over with and try to end it faster. That is a totally different mentality from someone like McClellan who seemed to drag everything out.
Sherman is one of those rare people who is just made for war. In the normal world he struggles and loses his way. He was meant to fight he is good at it.

I find it interesting to learn of General Sherman's feelings towards blacks. Growing up in Atlanta, I have always known of General Sherman as the man who burned through Atlanta liberating the slaves all the way to the coast. To someone who knew nothing about the civil war, Sherman could be considered a hero. He reguarly declined the use of black troops. He did not think blacks could be made voters, or social equals. Sherman definately had the right idea when he urged Lincoln to switch the war into a desolation campaign. He is right, war is cruel, and by resorting to desolation, the war might end faster. I think Davis messed up when he relieved Johnston to go with Hood as his man in Atlanta. Hood seemed like a hothead. In the situation of the standoff between the two armies in Atlanta, smart planning and cool heads prevail.

ON THE GUELZO READING...I gained a considerable, new respect for Sherman after reading his reasoning, his explanation for his attitudes. War is nasty; war is violent and cruel--brains are brains and guts are guts and blood is blood. One cannot simply arbitrate levels of horror. I wholeheartedly agree with the rationalization behind the plan to go straight towards Atlanta. More death, more destruction, and more ferocity do lead to a wuicker end to war; moreover, this outcome is acceptable if one concedes the premise that war in itself is purely evil and should be ended as quickly as possible, regardless of the means. On another note, I say "boo" to Jeff Davis for relieving Joe Johnston of his duties. Granted, he thought Johnston was merely retreating and acting like a heartless sissy, but he should have investigated the matter first. Look where Hood got him. Bye-bye Peachtown.

ON THE TEST...The addition of the picture section was cool. I like the way that it allows for the utilization of creative leniency (not to say that all factual knowledge is irrelevant). Not only did we get to choose a photo, but we got to give a purely personal opinion on why that photo would be effective and significant. Such liberties are quite relaxing...

The test will be held in FH 204, starting at about 6:00 pm.

The Gettysburg / NYC Draft riots info is at: (http://history.furman.edu/~benson/civwar/cw9.htm)
The Chattanooga / Chickamauga info is at: (http://history.furman.edu/~benson/civwar/cw10.htm)

Tonight's reading I found particulary interesting due to two different points introduced by Guelzo. The first piece of information that I found insightful was the actions taken by the community in Massachusetts. They did not believe in their family and community members fighting in war that was to protect african-american rights. Guelzo demonstrates that at that time, those who worked for the government and delivered enlistment papers, were in grave danger of harsh revolts by protective family members who did not want their children going to war. They believed in fighting for their own cause and not those who are not even their equals.
  The other point that I found interesting was how Lincoln wanted Grant to command the eastern theater and leave the west. Guelzo mentions that he lured Grant to the east by giving him the liutenant general position. It worked and Grant moved his command center in Nashville and headed to the east. Grant's attempt to put an end to Lee was a very difficult task that ended with many casualties and failed attempts. It was the lack of communication and determination that made the Union fail in their attempt to capture Richmond from the south. The Union did not press hard enough which gave Lee time to get his forces set up and be ready for Grant. One last thing that I found interesting was how in the end the Lee's troops lost more troops that Grants when all Guelzo told about was Grant's loses and the bad mistakes that caused many deaths.

The first section of the reading was very shocking to me. I did not know that riots such as this went on during the war. It does show how the war was wearing on the public. They were getting tired of their friends and family dying in battle. It was interesting how one women turned a crowd of 1,000 against the war.

Now about Grant's campaigns. It seemed that Lincoln was alot happier after Grant took command. Grant was the aggressive leader that Lincoln had wanted. Grant also seemed to get the public excited as well. When he started moving South, people began to cheer for Grant. Even though Grant suffered severe loses in his campaign in the East, Lincoln realized that he had a general that he could trust to do what he wanted. Also, I think that Lee might have realized that Grant was going to attack him until he won the war. Maybe Grant's aggressive style struck fear into Lee, knowing that his army was larger and superior.

I also found it interesting that Guelzo showed how Lee was the real butcher of his men. I have always heard that Grant was the general that was careless with his men's lives. Guelzo said that when facing Grant, Lee lost a higher percentage of his men.

The reading for tonight was, in my opinion, the best view into Grant's mind that we've had so far, and maybe ever will. One of Guelzo's running theme throughout our readings has been, "Will Lincoln ever find his general?" And despite the bad luck of circumstances, I think Grant was indeed Lincoln's general-in-waiting. He had good plans, just bad timing and really bad luck. I don't think the Confederates were expecting anything like Grant or his tactics. Lee was ready for anything, so Grant as a new commander was no surprise, but I think maybe Grant's persistence was a shock. Here's a General who has massive casualties and keeps persuing Lee. Like the Energizer Bunny. Perhaps I'm just glorifying Grant, being a biased Northerner and all, but in Guelzo's book, it's like reading a novel where a new character has just entered like a breath of fresh air. It's becoming quite the page turner.

And Megan, I know what you mean. And if you're the nerd, so am I. I got all excited and jumpy when I read in Shaara's book of a regiment from Minnesota. Rock on Minnesotans!

The discussion of Grant and his move to the East was very informative. Once again we the Union coming close, but not close enough. We see Grant's great plans fizzle out. Whatever hesitation Grant or the officers under him had in carrying out the plans enabled the Confederate army to gain the upper hand and dig in. It is interesting to read about the extraordinary ideas Grant had and the fact that he failed at all attempts to undermine Lee and take Richmond. Perhaps the failure could've been due to the fact that Grant was not as loved at Lee. Maybe the committment to Lee and the trust his troops had in him had something to do with his relative success against Grant.

PS Someone from Vermont was mentioned and even quoted! It's on page 339 if anyone's interested. I'm sure you all think I'm a nerd, but this NEVER happens! :)

The first section of Chapter 10 really showed how the war was wearing on the public conscious. Citizens who glorified their troops going to war were now rioting against them. No one thought that the war would last as long as it did, and they rioted because it was not just people going to war. it was their friends and family, and since so many had died or left the service after their three year term, people were forced to enlist. It is crazy that people could denounce the war effort when it directly involved them or someone they knew, and it is even more unbelievable that people died over it, and all were on the same side. The bread riot in Richmond was an example of rioting on the Confederate side, voicing the strong opinion that citizens were no longer caught up in the glory of war, they were bogged down in the horror and wanted it all to end.
     It was interesting to see how the Union troops felt about Grant as he took control as Liutenant General in comparison to the way the Confederate troops felt about Lee. Cuelzo does a fair job in showing the skeptical attitude of Union soldiers and citizens. Grant's track record since West Point was not very good, and he had not yet completely proved himself on the battlefield. Some felt Grant's strategy was as a "military butcher," who would just feed troops against the Confederates to wear them down, disreguarding the lives of his own men. Lee on the other hand was loved dearly by his troops. Shaara does a fine job depicting the cheers, tears, and salutes of loyal soldiers, even as Lee sent them to their certain death. He was loved more than Grant even though no general lost more men than he.
     Once again, in the battles at Cold Harbor and the Wilderness, indecision and bad terrain proved a terrible enemy to both North and South. In these particular battles, I think the North definitely would have gotten the upper hand, flanked around the Southern army and captured Richmond. They would have drawn Lee too far away from Richmond to protect it, and having divided his forces would be able to force their way into the city.

I never would have thought that Davis and Lincoln could have so much in common, but Neely makes a strong argument that the two men were on the same page in terms of their goals and how they sought to achieve them. The difference seems to be that, from the beginning, Lincoln did not hesitate to use any means available to achieve his goal of restoring the Union, even at the expense of civil liberties. Davis, on the other hand, comes across as much more calculating, using many of Lincoln's methods but spinning his actions to support the Lost Cause mentality. At the time, the word "spin" undoubtedly had little meaning besides making yarn or getting dizzy. Still, that is exactly what Davis did during and after the War, and as we know, he was surprisingly effective. In part, people want to believe the Lost Cause myth, and as Neely points out, only recently have historical records on Confederate politics emerged. But if, as Guezlo says, Lincoln's civil liberties "abuses" were comparable to the actions of later presidents (or even minimal by comparison), and if, as Neely says, Lincoln and Davis were very much alike, does that mean Davis' actions are less extreme than the actions of later presidents? I think Neely would say no, that Davis was as great an offender of civil liberties as any president, and maybe more so, given the number of political prisoners under his administration, the persistence of slavery, and his efforts to gloss over his actions with the Lost Cause myth.

As for the demise of American Protestantism, I think Guezlo is right. During the Regan era and thereabouts, you see the surge of the Religious Right. It's been a while since I took Religion and Politics, but I think it's fair to say that the Religious Right is quite not the political force it once was. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, I think there was a brief surge in church attendance, but eventually, the gradual downward trend in churchgoing continued. So yes, I think Guezlo is correct, though I had not previously considered that the demise of American Protestant intellectualism could be traced back to the Civil War.

The article by Neely on Jefferson Davis and his views on civil liberty is a new viewpoint that is never discussed in popular history. The viewpoints and actions of Lee always seem to be the most important, yet here we see exactly what the president said and did. This is a perfect example of the war on the civilian front. Ideologically, the people of the CSA were fighting for the rights. As all the soldiers in “Killer Angels” said, they were not fighting for slavery but for their rights that Lincoln had denied them. Of course this article points out the greatest irony of this, that Davis was doing the same thing Lincoln was. But Neely fails to acknowledge is that although Davis is suspending civil liberties and habeas corpus, he is only doing it because his nation is at war. As he states ideologically time and time again in 1861 and 1862, he does not truly believe what he is doing to right under normal circumstances, but desperate times call for desperate measures. His actions in 1863 are similar to Lincoln because he is finally realizing how to fight the war on the civilian front. Lincoln took on this wartime mentality when he realized it was necessary to defeat the seceding south.

I must spend a moment on the case of our old friend Burnside vs. former Senator Vallandigham (CAR 170-71). While Guelzo may not find Lincoln's (and his proxy Burnside's) behavior to be despotic when compared with U.S. actions in the 20th century, it does show the measures that the Union was willing to take in what we would assume to be a firmly pro-Union state. (As at Antietam and Fredericksburg, Burnside comes across as [unnecessarily] direct with his tactics -- breaking down Vallandigham's door and hauling him off to a tribunal.) Could the army not have been more subtle in keeping the Peace Democrats in line? Wasn't Burnside's mere presence (and that of the large Union garrisons across Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois) enough?

I was unsurprised but fascinated by the antidemocratic sentiments that the Civil War aroused among intellectuals (as opposed to Lincoln's increasingly democratized Whig republic). George Templeton Strong (of Ken Burns' Civil War fame) is prodded by the war to distrust popular government (CAR 323), and the Congregationalist minister Horace Bushnell sounds fanatical to our post-9/11 ears: Government derives its justification not from popular consent, but by "the ordinance of God" (Ibid.).

Finally, Guelzo states, "From the 1860s onward, American Protestantism would be increasingly marked by a quiet erosion of faith ... The Civil War proved nearly as deadly to the crediblity of American Protestant intellectuals as any of Darwin's apes." Comments? As an American Catholic, I can view the demise of the American Protestant intellectual tradition with little real concern, but does anyone disagree with Guelzo?

I agree with Shannon and Janna's statement about the Neely reading and the regard for civil liberties. I also thought the affect of the war on the survivors is an important point. I did find it interesting that the "secular intellectuals" had trouble justifying the war to the public. Although we think of these men today as great thinkers, it is notable that they wanted the Civil War to replace republicanism and place them into the elite tier of society. Similarly, prominent church leaders were denouncing the current form of government to their congregations. I can understand that the different had their opinions of the war, but I find it interesting that they would split off in such radical directions. I suppose this is another example of the ways that the country was split by the Civil War. Not only were the diiferences of opinion sectional, but they carried over into almost every aspect.

As Janna noted, the Neely reading strongly represented the idea that neither Lincoln nor Davis showed a real regard for civil liberties, except as those ideals might serve their purposes politically. I found it interesting, to juxtapose the Neely reading with the section in Guelzo on Lincoln--while Neely seems to level the playing field between Lincoln and Davis in terms of their treatment of civil liberties (a change from the idea of a tyrannical Union and a states' rights CSA), Guelzo seemed almost to go even further, treating Lincoln's "abuses" as if they weren't really that at all, and noting how minimal said violations of civil liberties were compared to similar situations during the 20th Century wars.

I think Janna also hit on something with the effect of the war on its survivors. In our discussion of whether or not the war was revolutionary, this is one area that cannot be overlooked. With respect to the effects on the lives of individuals, any conflict of this magnitude could hardly be seen as anything other than revolutionary. In reading the Guelzo section on intellectual and relgious "explanations" of war, I was struck by how much things stay the same. As we have discussed in class, beyond the complicated strategic objectives and "greater cause" (or lost cause, as the case may be), war is, at base, politics by other means; one could endeavor to reduce the entire conflict to the differences in views of "property" and protection of such. And still, inevtiably, relgion and intellectuals will try to find other means by which to explain, including the creation of (as Janna called it) the "righteous cause." When these two things are compared side-to-side (and notwithstanding that some modern day conflict are the intersection of politics and religion--i.e. the Israelis and Palestinians), one can wonder how those involved in any such conflict could not be forced to reevaluate their entire lives, including political and religious beliefs, after the conclusion of something of such magnitude, no matter the outcome.

In SOUTHERN RIGHTS, Neely addresses the common view that the Confederacy was more concerned with civil liberties than the Union during the war. During the beginning years of the war, Davis portrayed the Confederacy as a place where the border states could find "freedom" (ironic, huh?). He hoped that focusing on Lincoln's suspension of the writ of habeas corpus would cause the border states to join the Confederacy. However, "liberty was the best policy only while the border states remained in doubt" (161). Both Lincoln and Davis "showed little sincere interest in constitutional restrictions on government authority in wartime" (167).
If the war was not based on the Constitution, then what could justify it? Both religious and secular thinkers sought to explain the war...and both, for the most part, failed. I found Guelzo's ideas on American religion as "one of the Civil War's major cultural casualties" quite interesting (327). When the Confederacy's righteous cause began to collapse, individuals began losing faith not only in war but in their religious beliefs as well.
I think that the greatest effect of war was probably the way it changed the lives of the survivors. Government officials had undermined the legitimacy of the Constitution...and death and destruction had ruined the nation's religious foundations. Where could individuals find security and meaning? How could people rebuild their lives without any foundations in government or religion??

From the Thousand Oaks Star, Monday, June 22, 1998

CIVIL WAR MEMORIES ENDURE THROUGH LOVE

Gertrude Janeway: She lives now as she did 70 years ago; memories sustain her.

    by Fred Brown
    Scripps Howard News Service

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. Gertrude Grubb Janeway has a red ribbon in her hair and a smile on her face. In the thin
mid-morning light of her log cabin, she looks out from her bed onto a world that must seem strange, even bizarre at
times, compared to life as she has known it. Her perspective is from a long, long way back, almost as if she were a
stranger from a strange land emerging into the present.

Gertrude, 89, is something of a phenomenon. She is Tennessee's only widow of a Civil War veteran listed on
Department of Veteran Affairs records and one of only 15 remaining nationwide. She married John Janeway when
he was 81 years old and she was but an 18-year-old farm girl from Grainger County.

Theirs is the love story of an era now so far away it seems like a dream, but Gertrude has not forgotten a single
detail. She loves to tell the story because in a way it keeps her husband alive.

When she talks about it, her face lights up. Her memories are so vivid, the listener is transported back over 100
years to a time when even Gertrude had not been born. This is John Janeway's story as he told it to her.

Return to the year 1864. It is late May, a fresh, slightly cool morning. An 18-year-old boy is astride the family
horse. A sack of corn is thrown across the horse's neck. The two are on their way to the grist mill on Buffalo
Creek, the one near the falls that drops about 20 feet.

As the old horse plods the familiar trail to the grist mill, a wild-riding regiment of men in blue suddenly rounds a
corner and pulls their mounts to a stop. Clouds of dust powder the soldiers' backs and shoulders.

The soldiers are part of the 14th Illinois Cavalry, a distinguished unit that has fought its way from the siege of
Knoxville, chased Confederate Gen. John Hunt Morgan to Greeneville and run down Thomas' Legion of
Cherokees. It is now on its way to join Gen. Tecumseh Sherman, who is readying his army for a campaign that will
make Georgia howl.

A BOY BECOMES A MAN

"You look like a stout young man," one of the soldiers says. John Janeway is a stout young man -- tall, angular,
rawboned even. The soldiers tell him stories of firing muskets, of fighting Rebels in distant places, of adventures
he'll have but one time to see and a lifetime to tell about.

On that fine spring morning, he turns his back on the grist mill and turns his face toward war. John Janeway joins
the 14th Illinois Cavalry and rides off with them, pointing the family horse toward home.

When the soldiers ask him his name, he improvises. "John January." He does not give them his family name in fear
that his parents will find out and make him come home. He is eager for adventure, eager to leave behind the familiar
landmarks of Grainger County's New Corinth Community.

After enlisting June 1 at Maryville, he is sent with the Union cavalry to just outside Atlanta, where Sherman is
sharpening his troops.

Barely two months later, John January is captured in a fierce fight during which his unit, under the command of
Union Gen. George Stoneman, is "cut to pieces" in a running battle near Macon, Ga.

Stoneman has managed to get himself and his 6,500 infantry and cavalry surrounded by Confederate Maj. Gen.
Joseph Wheeler's cavalry.

After losing 2,000 men, Stoneman is captured along with 700 of his soldiers. Pvt. John January becomes a prisoner
of war at a place he wrote down as "Chattahoochee."

LITTLE TO SAY

Years later, after he married Gertrude Grubb, he would speak sparingly of his exploits, the adventure the horse
soldiers had promised.

"I just hope I never killed anyone," he said.

"A soldier's life is a hard life," he told Gertrude. "I had to beg at houses for food. You slept when you could, ate
when you could. I've seen some hard things."

His only words about his capture were that he was almost shot in the head the night he and other members of the
14th Illinois were surrounded by swarming Confederates.

The 14th had had no rest or sleep for four days, being hounded by Wheeler's men. Finally, at midnight on Aug. 2,
Capron halted his men on the road back toward Atlanta.

About 2 a.m., the men of the 14th were curled up on the ground near their horses, having been ordered not even to
dismount. Tired and tormented, they slept. Almost as soon as they fell asleep, they were surrounded. Some were
shot where they slept. One Confederate put a bullet through John January's hat brim, barely missing his head.

In December, John January was paroled. He returned to his unit but, four months later, the war was over.

It would be nice to say that he returned to Grainger County, got on the family horse and took the corn to the grist
mill on Buffalo Springs. But the reality of the story is that not much is known about John January's post-war
history.

Gertrude's recollections are mainly from shards of conversations she had with her husband. John Janeway was
already 63 years old when she was born July 3, 1909.

WHAT LITTLE SHE KNOWS

She knows that he was in California after the war. John Janeway had a family and lived to be an old man. By the
time he was 77 years old, he simply showed up in Grainger County.

"He knew my mother, Halley. He came by to see us one day when I was 16 years old, "Gertrude said. She shut her
eyes. It was like watching someone sweep away the dust from a set of books.

"He asked Hal-- that's what we called Mama---if he could marry me. She said he would have to spark for three
years before she would sign the papers."

Gertrude was born with a badly deformed right hand. Her right leg was shorter than the left and she was 7 years old
before she learned to walk. But, she was a pretty green-eyed girl.

Growing up was not easy for Gertrude. She was the oldest of four children. Her father, Tom Grubb, died in 1922
at age 69 when Gertrude was only 13 years old. Her old green eyes tear up as she recalls her father.

"He taught me how to walk," she said softly. "He would give me one end of a piece of string. He would walk to the
other side of the room and tell me to bring him my end of the string."

Before she could walk, Tom Grubb carried his daughter piggyback wherever they went.

After Tom Grubb died, Halley had four children to care for. Gertrude was the oldest at 13. Her three brothers were
8, 6 and 1.

"Mama took to the wash tub," she said. Her voice wraps around the words.

Hal Grubb, a slender, work-worn woman with large hands, washed clothes six days a week. She was paid 50 cents
a day for an entire day's work that involved boiling the clothes in a big black pot and then scrubbing them on a
scrub board.

HARD RAW DAYS

Gertrude still has her mother's black pot. It's a reminder of those hard, raw days. "We ate wheat bread and
cornbread three meals a day," she said of those times.

Gertrude had to mother her three brothers, Arthur, Rubin and Barney, the baby. She attended school when she
could, but then that stopped.

"I got through the fifth reader," she said, but the fifth reader was far enough. Gertrude is a big reader today. She
loves reading the newspaper and watching television.

The day John Janeway walked into her life, it was like someone opening the door into another world.

Here was the tall, lean and handsome Janeway. Hal's mother had known the Janeways, and now one was knocking
on her door wanting to court her daughter.

"Mama said we'd have to court for three years until I was of age. We courted for two years. We'd sit out back of
the house in cane chairs and talk for hours." The day the talking stopped was June 9, 1927. That was the day John
Janeway married Gertrude Grubb in the middle of a dirt road at 9 am.

"He and all of his people came up in a Model T Ford owned by his friend Horace Maples. I'd never been in a car
before," she said.

They drove to a farm owned by county squire Joe Collins, who was in the fields cradling hay.

"It was a warm Thursday morning," Gertrude said. Her green eyes gleamed with emotion.

One year later, her Civil War veteran, a man of the world, took his new bride to Knoxville to People's Studio.

The photograph they had made there and mounted in a round, wooden frame hangs on a wall beside her bed where
she can look at it daily.

She was only 19 years old. Her husband was 81. In the photograph he sits in a chair, stiff and straight, hands on his
knees. He is wearing a hat. Gertrude also sits in a chair, stiff and straight, hands on her knees. She is wearing a hat.

That was the first photograph she had ever had taken and she did not know how one should act or what one
should do in such matters.

"I did what he did," she said.

"I guess I should have taken my hat off," she said, almost embarrassed.

"John was long-legged. My feet wasn't touching the floor," she said.

A HOME OF HER OWN

After a few years of boarding with friends, Gertrude told John she wanted a home of their own. They had been
walking by a log cabin by the side of the road. After the death of the old couple who had lived there, John and
Gertrude bought it and began paying it off.

Gertrude does not know how old the log cabin is. She remembers seeing it when she was a child. The boards on a
later addition are more than a foot wide, and the rusting tin roof is the same one John put on when the wooden
shingles began leaking.

It is the only house Gertrude has lived in since she was 23 .

There is only one electric light in the front of the cabin. There are two electric outlets and two more fixtures in the
back of the cabin.

Electricity is another element of her life that she says she can do without and did until a few years ago, when some
of her family wanted her to have electricity for heat.

She has talked on a telephone only once in her life and that was when she was a child. She has never owned a
driver's license or driven an automobile. Neither did John Janeway.

Gertrude and John lived together as husband and wife for only 10 years. During that decade she cooked on the
black and white Mascot's Solitaire wood stove that still crouches in a corner in the back kitchen.

Gertrude loved to cook cornbread, and she remembers her first batch.

"It crumbled." John said not to worry. You had to break it up before you could eat it anyway.

"John was good to me," she said, turning to look at the photograph.

"I called him honey, and he called me Gertie."

"I told him I wouldn't stay with him if he drank. He never did drink or curse. John was a good man. He helped my
mama and took care of her."

DEATH LEAVES 'THE LEAST 'UNS'

Beginning in 1937, death began to come in bunches for Gertrude.

First, John Janeway died. Two years later her mother died in the same bed in which Janeway had died at the age of
91.

Then, four months later, her youngest brother, Barney, died.

"He just grieved himself to death over Mama. He kept saying that Mama was in a hole. Mama was in a hole."

Moments before her mother died, Hal made Gertrude promise she would take care of "the least 'uns."

"She died a-shoutin' when I told her I would."

Another brother, Rubin, lived with his sister until he died at the age of 73. He is buried in the New Corinth Baptist
Church cemetery down the hill about 200 yards from John's grave.

"I asked Rube where he wanted to be buried. He told me he wanted to be buried beside me. John is buried there,"
she said, tears filling the corners of her eyes.

"There is space for one more beside my man. But Rube asked me to be buried beside him, and that's where I'm
going. Right beside Rube."

The cemetery in the New Corinth Community is on Smith Hollow Road in Grainger County. A slender,
sun-bleached Civil War tombstone stands out on the top of the hill. It says, "John January. CO E. 14 Ill. Cav."

Gertrude had it put there after struggling with the government for a few years to get the headstone.

She receives a $70 monthly Civil War pension check. It still comes to her mailbox in the name of John January.

It has been a long day, and Gertrude is tiring. She loves to talk with the people whom her nephew Duel Grubb of
Athens brings to visit her and with the home nurses who attend her twice a day.

The single question left for Gertrude is this: Why did a pretty young girl marry such an old man in the last years of
his life?

Gertrude is quick to answer that one. She doesn't blink. She doesn't even have to think about it. Her eyes flash and
her face beams. "I loved him, I adored him," she said.

Out of all the documents today I found the Thomas journal to be the most intriguing. Here, Gertrude Thomas seems to be completely oblivious to her slaves’ true feelings, toward their jobs and toward her. It reminds me a little of the Vesey Conspiracy, because the Governor didn’t even know that one of his most trusted slaves was a main planner for the thwarted revolt. It seems that many slave owners in the south cared nothing about the feelings of their slaves. They didn’t care to understand them nor improve them. Mrs. Thomas seems to have finally had the wool taken from her eyes; the same seems true for her mother. Their most trusted and “beloved” servants are leaving without saying a word. It becomes apparent that these slaves must have had a horrible existence, and these were the “house slavers,” the ones that were treated nicely. I can only imagine what must have happened among the “field slaves.”

I feel sad when I think of what would become of these freedmen. The other documents paint a picture of their lives. No matter whom they turned to, they will not be left alone or given justice. They will be first treated poorly by the Union army, then by the federal government. Some of the atrocities they will face after the years of slavery won’t even be as bad as the ones they faced while slaves. The only comfort they will receive is that they are not slaves, but free, and even that freedom is small. As Douglas says, “I am for the ‘immediate, unconditional, and universal’ enfranchisement of the black man, in every State of the Union. Without this, his liberty is a mockery.”

This is a very telling reading, but I'm not shocked. This kind of racism was present, North and South, well into the twentieth century. It's tough to imagine, considering the harsh treatment of black Union soldiers, how the people of the Union had enough passion to fight against slavery. It makes me think that either A)Randall hit the nail on the head, and none of the common people could care less about the issue, or B)(which I think has shown itself more and more true) the issue of slavery was greatly heightened during the war and did not deserve the credit it is so often given as instigator. Miller's account is horrifying. How could any black person, even a former slave, have the impetus to fight for such a racist army? Obviously, not every regiment was so inhumane, but considering what we've heard about northern racism, it can't be too far from the beaten path. It bit the Union in the butt on the battlefield, though, as their racially divided forces could not take ground. Part of me snickers at the backfire.
     Douglass' speech is a foreshadowing of much of the civil rights philosophy after Booker T. Washington. He called for independence, a black race that could stand on its own two feet. It looks much like WEB Dubois or even his descendents, the Black Panthers, and their desire for their own economic system. This overarching desire for self-sufficency could have produced equality in societal performance, but it could never have produced harmony between the races. I am not overly impressed with Douglass' stance, but I admire his courage and integrity.
     Gertrude Thomas' entry is just ridiculous. It demonstrates the helplessness of white women ho have always owned slaves. I wonder how they coped with emancipation? Though it was certainly just to free the slaves from such hateful owners as Gertrude Thomas, it left many a helpless wife and mother to tend to a house. I cannot believe that she despises her slaves when she knows they keep her life together.

These readings shed new light for me on how blacks were treated. I knew it wasn't exactly good times for them but I suppose I always thought once they were "free" whites were easier on them and would never imagine my family being kicked out of an army camp in the bitter cold of winter as Miller tells us. I cannot imagine having to walk twelve miles in a night to bury my child and not return for the rest of my family. Douglass' piece was also very interesting because he reiterates the point told by so many abolitionists in that he just wants all blacks to be left alone by the whites. He thinks taht whites have allready done enough damage to them and all they want is to be left alone so they can pursue their wants and needs. He doesn't want voting rights, welfare checks, or any measure of help from the government of local communities, "but simply justice", which I can find no fault in. Lastly, in her journal, Thomas reflects McPherson's view of a Northern exceptiohnalism by saying that, "Everythin is entirely reversed".

I can't say that I'm really suprised that black people were looked down upon and treated badly by some within the union army. I would bet that some of them blamed the war on the blacks instead of on slavery. I was very impressed by Douglas's words on justice and equality. His insights are still relevant more than a century after his time.

We have read about Union soldiers who had doubts about black soldiers' capabilities, etc...., but we've only really talked about how the blacks redeemed themselves in the eyes of many who doubted them, and earned the respect of their fellow officers. We were obviously generalizing. Joseph Miller's protest is evidence of this. he was a union soldier, yet he and his family were obviously mistreated seemingly without much thought or concern from the U.S. army. It seems that protecting one's home, family, women,etc... apparently didn't necessarily apply to blacks' home, family, and women. Payne's complaint drives home the same point. I wonder how the white men felt about letting the blacks do all the work. Do you think they felt ashamed or do you think they rationalized? If they had truly felt that blacks were not capable of fighting, they wouldn't have trusted their situation and lives to them right? So they must have acknowledged the fact that blacks were capable soldiers. Therefore, I think they were simply cowardly and selfish in this situation if they truly did nothing. These passages we read for tonight really emphasize the ambivalent feelings going on within in the union towards blacks. It must have been a real emotional struggle. And Douglas, as always, gets his words in! OH - I was surprised at the the writings of Miller and Payne. They are just as literate, if not as poetic, as Douglas. They're more literate and well spoken than many of the accounts we've read of white soldiers.....interesting.

Edited by author 04-18-2002 03:08 PM
I thought readings on Emancipation for tonight were extremely interesting and forshadow some things to come after the war in the reconstruction period. The Payne document was appalling, and shows that the Northerners really were extremely racsist, probably more so than their Southern counterparts. The article by Gertrude Thomas was very funny, especially when she referred to the work her "servants" had done that she had never done in her life.
The most informative piece in my opinion was the Frederick Douglas piece, very prophetic. It seems he hit on some issues that still have not been resolved. Such as the part where he explains that when the slaves are released from physical bondage, that doesn't mean they are completely equal in every way. It is apparent that even today the fight for the justice of the black man is not over, and they still live in the shackles of mental opression. I really like Douglas's quote "And if the Negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also." Meaning that if black people are on an equal playing field as whites then, allow them to fail, but since they are not it is the whites duty to lift them out of poverty's grip.

Killer Angels-- i am really impressed with how well written this novel is. I think it was Kelly who compared it to a Faulkner novel.... i had been thinking the same thing earlier! Shaara certainly does capture the stream of consciousness of his characters well. Reading history material, i have always discovered what the commanding officers did-- the decisions they made and the ramifications of those decisions. But rarely do you read the evolution of the many smaller decisions that motivated the big ones. Shaara subtly reveals a great deal about the different officers through casual dialogue... their level of integrity, character, and what they valued. Understanding their basic nature and reading their (supposed) stream of consciousness, helped me to understand several things. I think i realized for the first time just how much incredible pressure the army generals were under considering the limited communication between them. Buford's decision to hold onto the high ground at Gettysburg (at beginning of novel) for example-- what tremendous weight fell on his shoulders! The holding of his position had the potential to make or break the Union's power in the battle... and one man had to risk the lives of many to call the shots for a potentially futile effort.
Others in our discussion group have touched on this, but another thing (what i found to be most engaging) was to see the legendary commanding officers in their most human state. Lee has always been the most respectable, but "shadowy" Confederate hero in my mind. To read of him being woken on several occasions in the middle of the night-- his body aching and his mind and heart weary of war's atrocities-- well, these humanistic accounts helped me to understand that Lee was just another human being who possessed the same capacity to make decisions just as i do. When we read of his efforts in textbooks, we are simply reading an account of a man doing his job... day by day and choice by choice. I have always thought of him as having these huge, sweeping plans to lead the confederacy to victory.... this novel enlightened me to the tedious process of taking each battle maneuver on step at a time.

Killer Angels was one of the first books I read about the Civil War in starting my junkie history of it. The first time I read it, I didn't realize it was fictional history until I was into the book - yes, I was an idiot thinking it was true. This takes away from reading history for me. Killer Angels definately puts a better picture into my head about Gettysburg, but I am worried that it is an inaccurate, fictional account. This is why I didn't continue reading Shaara. I do know that Shaara tried to be as accurate as possible but he must have assumed a great deal as far as emotions and conversations. I don't know why this bothers me because in reading a book in general, it is not necessary a true account ever.

About the book, this is also where I started focusing my "junkieness" on Longstreet. Shaara does a magnificient job in describing Longstreet's idea and strategy in the war. Imagine if Lee had heeded Longstreet's advice in leaving Gettysburg to get between Meade and Washington on the ground of the Confederates choosing. Shaara says, "This may be the time for defensive war. But this aint the army for it". I understood this as Longstreet was ahead of his time. His idea of trench warfare and making the enemy attack you was 55 years ahead of his time. Also, imagine if Lee heeded the advice to attack from behind on I believe it was Little Round Top because it was not defended as the left most flank. All of these "what-ifs" are fun and add to being an armchair general.

Lastly, I did not notice the major themes in the war as highlighted by Shaara until this class. Like when Shaara notes the Northern Exceptionalism, not Southern (pgs 164-5). These themes including varying reasons for why a private would fight jumped out this time for me to agree or disagree with.

  What a fantastic novel and approach to historically relaying the battle of Gettysburg. I agree with other members of the group that layout of the novel, with it's various character viewpoints, was especially interesting and effective. It reminded me of a Faulkner novel. I enjoyed getting inside each character's head and learning the causes of their actions. Each character brought to the table his own personal background and motivations making each man unique and not just another number in the grand scheme of things.
  One thing about this novel that really struck me was the extent to which Lee's men truly honored him. Even when they felt he was making the wrong decision and saw a better way to approach a situation that would lead to better ground or fewer casualties, they still honored his wishes. Lee was their great paternal figure and they took special care not to upset him, but it almost seemed as if they were treating him like a china doll that would break with the lightest touch. Granted, his health was declining and he was in much pain, I wonder if the generals could have made more headway with him if they had been more straightforward. Off course, you have to keep in mind that Lee would not stray away from his offensive stategy or any plan that he saw fit.
   My favorite sections of the novel were the conversations between Longstreet and Fremantle. One in particular is where Longstreet explains to him the eccentricies of the Confederate generals and how only Lee could hold them together. It is funny that Fremantle seems so surprised at their actions and eccentricies when he is a little bit eccentric himself! His facination with the war and his outsider views of it are interesting and leads one to wonder what he's going to say next!
  On a final note, this novel made me want to dig deeper into the lives of these generals. It was a small taste of their experiences and struggles that led me to want to find out more. I feel that this novel really draws the reader into the story and did a wonderful job at straying away from your typical cut and dry battle account.

The concept of the book was cool with its changing of characters though I think I began to suffer from a mild schizophrenia. An evidence for that and for Shaara's good writing was that I began to not know who I was rooting for. THe actual battle scenes were the most difficult for me to read. Perhaps that is fitting with the confusion of battle. I most enjoyed the downtime in between battles. The section after the first big day of fighting particularly gripped me. In one of Longstreet's chapter after that first day it deals with all the confederate loses. You can really sense the despair and tension, especially when the men want to court-marshall Stuart. The tension is also felt when Goree tells the story about how he punched that other officer. Lee tries to quench that fire knowing that division among his army would only make his fight harder.
The next chapter showed Lee as very contemplative, careful, and calm. THe book was littered with anecdotes about how much Lee was respected and how he was almost God-like among the men. As I've been reading this book I've seen Lee as being more and more cautious about things whether it be his attacks or the way he deals with his officers. THis is seen as he is praying about what to do for the second day. Today in class, something was said that made Lee sound a bit more aggresive and maybe even hasty. I'm struggling to really figure out what he was like. In order to do this I have been constantly questioning how much artistic license Shaara has taken with telling this story but I imagine that his development of character is well-researched and carefully pieced together.

I am left speechless and tickled with awe having just finished Killer Angels. Michael Shaara, with these three hundred and something pages of text, has, in my mind, revolutionized the historical novel. From the moment that I saw the pattern of his “character view” form, I knew that the story would present itself in a pleasantly unique way. Moreover, Shaara’s writing style is grossly effective; he does not worry endlessly about following standards of syntax and grammar—he presents thoughts and fears and worries and regrets and feelings and emotions and wants and everything with blatant reality. Also, Shaara managed to shed light on various leaders as actual people. Through nice mixes of dialogue, thought, and action, he illustrates the idea that even glorious war generals are human beings who have thoughts and desires and regrets—and they miss their wives and children.

The most fascinating sections, in my opinion, were those that focused around Longstreet. Having never heard of the man before reading this novel, I was taken aback by the reverence with which General Lee viewed him. Shaara painted almost a “father/son” relationship betwixt the two. As far as Lee is concerned, I was rather disappointed to read in the Afterword that much blame was placed on the Old General for Gettysburg even in years after the war. Granted, the plan of attack may not have been the most viable or “common sense” option. Nonetheless, one cannot deny that Lee had great intentions, loved his army, and wanted what was best for his troops; he had no Cause—he fought for the men under him, for their respect, love, and trust.

In closing, I must say that I will surely add Killer Angels to my library. I also hope to read Jeff Shaara’s Gods and Generals. The battle at Gettysburg may very well be the most hallowed military confrontation that the world has ever seen. Lincoln’s address, post-battle, is one of the most revered pieces of speech in all the annals of American lore. Pickett’s charge. Chamberlain’s fiesty Maine units. Kilrain...maybe the most loveable character in the novel. What a delight.

I loved Shaara’s book, it has to be one of my favorites of all time. I like the style he has taking you to the camps of the characters and being put in the vicinity of the characters. Shaara writes in a way that the reader feels like he’s right there, that he’s sometimes in the mind of the characters. But what I love most is how Shaara tried his best to not write with a bias, that he writes from the views of both sides, many Civil War novels are slanted one way or another, but as far as I know the Shaara books are some of the most neutral of Civil War books. I love how Shaara portrays the lack of cavalry involvement and the role women can play in the war. As we talked about in class today cavalry was used ineffciently in the Eastern Theatre. JEB Stuart may have arguably been the best cavalry officer in the Confederate army (Lee thought so), but his want for fame and trying to get in the Northern newspapers cost the Confederate Army, more so at Gettysburg than any other army. Stuart was efficient at making circles around the Federal troops, but he could have been much more useful if he had cut railroads and supply lines and while the infantry was engaged quickly strike the enemy on the flank or from behind. As for the role of women, Shaara quietly mentions how Ewell was hesitant in taking Cemetery Ridge the first day because he had his wife with him. It is argued that she was calling the shots for him at this point, even if this is true I believe there could be other reasons he did not move in. Men are very protective of their wives and family and if there is a chance that something could happen to them, men can be hesitant. Take for example William Hull in the War of 1812. He commanded Ft. Detroit at the time. Instead of taking his larger force and invading Canada as he should have (because everyone knows that to take Canada you must have a 3 pronged assault, talk to Dr. Barrington), he instead is hesitant and waits for the British to do something. When the mixed force of British and Indians march towards Detroit, Hull allows himself to be intimidated by a smaller British/Indian force and surrenders not only Detroit, but all the forts in the area so that he and his family may receive good conduct.

What I disagree most with the book is the importance of Chamberlain. Chamberlain may have saved the Union army, but until today or a couple other days could anyone name another Union man who saved the Union flank? No, probably not. It is because Chamberlains after war fame that he gets such recognition for what he did at Gettysburg, another example of how events at the time do not seem as important as they seem to be later. In the book before the battle Chamberlain gives a moving speech in which he rallies the 2nd Maine to not mutiny, but to fight. I would have to believe that other orators gave speeches also that were quite important, but it is only after the war that we give such importance to this speech by a Lt. Colonel. Shaara’s lack of attention given to Hancock is appalling. Hancock was crucial in the repel of Picket’s Charge. Many other Union generals would have fallen back under the cannonade and the attack of Picket. Even with the Union forces falling back it would not have changed the outcome of the battle, the casualties suffered by Picket would have been to much to roll up the Union if they could have kept their heads. Picket would have been repulsed nonetheless as long as the Union soldiers below and above Picket’s attack would not have gone into a panic. What cost the Confederacy victory was the first day, Ewell’s inability to take the ridge. Ewell was commanding Jackson’s old corps, had Jackson not been lost at Chancellorsville, then the Confederates would have had the high ground and the battle would have went the other way.

I just want to say that even though I'm not a Mainer like Eric, I really liked reading about the Charge of the 20th Maine Volunteers (if I can call it that). I read it yesterday in Shaara's Killer Angels, then again in the Guelzo readings. Like Guelzo tells us, bayonet charges were quite rare in the age of guns, but the guys were out of ammo and they had to hold that spot, no matter what. On top of that, they actually succeeded! That's great stuff; I love stuff like that.

One comment I'd like to make about why we re-enact battles instead of debates: I like it mostly has something to do with the primitive "id" within us. I mean, a lot of people would rather see a spectacular movie based on a book than actually taking the time to read the book. The movie is faster and more action-packed, maybe even with cool special effects. Another analogy from my own experience: watching someone play a video game or reading or hearing about one isn't nearly as fun as playing it yourself. I think the same is true for battle re-enactments, whether it's Americans re-enacting Civil War battles or Europeans re-enacting ancient Roman battles. If you read about it or watch a movie about it, you feel a little engagement with the subject, but actually being there to experience the sight of chaotic battle, the smell of smoke, the sound of booming cannon and Rebel yells, the taste of hardtack, and the feel of an authentic Civil War rifle in your hands, all engage all of your senses, and it's a much more intense, exciting, adrenaline-pumping experience. It's one of those things where "you have to be there."

I thought today's reading on Lee and the battle of Gettysburg was very interesting to me and answered some questions that I had about the very decisive engagement. Guelzo points out that Lee had three factors which made him the great leader that he was. Those factors include: great subordinate leaders who made great decisve decisions in the heat of battle, his great relation with Jefferson Davis which gave Lee the power to make almost all decisons on the battle tactics as Davis trusted Lee, and Lee's aggressiveness in the battlefield allowed for many victories by Lee. Lee did not believe in defensive strategy as he always wanted to attack, attack, attack!
   The battle of Gettysburg was the one tarnish in the career of Lee. Lee's attack method allowed for the Federal army to run down Lee's troops and made for a large advantage in man power. The Confederate lose in Gettysburg proved to be the decisive blow to the South. It lowered the morale in the South as demonstrated by Tally Simpson and made the the troops believe they could no longer win this war.
  Another interesting fact that I got out of this reading was that the 20th divison of Maine Volunteers was the one who routed the Confederates at Little Round Table. I am from Maine and I did not believe that Maine had any big part in the war. It makes me proud to be a mainer!

The readings today on the different accounts of the war were very interesting. I think they also lend themselves to the argument we talked about in class some. Who exactly is giving an accurate portrayal of the battles and the war? It is interesting to read the documents and see how each side says they are (or were) doing well in the battle. In Lee's account it sounds like the battle is going well most of the time for the Confederacy. However, from the text we know (or do we?) that the Confederacy faced some very severe losses when the were charged by Chamberlain's troops and the next day when they charged the front lines of Union army. I suppose I always took for granted that what the history book or a particular document said as the truth. Really, it takes a look at all sides and perspectives to get a realistic view of what happened at a specific battle.

I found Sara's ideas on reenactment and the "continuing civil war," interesting. Coming from Massachusetts, I agree that morals and ideasare different in the South, and I can see the divisions in beliefs and thought are still relevant in today's society. Since coming to the South, especially in this class, I have heard some pretty strong pro-Southern opinions, and I have heard the same arguements from the North as well. I think that there are many ignorant people in our society that haven't taken the time to learn anything about what we are learning. They still hold feelings(many harsh) that were held before and subsequently after the war. Both sides have points to prove, the South seemingly more, but neither side really wants to listen to the other.
     I agree with Ryan that the morale of the troops was generally quite low, which Simpson exudes in his letter, and I also noticed how Simpson changes his direction. First he says that the army was breaking down and victory looked bleak, then he talks about the influence of God. He says "We were a wicked, proud, ambitious nation, and God has brought upon us this war to cursh and humble our pride and make us a better people generally." I wonder what his reasoning behind the statement was. Maybe he was sick of the war and figured god had punished them all to make them all better, Confederates and Federal soldiers alike. Prior to that statement he states that he thinks the Confederacy would prevail. Maybe he meant they would win the war, or maybe, like Sara had pointed out, he meant that in the long run the South would prevail if they kept at it and kept their values. That may explain some of the ill feelings and resentment.

From the readings today, I believe that Tally Simpson's views after the battle of Gettysburg were probably true for most of the Confederacy. This battle was devastating to the Confederates size and morale. I think that the two reasons that the Confederacy lost was because of Stuart and Lee. In The Killer Angels, Lee has no idea about where Stuart is or what he is doing until the battle is almost over. Lee considers Stuart the eyes of his army, and Lee is left with no idea of what the Union is doing. Guelzo talks about how Lee's aggresive style made him a great general. I think that Gettysburg was one situation where it backfired on him. It seemed like he knew that there was no way that the Confederacy could get the Union off the high ground, but he was going to risk his men's lives to try it anyway. Back to Simpson. In the first part of his letter, Simpson feels like all hope is gone for the South, rightfully so. The Confederacy seemed to lose all their morale after Gettysburg. For example, Simpson talks about how the major southern cities will fall soon. He states, "Savannah will follow, and then Mobile, and finally Richmond." It is funny how his outlook changes in the next part of his letter. Now he is convinced that God is on their side and the Confederacy will win the war.

I also found Lincoln's letter to Halleck interesting. Lincoln discouraged Meade from attacking the Confederacy after Getysburg. But wasn't Lincoln the one who complained about his unaggressive officers?

Edited by author 04-16-2002 05:51 PM
I really enjoyed the class discussion today. I've enjoyed seeing re-enactments whenever we drove by them, and I'd like to make it a future habit of seeing re-enactments when I can. One thing I pondered upon after class today was the question we discussed, why would we re-enact battles and not conventions? I personally think that the Second Continental Congress would be a fabulous re-enactment, but that's a different story.

I ended up discussing this re-enactment of battles with my father, the big Civil War Buff, on the phone after class, and we came up with two conclusions. The Civil War is still being fought today among us all, just on a totally different battlefield that is less grotesque and violent, more of a social battlefield. It's something, especially while looking at my transplanted life from south to north and then north to south, that I can't deny. We're still at each other's throats, more verbally with stereotypes than with bayonets and musket fire. So maybe re-enacting is just a good natured, historically accurate, and fun way to release some of those tensioins that still arise between Yankees and Rebs.

Second conclusion, why get heated over controversial issues in a convention re-enactment when you could fight the battles over it? If one is going to get all riled up over southern states' rights or the expansion of slavery into the territories at a re-enactment, why not just fight the good fight? I feel that's why Brooks got all wacko on Sumner, he just wanted to start the war earlier than everyone else. I may not be articulating myself well here, but it's just a theory on why battles are more popular than politics.

On to the readings. I was glad to read Guelzo's bit on Lee before and during Gettysburg. It makes for a nice companion to Shaara's Killer Angels. In Guelzo's writing, even after all that we have read on Lee, one can't help feel sympathy for Lee who has seemed to give a good part of the prime of his life to the war. Lee certainly is a figure one can study continuously and feel like they never quite have a good idea of who this man is.

Debate Group Assignments:
(See the syllabus for details and requirements.)

Ex-Confederate vice-president Alexander Stephens
Cash, Brantingham, Gunter, Davis, Caldwell

President Andrew Johnson
Gray, Vendt, Morrow, Potter, Collins,

Congressman James G. Blaine
Jordan, McCann, Barry, Lee, Griffin

Congressman Thaddeus Stevens
Mathews, Reagan, Iglowski, Michelsen, Ayers

Susan B. Anthony
LaBerge, Chapman, Willard, Lynn, Roe

Congressman Robert B. Elliott
Gunn, Poehlman, Deloach, Atkins, Heathman

On this notion that consistency in the Union leadership would have been beneficial, I have to disagree. Burnside, Hooker, Buell, Meade all made critical mistakes or failed to follow through on their successes. In a time when results are everything, Lincoln would be taking a huge risk if he operated on the assumption that his commanders would eventually get it right. Frequent turnover was the only option if he hoped to end the war anytime soon. Also, the idea that Hooker could lead the charge to Richmond if things had gone his way is interesting, but is it plausible? Judging by Guezlo's description, I would say that Hooker lacks the strength of character to attempt something like the capture of Richmond. I can imagine him vacillating on the subject, unsure if there are larger Confederate forces at hand to defend the city. Of course, by that time, there may not have been, but unless the victory literally fell into his lap, I can't imagine Hooker making such a bold move.

The importance of the war in the West is another interesting topic from this passage. On one hand, it was the site of many critical battles and home to the Mississippi. Nevertheless, Guezlo points out (correctly I think), that even without Western access, the Confederacy continued the war effort for another two years. I like the point Thomas makes, that perhaps in those two years, if Lee had done just enough to persuade Northerners that the war could not be won, the Confederacy might have survived.

In response to what Thomas said about the reopening of the Mississippi being a huge gain for the Union, I just wanted to look at the section in Guelzo on this point. Until now, I think we would agree that the Mississippi is a huge piece of the puzzle for whichever side has control of it, the fall of New Orleans certainly a striking blow to the Confederacy. I think all of Thomas's points on the gains from the fall of Vicksburg and the reopening of the Mississippi are merited, as well. But I just find it interesting that Guelzo seems much more measured in his response on this topic, saying the conquest paid the Union "a few" dividends, then turning to focus more on the problems still at hand. The section from 268-269 regarding Lincoln's fears about the reopening that were, instead, "a generation old" (new focus on the RR) seems a very telling point about the time period and the changes that really were going on, both those brought about by the war and those which were simply part of the larger context of development and western civilization as a whole.

Vicksburg was huge. By reopening the mississippi for the Union and thus securing the support of critical midwestern agricultural states for the Union cause, by fact of the surrender of nearly 30k confederate troops, and in making the reputation of Grant that would eventually land him in command of the Army of the Potomac. I think that a contrast is beginning to emerge between the nature of the eastern and western theatres. In the east, the fighting keyed on the capitals and their defense. Each side believed that it could deliver a decisive blow which would end the war by crushing the opposing army or taking the opposing capital or both. In the west, the strategy seems to be based more on the larger scheme of things, with more economic and political motivation in the thinking of the commanders. There were obvious strategic reasons that Vicksburg or New Orleans or Chatanooga were critically important to both sides, and the battles for these cities were fought for obvious reasons. Contrast this with the eastern theatre, where the Army of N. VA and the Army of the Potomac seemed to wander into these massively bloody knock-down, drag-out brawls for the sole purpose anhiliating one another. Certainly, the naval blockade of the confederacy along with the Federal domination of the western fighting meant that the economic pressure on the confederacy would eventually have rendered it unable to continue the war. But perhaps Lee was not incorrect in thinking that by destroying the Army of the Potomac, or perhaps by mounting a significant enough threat to Washington itself, he could end the war before the confederacy was squeezed into submission by the Anaconda plan. At several points (Second Manassas, Gettysburg 1st day) it seems that Lee was tantalizingly close to realizing this goal. It makes for interesting speculation anyhow.

On the theme of "hanging on to bad generals," I can't resist discussing Gen. Joe Hooker, the author of Chancellorsville. While we'll never know just what caused him to entrench the Union army in the hideous terrain (for fighting) of the Wilderness, he had plenty of warning that Stonewall was flanking him -- 26,000 men (more or less) do not sneak around in the woods! If Union Gen. O. O. Howard (of whom we will hear again) had gotten a clue and deployed his men appropriately, the mortally wounded Stonewall Jackson would have been joined by far more casualties in gray, and (in my opinion) Hooker could have led the charge to Richmond.
Shifting to Vicksburg, where Grant displayed an ingenuity and audacity of advance in the face of the enemy (similar to Jackson's), the entire campaign demonstrates how terribly the war has gone for the Confederacy in the West. The Confederates have no navy to contest with the Union gunboats on the Mississippi ... a situation which Guelzo links to A. S. Johnston's earlier gamble at Shiloh. (And I had always wondered where all the garrisons in the West went!) Even with the squandered opportunities of Buell and Rosecrans, I think that Grant and Sherman could see the Atlantic Ocean from the conquered citadel at Vicksburg.
And just as the loss of Vicksburg blocked the central artery of the Confederacy, Lee was losing more troops he couldn't replace at Gettysburg. Was Chancellorsville (an imperfect victory) the limit of Lee's brilliance? Were his troops overconfident? Does the eastern theater even matter in 1863 when the war in the West is so one-sided?

The taking of Vicksburg was a huge moment for Ulysses S. Grant. Guelzo mentions that Grant gained a reputation with his victory at Vicksburg and this is certainly true. In my paper fall term, I looked at media opinions of Grant and most civilians and some of his commanding officers thought he was an incompetent drunk(which was completely untrue). His strategy at Vicksburg helped to dispel those rumors and he gained respect from Lincoln. I'm not sure that I agree that the Union should have kept their commanding officers even though they were making large mistakes. I do think that Lincoln had some errors in judgement with his officers which caused much of the inconsistency. This definitely caused problems for the Union army, but would the situation have been worse if Lincoln hadn't removed McClellan or Meade form their positions? I think that Lincoln made mistakes when appointing his generals which definitely cost the Union army some victories, but in the end he found the right general in Grant which is ultimately the most improtant thing.

This post pertains to Friday night's readings. Please forgive the extreme tardiness of this message.

Everyone in our class had thoughtful things to say about Keegan, Watkins, Buell, and Bragg, that I'm afraid this will just be an echo of many opinions. Thus the consequence of posting so late. I enjoyed Keegan's excerpt very much, especially the comparison of Caesar's and Thucydides' take on war. Both very different, Caesar, as always, giving himself a pat on the back, and everyone else is a part of a legion working for him. It takes the inspiration of the divine Caesar to make the troops run into battle. Thucydides wrote more on the patriotism of the fighting soldier and his sacrifices.

This of course worked well when I read Sam Watkins' narrative on the Battle of Perryville, which was as entertaining as it was insightful. I think I would like to meet this guy were he alive today. His claim that rank has nothing to do with your intelligence, but everything to do with battle is representative of the hard truth in the Civil War. When reading Watkins' account of battle it brings to mind Keegan's "The Narrative Tradition" and what it was that made the Civil War soldier fight or run away. Especially when considering he has befriended a soldier from the "enemy side" and shared the wartime experience of raiding civilian homes for food. How does one fight the enemy after bonding with him? When on the battlefield, read to shoot, do the soldiers become the war-machines of Caesar or the patriotic soliders of Sparta?

Following Chancellorsville in May 1863, the Army of Northern Virginia (under Lee's command) "was becoming convinced of its own invincibility" (CAR 261). The frequent officer turnover in the Union army was taking a toll on Union forces and the Confederates believed that southern victory was just around the corner. Lee was given "three cheers" by his soldiers and heralded as the "most noble countenance" some had ever seen (262). But wasn't this the same Lee that we read about in chapter 19 of the Thomas book a week or so ago? The Lee that was considered disorganized and responsible for Confederate mistakes? It makes me wonder just how great the role of officer turnover was in Union defeat during 1862-1863. If the Union had stuck with the same commanding officers (despite their "blunders" and mistakes) would the Union have been more successful? I think there's a lot to be said for consistency...

This is an addition to Friday's discussion...
I really think Janna has hit on something when she discusses the value of looking at all the various perspectives on the Civil War. Certainly different people who are serving in different capacities are going to view the events and attitudes/morale of the war in diverse ways. Upon greater reflection over the weekend, i was struck by our limited ability to understand history. For instance, one battle could be viewed in thousands of different ways. Why? well, because each soldier who goes into battle takes with him, a lifetime of experiences and attitudes that contribute to his perceptions of life and the events he encounters. So to lump all commanding officers together, all navy officers together, all commonplace officers together, etc. and then give a general overview of their catagorical perspectives on the war, produces an incomplete understanding. Commonplace soldiers for example, differed in their perspectives although they served in the same capacity. Is it not then overwhelming to consider the vast amount of history that will never be known, because so many perceptions were never recorded? I hope these thoughts make sense to y'all... i just wanted to share, because it opened my eyes to the fact that history is not merely fact, but largely about perceptions.... and if all perceptions- regardless of truth value-- (and therefore all history) could be known and understood.... well, how overwhelming would that be?? as humans we would never have the capacity to contain a single day of history....

I'm going to have to lean towards James' opinion on this one. It seems to me that the trained strategists, the generals, shouldn't be subjected to the whims of Lincoln like he's Zeus on Mt. Olympus. McLellan, a general who practically deserved tenure, knocked around the Confederate army at Antietam, but he didn't pursue, so he was replaced. But he was on the battlefield. He had fought through the war. He knew what was going on and, I would assume, had a better grasp of the situation than his boy in Washington. Later, Buell's victory (but failure to pursue)gets him replaced. What about the possible consequences? It seems that Lincoln only thought of the positive possible outcomes of fierce aggression, not the possible outcome of a bloodbath, an ambush of tired Union troops. He thought politically instead, knowing that his constituents wanted an end to the war. Another side of all these replacements is the lack of unity and continuity that it had to have caused among the soldiers. Great college sports teams are the ones who know and love their coaches. Sure, the Union didn't have the time to play "sport" with the war, but the principle remains.
     On the other side of the coin, it seems that aggression may have been the answer to strategic problems. Nathan Bedford Forrest won not only because of his strategic genius, but also because of his fearlessness. Look at Burnside's hesitation at Antietam. His move across the bridge could have been the crushing blow to Lee's army.
    Positive for Burnside: I was impressed by his loyalty to McLellan at the beginning of the war. He chose a much lower postition than Lincoln offered in order to remain under his general's command. A bit of loyalty and constancy in the ever-changing Union army is refreshing.

Its amazing to me that these Union generals didn't learn from each other when it came to pursuing defeated Confederate armies. As Guelzo notes, Buell, like McClellan not long before, failed to go after Confederates in the fall of 1862 and contributed to making Grant so mad he almost quit. I know that chasing the Confederates would have onvolved more than simply moving a couple figures on a big chess board. The Union soldiers who would most likely have just finished a battle would have had to find the strength and fortitude to chase after the Confederates. However, to me it seems too important a possibility for the Union to not at least try and run and catch them. By this time in the war Lincoln was getting restless at all the strategical movements of war and he wanted "Confrontation, not turning movements", so it would seem he would be in favor of pursuing fleeing Confederates as well.
As a result of Lincoln's want of direct confrontation the Union objective was moved from Richmond to simply finding and attacking Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. Guelzo does not specifically say so but I get the feeling that this was due in large part to the fact that the war had been going on for awhile now and was dragging on much longer than many people expected. Secondly, and more integral in my opinion, was the fact that Lincoln did not want to appear to be a public leader who was all bark and no bite, and he wanted to give Northerners, and especially people in border states, something to think about before the next Presidential elections. This blend of politics and military strategy has been a reoccuring theme throughout the Civil War. Lincoln's desire for direct conflict also seems to have spurred on the newly appointed Northern army commander Burnside in making repeated (6) frontal attacks on a heavily fortified and protected Confederate station that resulted in the 12,000 Union soldiers being killed or wounded. It would have done Lincoln, and other political leaders of the time good to leave the battle strategy to the military officers and concentrate on other matters, like making sure there was enough supplies and ways to get them to troops.

Why is everybody bashing Lincoln? Gosh James - incompetent? You're harsh! I think the failure at this point was in the failure of both Lincoln and the generals under his leadership in their understanding of their exact cause. They realized a little late that the way to win was not simply by keeping the Confederate from winning, which is what McClellan and Buell were doing. They were doiing just enough to keep the Confederates a little beat, as if the Confederates would eventually decide they had had enough. On page 269 is a great quote explicity stating the mindset of the federal strategy up to this point: "We are in arms, not for the purpose if invading the rights of our FELLOW-countrymen ANYWHERE, but to maintain the integrity of the Union and protect the Constitution." Talk about denial. Notice the langauage McClellan uses here! Their attitude was all wrong, and trying to overcompensate with more aggressive generals kind of backfired. But the blame can't be laid entirely on Lincoln. It's not as if Burnside for example was just feeling pressure from Lincoln.He was feeling pressure from Washington. There's a lot more to washingtin than just the President. Something else that caught my eye too was the description of Rosencran riding down the lines to rally his men in the face of sudden Confederate fire. CAR says that his personal ride down the lines is possibly what saved the battle. I just thought that was interesting in light of th readings from Friday and the comments that people have been making about the relationships between generals and privates, etc....

Edited by author 04-15-2002 01:45 AM
To speak out of turn, I beg that you look back to the readings from Friday and to Mr. Heathman's remarks on the "invention of history." I can't resist adding a postmodern twist to his points -- in our interpretation, we too are inventing history.
For example, my own interpretation of Perryville -- that Braxton Bragg (the most incompetant and long-serving general in gray whom I can remember) "blew it" in Kentucky despite having the initiative AND choosing his ground -- is a product of my own background and (nefarious?) purposes. As a Tennesseean, for example, I have an ax to grind with the Confederate commander who so ignominiously gave my state to the Union armies. All of us have our own biases, though perhaps more subtle.
Back to Perryville. To satisfy anyone who enjoys reading my demolitions of generals, I say that Bragg behaved like a general who HAD the 20,000 men he only imagined would join him in KY, and Buell was patently clueless. (The terrain helped.) The battle was decided in those hideous charges against artillery emplacements that Sam Watkins describes; Bragg couldn't afford to lose the men who were mown down by grape shot and canister. Even if Bragg's charges had succeeded in dislodging Buell's men before dark, the Union troops would have rebounded from superior defensive positions over the night (cf. Shiloh), in my armchair general's opinion. If only Bragg had been wounded by some Heaven-sent Union sniper, perhaps Kirby Smith (my personal favorite among the Western Confederate generals) could have taken command and spared Confederate sympathizers the embarassment of the next 2 years.
And since everyone is talking about Gaius Iulius Caesar as the stereotypical political general (with some help from Keegan), I'll defend the old dictator. Caesar actually tells you quite a bit about strategy and tactics -- so long as you accept that he always knew everything in advance, and that he never made a mistake! Other than being clairvoyant, Bragg and Buell could certainly learn from Caesar (1900 years later): don't concentrate your forces on the field, do some reconnaissance, build entrenchments, and stay organized. Ah, the wonder of hindsight.

It was unfortunate for the Union that not only did they have to contend with generals being fired for not being aggressive enough for the politicians, but also that those who were aggressive for the sake of politics followed that tactic to stupyfing ends. Meanwhile, Lee had both a loyal army and a good relationship with other generals. It seems to me that Davis let his generals run the war more than Lincoln let his. Perhaps Lincoln should have let his generals run his war a little more...

the reading for tonight basically focuses on the incompetence of leadership during the war (particularly leaders of the union army). it is tough, surely somewhat impossible, to know who is going to make a great leader during war. as the passage on nathan forrest explains, he had a gift for knowing what to do with a given tactical situation. this is a man who was seemingly the antithesis of a west pointer. education apparently matters very little once the real bullets start flying and you must take command of a numerous amount of men.

lincoln's style of handing out new generals like they were a dime a dozen had an obvious effect on the morale of the union army in the east. Lee, for one, knew that new command meant many things. it required the familiarity with new officials and basically a "get used to your new army" period of down time. although lincoln felt the best way to get his generals to move in the east was to replace them by more aggressive generals, his strategy ultimately backfired in his face on more than a few occasions.

It seems like everything went well for the Confederates in the east, and was extremely deplorable in the west. The west and especially Vicksburg were integral to the Northern strategy of securing the Mississippi River and gaining crucial western territory for recruitment.
The releasing of G. McClellan by Lincoln is monumental and left the Union army with a string of incompetent generals, and left Lincoln scrambling. It almost seems like Lincoln had been trying to find a way to get rid of McClellan for quite some time. The lack of leadership really hurt the Union in the East.

Tonight's reading focused mainly on the incompetence of the Union generals in charge of the Eastern theatre, but within the readings, there was a reoccurring theme of Lincoln's incompetence.

On page 257, Guelzo makes the point that Lincoln should have known better than to give Burnside the job if he was reluctant in taking it. After his humiliating defeat at Fredericksburg, Lincoln should have had Burnside shot for gross incompetence, yet it took the outcry from the corps commanders for Lincoln to relieve him.

After Burnside, Lincoln made the mistake of giving Joe Hooker the job of commanding general. Lincoln should have done research, knowing that Hooker was "a bragger and a show off."

Finally, the final passage of reading illustrates the overall stupidity of the Union war machine. By not going for the industrial centers, and instead focusing on the Mississippi, the North dragged the war out unnecessarily. The fact that Lincoln and advisors didn't realize this makes one question whether he had a complete grasp on the task at hand.

As we see from the readings, around the time of McClellan’s replacement, there were a lot of tough losses for the Confederates. Their lines in the southwest were badly broken. New Orleans and Tennessee had both fallen. These were vital to the Confederacy. As we discussed in class, New Orleans was the gateway for the south, and Tennessee was a buffer that helped keep the Union from marching all through the south. Now both were gone.

The Union, on the other hand, had a great loss as well, at Fredericksburg; Lee vs Burnside. Burnside had a great plan, but when it failed he should have quit and thought of something else. Due to this error, he lost many men. But I don’t think this was really that big of a tactical loss, not to sound to unemotional. There were many men lost. That is big. There were much more men lost here than during the Union’s taking of Chattanooga, but the Confederates loss of land, and tactical position really struck a blow with them. The Union lost many men, but no real position advantage and Lincoln just replaced Burnsides as commander.

I've found this discussion of the validity of the various accounts to be quite interesting. Initially, I would have favored the views expressed by Neal, that there is more "truth" to be found in the writings of those who are not in command, the soldiers and reporters. Indeed, the anecdotes in the Watkins account give the reader a great deal of insight into the experiences of the average soldier. The newspaper account also gives a seemingly accurate blow-by-blow account of Perryville from a Union perspective. However, Thomas's comments on the Bragg and Buell reports prompted me to re-examine those accounts. During my first reading of those reports, you might say I was in the Keegan mindset, expecting that these accounts were all directed at some "political end," i.e. furthering their reputations. Rereading the pieces, I believe that Thomas is on to something, and that there is something more than mere propagandizing or reputation building in their reports. Bragg tends to boast about his army more, but both he and Buell are fairly frank about the setbacks they endured.

Ultimately, I'm forced to get on the bandwagon with Austin, Janna, Shannon, and others, and say that all accounts are worthy of some consideration. It is up to the historian to decide whose perspective deserves the most attention, and that, of course, depends on what he or she is concerned with. Keegan discusses the "battle piece" and lays out clearly what he intends to write about: the soldier's perspective. It is obvious what accounts would be most worthwhile to him, but depending on your goals, accounts from the leadership perspective could be just as useful. These readings reinforce the notion that we must be considerate of where these authors are coming from, and to take everything with a large grain of salt.

One last note: I agree with Matt that not all of these accounts are propaganda. While each author clearly brings a slant to his writings, I don't think it's fair to say that each account is an attempt at propaganda. There is no question where the Cincinnati Gazette reporter's loyalties lie, but is he really writing propaganda for the readers back home? Other than a pro-Union bias, I don't see anything in his account that acts as full-blown propaganda. Earlier, we read the piece by Longstreet in which he vilified the Union, and there is nothing on that level in the reporter's account. Buell and Bragg are fairly straightforward in their accounts as well. They too are biased, but they aren't writing propaganda for the perusal of the powers that be back home. Only Bragg's Proclamation to the Citizens of Kentucky and, to a much lesser extent, Watkins’s account posses anything resembling propaganda. Bragg hoped to win support from the Kentuckians by portraying the Union forces as "despoilers" and "cowardly." Watkins, in an effort to present the war from a common soldier's perspective, lashes out at the commanders. As for the other accounts though, I don't see much in the way of propaganda.

I agree with Nicholas, Janna and the rest that the General's accounts were very important, not just because they knew where the enemy would be, but hecause they were given the most in depth assessment of the overall battle. In that respect, I think the soldier's accounts were just as important, because they showed the thick of the battle and the psychological and social ideas and events that occured. I also agree with Matt in his criticism of Keegan. Soldiers were fighting for each other and their families, and the knowledge that they were all in it together fighting for their cause intisified their desire to fight and be a part of the bigger army. I also found it funny as many have pointed out, that accounts of both sides depict their men as unflatering and unwavering. Also, accounts from both sides say that the men are eager to engage in battle, if only to prove themselves. I have a feeling, both issues were glorified. I think the men probably were not "eager" to fight and when the time came to retreat definitely did not walk as The Ohio Gazette claims.
     It's always better to read personal accounts rather than just following a history book, because they immerse us in the war and everything that was going on from a participants standpoint rather than a historian. The story of Union retreat when the area around them caught fire was an interesting sidenote usually only found in personalized accounts and the story of the yellow dog in Walker's account was interesting because it showed that humor could be present, even during battle.

i agree with Janna and others on the point that it is necessary to cover as much ground as possible in reading accounts of battles. the generals' accounts are important in their broader interpretations of battle and their inclusion of the overall purpose of each particular battle. only the generals truly know why the army is striking where it is striking and what they hope to gain from such a maneuver. the accounts of the soldiers, on the other hand, offer the reader first hand descriptions of battle. comparing the simple soldier to a pawn is not inaccurate. many just do what they are told without the knowledge that their generals possess. you do what you are told because you are but a child who doesn't know any better. is this difference between soldier and general only because of the opportunities afforded to generals as they were growing up and the amount of education they were able to receive (from west point)? i found Sam Watkins statement that he knew many a simple soldier who would be fit for general (and vice-versa) very interesting. i do not doubt this statement for a second. as the writer from the cincinatti gazette stated, if only the union had better people in command in certain battles victory would have been insured. this proves that many generals were totally unfit for battle.

i also found the Verdict of Truth section in The Face of Battle very interesting. the effects of the ideals of the society we grow up in on the psyche of the average soldier was very surprising. the idea that no more of a quarter of soldiers fire on their enemy is astounding. until the brainwashing of war occurs and it becames a new society with new ideals and morals, i can understand how many solderis, upon first entering the field, are not ready to kill or hurt anyone that they don't know. the subconcious restraint of morals given to us by society is certainly an interesting issue on the battlefield.

Each account of Perryville strongly resembles the Caesarian section(pun intended) of the Keegan chapter. They are all "we, the good guy(singular), versus the enemy," and they all heavily stress the value of the officers, especially, the general. They each lament the loss of their high-ranking men. They also speak of the battle in terms of strategy and success, victory and defeat. The accounts of the horror of battle, while beginning to peek through clounds of glorious war talk, are surrounded with words of honor. And there is no talk of fear. Human emotions do not come into play. The gazette account, in all its detail of the blood spilled, immediately follows its horrific statements with something like "our men did not flinch." That's bull in Keegan's book. I believe Bragg's account uses something along the lines of "our men did not recoil."
It is all written as if the men are machines of war, always valiant and with their eyes on the prize. At least Watkins' account has more of the inquisitory feel, saying that both sides were whipped instead of outlining a clear winner.
     I don't think that all accounts were propaganda. Every writer has a bias. I don't belive people were made to be completely objective. Subjectivity is unavoidable. Each wrtier clearly had a desire for victory that twisted his story a bit. These were no Nazi pamphlets to brainwash men into a higher state of morale. There would have been less talk of loss and wounds on each side.

First on the "Narrative tradition": A few things Keegan says do not sit well with me: He criticizes Caesar's tradition as being to collective, oversimplified, and using limited characterizations, but is that not the way we think and speak about the army today? Isn't the very concept of the armed forces to fight as a collective whole synergistically and defeat a common foe? Caesar's narratives seem to build off of the notion that every person is and wants to be part of something bigger, so each sacrifices himself for the cause. He is no longer an individual, but rather a soldier like the rest. Also, to compose any sort of readable account, one cannot describe the actions of every soldier and the fullness of the battle's chaos, making each man as crucial to the battle as the general. It would be 8,000 pages long. Still, Keegan's bent towards the trauma of the war and the fear/morale of the individual soldiers is a crucial part of the war's identity that Caesar's tradition glaringly omits.
     Keegan also states that though fear dominates the mindsets of soldiers when they encounter combat, their cultural values of reputation will keep them fighting. I disagree. I think that the fear of death is the ultimate human fear, and though the evil of pride in reputation is extremely powerful, it cannot hold a candle to death. The counterargument that the general's main responsibility is to destroy that fear seems more accurate. The courageous soldier is the one who can run into combat with the confidence to say, "O death, where is your victory? O death, where is thy sting?"

Well so much has already been said, but I guess that's the penalty for posting so late. As has been said many times before, I think that every account in worth reading. But not just to understand how everyone in the battle viewed it. I think it is important when reading a general's public account of the battle to realize that that is the only account that many ever heard during the war. It's hard for us to put ourselves in the shoes of the people who originally heard it because we've been told to take all of it with a grain of salt, except for the soldier's accounts of how horrible war is. Indeed, I think the general's accounts are more important than the soldiers accounts we read, because the generals usually had more complex motivations for saying what they said, political and otherwise, and also because those are the accounts that were released to the public at the time of the war. With that said though, even though I think the soldier's accounts are less important because no one really doubts how awful war is, I do find the soldier's accounts more interesting to read.

If one is a historian, then it is important to read all these different accounts. That is the best place to start in trying to figure what is "fact" and what is "true". My favourite was to read Watkins's though. In that account one gets all the fears, horrors, and hopes that he experienced. The one story about him curling up with a dying man and finding him cold and dead the next morning isn't found in the general's accounts or the newspapers. One has to, however, take in to consideration the fact that this was written twenty years later by someone who might have not known what was going on in the first place. He is the first to admit that you can't get the "facts" from him but I think his contribution is much more valuable than the numbers and strategies.
I agree that the Gazette account is pretty biased but there are some real gritty descriptions of the battle. This piece has a lot of value because this writer was there and wrote this piece up shortly after. He obviously does have the kind of propagandal (is that a word?) intentions as he is trying to write an account for the Northern readers that keeps them behind the war and their boys in blue.
The accounts of the generals have their biases. They are official reports so I guess they want to make sure that they look good. Im not sure who exactly these reports go to but I imagine that someone in charge reads them and makes sure that the war is being lead well.
All in all I aggree with Shannon that all these pieces have a bit of propaganda in them whether it is subtlely barried or not. The need to get everything one can from battle goes back to Caesar and that is to winning the battle even down to the way it is told and remembered. It is now our job to take the materials at hand and try to best piece together what might have happened.

I agree with Shannon and Mike that the readings are all some form of propaganda to the public. Naturally each side is going to present their individual interpretations for political reasons and to boost civilian morale. Like Janna, I think it's important to take into account every interpretation of battle because that's the only way that we can really understand every aspect of it. I think with the Civil War it can be difficult to get an accurate account of the action because both sides are obviously biased and that comes out in their reporting of the battles. As other people pointed out, the Cincinatti Gazette was not objective in its reporting at all. These biases mean that the reader must consider every view before making a judgement. Bragg was very self-promoting in his report; however, generals had the challenge of trying to keep their rank and in order to do that they had to make themselves look good. Jefferson Davis and Abraham Lincoln were not on the battlefields so they were forced to depend on hearsay. These generals needed to keep their jobs so they might have had to make their actions look better than they really were. I don't think this distorts battle accounts as long as the reader understands this perspective.

I remember earlier in class we brought up the idea that the Civil War might be among the first to resonate with the modern day, and I think this has definately been true for a lot of the points we've made thus far. Today is no exception, though the verdict is still sort of our with me as to how much of this stuff is universal (especially since the Keegan article goes back to Caesar), and how much is of more modern significance. I think Mike Davis and I were on the same wavelength on this one, so I'll expand on some of what he said, first off. I agreed with his focus that all the accounts we looked at today are forms of propaganda, in one way or another. In thinking back to the causes of secession, I feel like we're dealing with a "tangled web" scenario, one "lie" compounding the next, and thus the need for more propaganda to make public opinion continue to fuel this conflict.

As far as propaganda within the individual accounts goes, I think everyone has agreed that all the accounts are biased in one way or another, but that doesn't mean some good information can't be gained from each of them, when viewed through the proper lens. A lot of people have criticized the generals for being extremely biased (especially considering the Keegan point about Caesar composing for a specific political end), but, as Ali noted, even the Watkins account has its share of romanticizing. At this point, we are a good ways into this conflict, and public opinion is threatening to wane in many places. As with most conflicts, at the beginning it is easy for everyone to say "Let's go kick some (insert "emeny" here) tail!", but as we continue on, outsides can become more measured in their support--the individuals directly involved in this conflict (i.e. both the generals and individual soldiers) have to keep up their "whole-hearted" resolve. In short, it is no wonder their accounts show ideas that are not quite true in the sense of objective reality. One might expect the paper to be the best source, then, but we can see from its mere words (the liberal use of "our army" and "the rebel army") that it is also slanted to some degree. I think what would be most interesting to see was the account of someone critical of the whole conflict, though I am not totally sure this is the type of conflict which could lead to such a position (not exactly an American interventionist deal, like Vietnam, or perhaps even Afghanistan).

Like Austin, I think it is important for us to give equal consideration to all accounts. From the generals' perspectives we gain insight into the strategy of war...from the soldiers' perspectives we better understand the reality of combat...from historians' perspectives we are able to view battle more objectively and better understand the perspectives of individuals who were actually involved in battle. We have the distinct advantage of examining past events from all sides and THEN forming opinions, ideas, judgments, etc. If we limit ourselves to only one interpretation of an event, we fall victim to the bias that shaped the original accounts.
Several of y'all mentioned that you felt the reports of the soldiers/civilians, etc. were more valid than the reports of the commanders, who always kept their reputations foremost in their minds. Perhaps this is true...but consider what a large part of history we would be missing if we totally discounted the commanders' reports!
Keegan explored the origins of military reporting in chapter one of his book. Kinda interesting that even the manner in which battles are reported had to start somewhere! Were the individuals who narrated Civil War battles giving real accounts? Or were they mimicking the accounts of earlier reporters--merely inserting different names and places into the "story"? I realize that each battle is characterized by distinct events, etc. but don't you feel that all battle is portrayed as essentially the same? We've read several varying accounts of several battles so far this term...and I find myself thinking that they all sound strangely similar. Is it because the reporters were influenced by early historians' reports or because they all had similar aims in their reporting? Just a thought...see y'all Monday!

On the subject of bias and historical interpretation, I think each of the accounts we read deserves equal consideration since each is one side of the whole picture. If we discount even one of them for being biased, then we should discount them all, and we just can't do that, because if we did, then we wouldn't know anything about history. The Roman perspective (generals and overall tactics/strategy) gives us an informative viewpoint even though we have to weed out the possible exaggerations on the part of the generals who record this stuff. I think Bragg's proclamation especially needs to be sifted through so that we can get to the heart of the matter. On the other hand, we have the Greek perspective, akin to Sam Watkins's account from Company Aytch, the story of the fighters themselves. It did worry me, though, that the majority of the accounts we read were tilted toward the Roman perspective that Keegan discusses. We can see that Bragg and Buell were at least a little egocentric, and that the newspaper was obviously showing signs of being patriotic, what with all the valor of the Union army and blundering quality of the Confederate army. In addition to the patriotic element, it talked mostly about "Bragg did this" or "Buell did that" instead of the soldiers actually doing the things that the generals ordered. I realize that it's more convenient to replace long descriptions with just generals' names, but it does take away some of the accuracy.

Except for Thomas, it seems that just about everyone but Thomas thinks that more truth can be found in Watkins account than in the generals', but I have to agree with Thomas. Kenneth made really good point when he said that history was interpretive and not based soley on fact, b/c what are you considering "fact"? The accounts of the generals are no less factual than the gritty accounts of Watkins if you're wanting to get the whole picture. Sean said that Watkins is honest while the others are not. I don;t think that's true. Are you saying there's no romanticism in Watkin's description? He too says, "Never on earth were out troops more eager..." A vivid account is more interesting to read, but it isn't necessarily any true. He obviously has a bit of a bias against those in higher ranks, so what might that say about his account? I don't think we should be so overly critical about the generals' accounts. Would you want someone commanding you who was showing every fear that he had? I wouldn't. And like Keegan saids, the relationship between soldiers was important, and that includes relationships within the different ranks. How else do you account for the loyalty to McClellan? Whatever he said must have meant something!Even though someone said that the generals' motivational talks were pointless in encouraging courage. I totally disagree. Look at Bragg's proclomation. Did anyone notice his direct appeal to the women. His language(very allusive to the Am. Rev.) and how he appeals to the people reveals many historical truths in itself. And Rusty pointed out that the generals always described even the bleakest moments as hopeful and temporary. Might not they honestly feel this way? And someone also criticized the generals for not admitting to a loss, but it seems to me from all accounts that no one admitted to a loss, b/c there was no clear cut and decisive win. I do think that Watkins account captures the spirit, but as Keegan says, its unfair and "perverse to ignore, or even to minimize, the influence on events of the directing class. Rather, it is over the question of HOW one should come to a judgement and in what light one should cast the central characters..." Sorry i ramled all over the place in this one!

You could say that it is interesting to get inside the minds of these battlefield generals, but I don't know how interesting it reaaly is. I agree with Ryan by saying that both generals accounts of the war seemed written to satisfy a political means. The main reason why we know that these writtings were politically motivated is that neither man would admit to loosing the battle. If one wants to get a more accurate account of what happened, they could find it in the Watkins account. No political motivations in the Watkins account, just the real deal. We get to see the war from the front lines where the blood and sweat spill, not in the rear with the gear like the generals. He makes light of the fact that the coomon soldier is overlooked in gaining the recognition for winning the fight. They are in fact the true heros of this war.

I loved the Watkins excerpt from Company Hatch. It was great to see the war from the private’s point of view. It was crazy how he hung out with a Yankee the night before the battle. That just shows how the war was fought between to fanatic ideologies that the people didn’t much care about. They were brothers fighting brothers. I think this piece is also very interesting in how Watkins talks about and to hand combat. We’ve been discussing in class how little bayonet warfare is used, yet here it seems very crucial. The influence of the 4 cannons is incredibly important. The artillery was so important, yet consisted of so little of the men. I loved the end of this piece when Watkins talks about the generals getting all the glory. This is where I disagree with what someone earlier said about how there was nothing controversial in today’s reading. Watkins is busting on the men that our culture has turned into heroes, and says that many of them don’t deserve it. Throughout the book, Company Hatch, Watkins talks about how he only reports on what he saw, and stays away from the recorded history of the events, yet in this last paragraph he is making a political stand against the historiographers. Keegan talks about his in his chapter. He alludes to the question of how can these men report on the wars and battles when they have never been on the field? Watkins goes deeper with this idea, saying these men are way off in telling the stories of the generals and not the brave privates. I agree with Watkins. In the reports by Buell and Brag, they seemed very biased and directed towards their own glory. But the Watkins book on the other hand is extremely honest and is willing to tell exactly what happened, the bravery, honor, and death on both sides.

  I found todays readings especially interesting for the fact that they showed both sides views of the Perryville battle. It was interesting to be able to get inside the heads of the generals and learn why they did what they did and what they thought about the other side. In each general's assesment of the battle, neither general was willing to claim defeat even though both armies lost large numbers of men and suffered greatly. It seemed as if both sides knew that they hadn't done very well and were rationalizing their actions to make themselves feel better. I almost felt sorry for Bragg after reading his account of Perryville where he talks about Kentucky's unwillingness to rise up and gain independence from the Union. He seemed to feel so passionately about Kentucky in his Proclamation and Perryville pretty much dashed his hopes. As usual, I enjoyed Watkin's account of the battle because he portrays it from a more personal aspect. I also thought the imagery he used was wonderfully descriptive. The Keegan excerpt was interesting in how it explained the importance of the writing of battle histories and how they had such an effect on future armies and writings. These histories helped future armies understand what they were experiencing in battle, gave them knowledge on how to raise an army, and even gave them ideas for regimental symbols and uniforms among other things. On a final note, you would think that Buell would have learned from what happened to McClellan that he should have followed the Confederates after the battle of Perryville. Sometimes, even if you don't think something is worthwile, you just have to do it to make the President happy!

First, on the subject of generals in general, and more specifically on the accounts of Perryville by Bragg and Buell, I would like to disagree with Neal and Matthew a little bit. They both touched on a supposed tendency of generals' to shade their reports of battle in favor of their own armies or in favor of their own actions. Certainly this may be true in certain cases, but I think it is a mistake to attribute the particularities of a specific general's perspective to an assumed preoccupation with his reputation or ambition. This may be part of a larger phenomenon. Throughout the course I have noticed that we will readily critique and criticize the commanders on either side whenever the opportunity presents itself. Granted, the job of a general is a demanding one, and his conduct should be scrutinzed in a harsher light than that of the ordinary soldier, but I wonder if our haste to undertake such scrutiny is not based in a resentment (perhaps a subconcious one) of the fact that a general's job in battle is to stay behind the lines and send other men to their death. I saw several things in the accounts of Perryville by Buell and Bragg which would suggest to me that these men were trying to perform a difficult job in good faith and that perhaps personal ambition and reputation was a smaller part of their motivation than we often suppose. At the end of his account of the battle, General Bragg offers this praise to his subordinate officers, "To Major-General Polk, commanding the forces; Major-General Hardee, commanding the left wing (two divisions), and Major Generals Cheatham, Buckner, and Anderson, commanding divisions, is, mainly due the brilliant achievements on this memorable field. Nobler troops were never more gallantly led." To me this sounds like an honest attempt to give credit to whom it is due, not an effort to consolidate glory or enhance personal reputation. In the same way, General Buell's admission that he was "astonished" that his troops had been heavily engaged for several hours does not sounds like the account of a general who's first priority is to present a flattering picture of his own leadership abilities. That said, I do see the lack of grity realism in the generals' accounts of battle that might give some people the impression they are less accurate than the account of a soldier like Sam Watkins. Keegan touches on this in his discussion of Caesar's poetic accounts of battle. Contrast this romantic caesarian style with Watkin's accounts of friends with both eyes shot out or their jaw shot off, and the generals do come off as a little descpicable at times. I guess it cuts both ways.

I also agree with everything that has been said. Some interesting points have been brought up. General Bragg and General Buell's accounts of the battle show that the war was really political to alot of people. Neither of the general's accounts claimed defeat for their side. Watkins account, written years later, was much more detailed than either of the generals. His story shows the dirty and unorganized side that the generals don't. He talked about cleaning up dead bodies and seeing his friends die right by his side. It seems like their is a parallel between the general's and Watkin's accounts, and the writings of Caeser and Thucydides. To me, Bragg and Buell wrote like Caeser did, to gain prestige with the high command and with the people at home. Watkins, on the other hand, told the true account of the battles, as Thucydides did.

I also found it interesting that Watkins took on a sarcastic tone in the last couple paragraphs of his writing. He seemed distressed that the generals get all the credit while the privates did all the dirty work.

I found the texts to be pretty interesting today. Keegan’s “The Narrative Tradition” describes the evolution and use of historiography and cites and analyzes such examples as mercenary warfare, the Romans and the Greeks. Each group studied history different from each other (Romans “began with politics and the state” while Greeks “sprang from geography and human behavior”); even individuals within one-group would study it differently from another. Though each group/individual studied history differently, I couldn’t help but think about the nature of history and the dangers it can entail. You can make incorrect assumptions and over-simplify matters as there might be evidence or points of view that haven’t been explored. It just goes to show that history is a matter of interpretation; it’s not necessarily based solely on fact.

Historians should concentrate more on civilian papers and testimonies instead of relying on generals and the leaders as much. The wider the variety of sources studied, the better the overall result will be. Perhaps that’s why we read and study a wide variety of primary sources in this class. As previously noted here on the discussion board, the Watkins reading provides actual war descriptions while some of the others don’t. It’d be easy to read one text from one person then walk away from the subject, never reading another account concerning a specific matter. However, that falls into the trap of interpretation – one reading from a general cannot give a full account/explanation to the complexities of history.

I agree with what everyone has written so far. Unfortunately, there isn't anything to controversial in the readings for today. The different accounts of the battle at Perryville are quite interesting. The different sides both have such different ideas of what happened, or at least what they are willing to report about the battle.

The Keegan article provided some interesting insight into the people who write down the history versus the peopel making the history. I think we take for granted that the recorders of history are honest and unbiased when they take down an event.

Edited by author 04-12-2002 02:43 PM
The pieces by Bragg, Buell, The Gazette, and Watkins gave wonderful accounts and varied interpretations on the issues concerning Perryville. As a note on Buell’s comments, I always find it queer that generals, no matter how bad the situation they are in (granted, the battle was far from being a victory by either side), rarely acknowledge any defeat in their dispatches. Pride comes to the forefront, and even the bleakest moments must be portrayed as hopeful and only temporary.

I place my primary emphasis in tonight’s posting on the Keegan pages. His consideration of historiography and military strategy was fascinating. One aspect of the reading particularly caught my attention; it had to with the idea that only a fraction of soldiers ever use their weapons directly on the enemy. I never considered the thought myself, but it seems entirely plausible that many soldiers are so engulfed by anxiety and nerve-power that they never strike a blow. Some desert, some hold back, and some just get killed without fighting back. Wow.

I do have slight qualms with the notion of officer responsibility in the area of courage. You can build a soldier up all day long, telling him how great he is and how brave he can be, how he is full of honor and needs to go out and fight for all things “right”, and how all he needs to do is keep his head on straight in order to destroy the enemy. Nonetheless, when battle comes—the swords and guns and blood and guts and dead friends and dead brothers and pieces of brains and prospects of life coming to an end—it is up to the SOLDIER to be courageous. No one—no one—can implant such a necessary degree of courage into an individual.

I thought the Keegan chapter was filled with interesting and relevent information. I can remember learning about Thucydides and Herodutus in high school, but never realizing the impact their writings had on future history writing and thus future history in general. I found the discussion of Caesar's Commentaries interesting, and how many historians have taken what he said as the way things really happened and don't think he was exaggerating in the least. DuPicq's discussion on the army as a social entity, and the underlying reasons for soldiers remaining in battles that are essentially hell on earth.
Other than the Keegan article, the accounts on Perryville shed some light on what seems like a rather complex battle. I especially enjoyed the soldier, Sam Watkins account of the battle. I thought his discussion of the pre-battle when he was standing guard and made friends with a Union soldier and then raided a house for food was really interesting. It is crazy to think that Sam Watkins could have killed that man or someone who was very close to that man just hours later. It also shows that the war was very political and perhaps more detached than might be thought from the common person. Common soldiers seemed to have no personal vendetta against their former coutrymen.

Keegan's article is interesting because it commments on the writers of history not the makers. His commentary of Roman vs. Greek history was especially interesting because it is very easy to see how Caesar makes his account of battle seem like a movie like Braveheart or something with the valiant, courageous king riding into battle to save the day. Meanwhile, Thucydides account focussed on what the soldiers felt like marching into battle rather than the grand war scheme drawn up by a ruler miles away from the frint lines.
DuPicq's ideas are also very interesting in that they focus on the soldiers and why they fight or flee in battle. He notes that there was an incredible amount of soldiers that fought in the Civil War who wrote commentaries on their activity during the war. Also, he noted that many of the soldiers did not attempt to hide their fears in their writings which is interesting. I thought it particularily provocative his reasoning behind why soldiers stand their ground and fight and I agree with him. I think the bonds formed between soldiers must be the strongest bonds formed in as short of a time period. These guys stood and fought and died side by side and I can definitlly understand how they valued their reputation more than life.

I would like to comment on John Keegan's, "The Face of Battle," because I found it very interesting and showed me that history has a influence on how battles are fought. For example Keegan illustrates the influences of Ceaser and Thucydides on how battles in years to come fought their battles. Generals would read the writings of these two ancient writers and get strategic moves, plans, and also what not to do in the field of battle. Keegan explains that Ceaser explains his war as more history. He tells nothing about startegic manuvers but of the way his army followed his command and how he was such a great leader. On the other hand Thucydides talks about the art of war. He explains the manuevers of his army, the way they acted, and the way they fought. What I also found interesting in Keegan's article was he notion of Du Picq's when he says that soldiers die the most when they are retreating or running away because they ahve their backs turned and cannot defend themselves. Picq believed that the army is a "social organism" in that they ahve their own laws and that the only dicipline that they listen to from above is getting them encouraged to fight. I just thought that was an interesting piece of information.
  To tie in the articles of General Bragg and Beull the notion of lack of courage and discipline in the soldiers is one major fault in many of the troops at that time. Keegan explains that picq believes that it is the Generals are at fault for the cowards in the group. The Leaders should encourage and get the morales up from their troops and explain to them that they are doing the fighting for a good reason and for their country.

The readings for today give me reason to support my next statement. Accounts written from papers, civilians, foreigners, and privates should be taken as more factual accounts than accounts written by the commanders. Gen. Buell and Gen. Bragg as Sam Watkins' said "risk their reputations" in war. So, light on their activities will be the brightest possible. When I say accounts from papers, of course, the author must be able to view the fight. Writing from what is heard or reported as Keegan states doesn't capture the true feel of battle. When at the battle, though, newspapers can be more objective. Sam Watkins, the soldier, is one I view most favorably because he described battle. The ones before me noted even a dog running through lines. Watkins was there and though gives a biased account, can give actual deaths and actual battle scenes. Watkins tries to devalue his statements by saying approach historians or commanders for the actual numbers and movements. But as seen in Buell's account, he can't even tell the numbers of deaths.

The invasion into Kentucky and Maryland had the same goals. The Confederates were coming in as armies of liberation. The Confederates were going into these neutral states so that the pro-Confederate peoples could throw off the oppression of the North. Like Bragg says “to free yourselves from the tyranny of a despotic ruler.” The Confederates believed that if they came into the neutral states and defeated the Union, rebel persons of these states would flock to their banners. If we remember back to the CSA’s strategy at the beginning of the war, one of them was to defend ‘all’ homes from the fiendish hordes, including Missouri, Maryland, and Kentucky. The Union forces have come into these states, therefore the rebels believe they must push the Union out of these states and protect the pro-Confederates from the fiendish hordes of the Union. Bragg exemplifies this when he says “I shall enforce a rigid discipline and shall protect all in their persons and property.”

While doing the readings for today and discussing them with a classmate I thought back to my Ancient History course and learning about the ‘invention’ of history. The Ancient Greek writers Herodotus and Thucydidus are credited as being the first people to record history. Herodotus wrote about the Persian war not only to inform but also to entertain in perhaps the form of lectures, whereas Thucydidus wrote purely to inform and only wanted to include the truth. When we read history we must remember that each person writes his own story with a bias. If I had only read Bragg’s battle account and someone read only Buell’s account, we would have two very differing ideas of how the battle took place. The problem is that everyone wants to look good in the eyes of others, so the accounts that will be published will be ones that speak highly of what the generals did. On one hand the generals wanted to protect the civilians from the realities of what was going on on the field and on the other hand they also wanted to protect their image and build up their legend. If one were to read the publicized accounts of the battle and the journals of the generals, the letters home, or the reports to their commanders, one would find large discrepancies in the battle account. It must be taken in mind whenever one reads an account like this, that the writer will always be biased to one side.

The readings for Friday night paints not only the Civil War in a particular light, but also wars themselves. Generals Bragg and Buell told of a battle that was controlled and organized. Buell states "I have no accurate report of our loss yet. It is probably pretty heavy, including valuable officers." This is a testament to how chaotic war actually is, when the commanding general of the Union army has no idea what is going on in battle. When Sam Watkins tells of a dog running through an advancing union force, this illustrates how crazy a pitched battle is.

Another point brought up was the courage of the common soldier. Bragg says "Nobler troops were never more gallantly led," as if the battle was something to be proud of. All the generals in the reading told stories of valor and courage, whether it was from their men, or from themselves. Yet, everyone knows that men in battle aren't brave and or courageous, but rather scared and petrified in the heat of battle.

I really enjoyed the friday readings. It shows us yet another interesting part of war, Propaganda. Keegan talks about this in his book. Specifically when he says, “We know that Caesar composed his Commentaries for a carefully calculated political end.” I thought this was relevant when reading the other articles about Perryville. From the account given in Guelzo, it is apparent that the battle was not really under the total control of the generals; “Like Shiloah, with neither Bragg nor Buell fully in control of the days events.” This sentiment is echoed in both accounts by the generals. General Buell told his superiors, “[I] heard with astonishment that the left hand been seriously engaged for several hours...” While this was the truth, the newspaper reported that the battle was a textbook example of efficiency on the part of the Union. Even the confederate generals acknowledged the good management. Also at the battle there was “no cowardice displayed”, and “the disposition of forces upon the field was skillful.” This seems far from the truth, but that is what was reported back to the homes of northern citizens, not the confidential statement about what really happened. Most of the true stories didn’t come out until soldiers told their stories, such as Sam Watkins story.

Which brings me to something else I saw is the Watkins piece. Watkins shows a view from a soldier’s experience. He discusses such incidents as the death of a dog by the hands of frustrated soldiers, and the raiding of local homes by soldiers looking for food. This account gives us another example of a soldier’s tough life, but it also shows another point about propaganda when it is compared to the Proclamation issued by General Bragg to the citizens of Kentucky. He states that they have come to guarantee the safety of homes a property, and to restore freedom. He also states that if anything is taken for the war effort that it will be paid back in full. All of this was far from the truth.

as time was unable to permit today, i was deprived the opportunity of bringing up a point in the beloved fish-bowl discussion. i figured i would hop online and contribute the point i wanted to bring up.

it can not be overlooked, the importance of letters from home to the soldiers of war. the women, wives of soldiers (particularly of the south), were able to experience first hand the devastation of war. they were witness to battles on their land, the desertions of soldiers unhappy with the war, and the pillaging of their land of food. they also saw the effects of conscription and the strain it put on so many families of the south. all of these factors contributed to a weakening of faith in the war. they would relay these to their husbands in the war and this offered the soldiers a glimpse into cvilian life. their old life. it had to have made many soldiers realize the true effects of war and the hopelessness. the letters were, in effect, morale killers. it is not unlikely that these letters contributed greatly to the desertions of more and more soldiers as the war effort became more and more desperate for the confederacy.

I found myself struck with the desire to reconsider the portion of today's seminar that dealt with such issues as "Presidents being only as strong as their wives" and "how Mary Todd Lincoln felt about emancipation". I feel it would do us all well to step back for a moment, before we begin advocating that Eleanor Roosevelt actually concocted the New Deal or that Ladybird Johnson was the driving force behind decisions concerning the Vietnam War. NOT to take anything away from 19th-century women--they made large strides during the Civil War Era and set precedents for later feminist movements--but I think sometimes their effect is overblown. When all is said and done, the outcome of war depends on the firing of arms, the clashing of swords, and (if you ask George Brinton McClellan) the skillful use of bayonets. Females played a large role in motivation--even moreso as the war escalated. Nonetheless, the Faustian notion that the role, or lack thereof, played by women had something even remotely to do with the outcome of the war is a bit of a stretch.

  These readings definitely showed the extent in which women were involved in the war. They were not only part of the homefront but very close to the harsh brutalities of war as well. In both the North and the South, they were nurses, members of aid societies, ralliers of support, and the list goes on. The fact that Southern women became involved in the war effort at all(but not involved enough according to Faust), works to disprove the idea that Southern women sat around all day in hoop skirts, drinking mint julep(an adaptation of the moonlight and magnolias idea often mentioned in class!).
  I found the articles on nursing to be especially interesting. Leonard's article about Rebecca Usher's nursing experiences shows a glossed over and almost cheerful look at nursing and army hospitals. In direct contrast, the first sentence of Faust's article hints at the "demands and real dangers" of army hospital life. I tend to side with Faust's article because having to deal with wounded soldiers, disease, and death among other problems, is anything but a cheery and pleasant task. I also found it interesting that within the hospitals, there was a stratification of class and race much like in the society of the time period. You would think in times of war, there would be things of higher priority to worry about other than class and race.
  On a final note, when reading about the Richmond bread riot, "Wow" definitely came to mind. It reminded me of a riot that takes place in Emile Zola's "Germinal." In both the book and Richmond, the women of the city are starving and nothing is being done about it so they riot and steal food and other items that can be sold to buy food. The fact that the Governor had to bring out the Public Guard in Richmond really shows the extent of the women's desire to obtain food. I know people who become mean when they are hungry but the Richmond bread riot definitely takes the cake....er bread(bad joke, sorry!).

Being a southerner myself, I found the social stratification among working Confederate women, as well as their reactions to war, to be significant. While a plethera of nurses like Rebecca Usher would have been ideal for the Confederate war effort, it appears that southern women were not so selfless, fulfilled and joyful in their mundane hospital work. Rather as the war waged on, they seemed to embody the antithesis of Usher.... becoming self-centered, they appear to have gotten caught up in petty social stratification squabbles. My image of Civil War Confederate nurses has always been of selfless, brave women forsaking all concern of what is "proper," to bind together as women in providing substancial aid during their desperate times. Faust's essay definitly destroyed that image entirely. I had no idea that women were assigned roles in the hospitals based on their families' socio-economic status. This sort of stratification would seem to me to be destructive in forming a unified, efficient team of hospital workers. Obviously the South had operated under a rigid system of social status for a long time-- but did they not see in the desperation of the hospital setting, that social stratification among workers needed to be thrown out the window in exchange for unity?? This stratication only caused and maintained problems for southern working women, it seems. Faust presents an interesting point concerning different reactions of women of different social status, to the "deprivation and anger" they felt from the war. Resentment of social stratification rears it's ugly head here again.... upper-class women were frivolous and lower-class were violent.... and they despised each other's responses to the hardships of war. Again, stratification was destroying the Confederacy from within. I think this discussion of womens' roles in the Civil War serves to illustrate that the Southern states' rigid social structure-- (fostered by that sense of southern honor and a need to feel "one step ahead" within southern society)-- was doomed to fail. This extreme stratification was destructive in it's very nature, as we see here.

I think that women did play a huge role in the civil war, at least now. We talked a lot about the soldiers wanting to defend their homeland and families. If their families are no longer interested in the war it seems there would be no point. It seeems that all their fighting would be great and all but there there was going to be little to return home to. I've never really considered the effect the war had on the people back home besides towns that were burned or whatever. It is crazy to think about the psychological affect on the people. The soldiers could not defend their homeland against that.

The disscussion of nursing was interesting too. It is frustrating to hear about how some people gave so much but others refused to support. Gone with the wind portrayed women like that too with superficial issues and concerns. Perhaps the South was never really behind the Confederacy the way it should have been.

As we can tell from the words of Longstreet and others, soldiers cared about their family back home. They were all worried about protecting their families from the barbarian hordes of the North. At this point in American, women stayed at home and did not work. Men were the workers, they brought the paycheck home. With the men gone, women had no money coming in and could not buy food or other necessities for life. This espically affected small farmers and families in the cities. Wives and Daughters of planters did not have any problems because the planters were usually still at home and had slaves to grow crops, but the small yeoman farmer grew his own crops. Women knew nothing of growing crops, therefore they could not supply food for their family. With most the men being drafted women were left alone at home to take care of the childern and survive. Perhaps she could learn to grow crops and have just enough to survive. But the women in the cities were worse off, they could not provide their own food, they would have to buy it from other farmers. The yeomen were no longer producing food, therefore all food must come from the planters. The planters were forced to supply the armies who got first dibbs as Guezlo says and then the leftovers which were not much went to the city folk and other families. If a woman was lucky enough to get a job and work then she might have a chance to buy some necessities for her family to survive. Soldiers are supposed to get paid which they'd usually send home, but the confederate government had no money, the money they were able to come up with was spent for the war effort. Lets say that the women back home did recieve some money from their sons, husbands, fathers, or brothers, at the rate the Confederacy was printing money, it was pretty much worth less, not to mention the astronomical prices Guezlo talks about since there was such little supply and the demand was so high.

Women did not support the cause as we can see by Moore's Dixie Speller in Faust's essay. As many have argued and pointed out, the Civil War was influenced deeply by local interests and selfishness. I think this is even portrayed by women, clearly seen in Moore's Speller. What is the best way for a woman to survive in the nineteenth century? Having a man around. As I stated before women did not bring home the money, they did not work to support the family. Men called the shots at this time and ran society, women had no power, no voice, no nothing. Therefore, for a woman to have anything she must have a man around. The man would work his hardest to support her and his family. I believe this is one crucial reason the women did not support the cause. Yes, at first all the women supported the men to go off to war, but no one expected the war to last over a year. In April of 1861 most everyone thought the war would be over by harvest time, giving the men plenty of time to get back and support the family. But as time wore on and there was no man to support the family, women began to not care about the cause, worrying first about their family and theirselves. It may not be the fact that women did not like the war, but that their motherly instinct was coming out and they realized the best way to survive was to have a man in the house.

Women have a high impact on men. If a man's wife and/or family is barely surviving back home he feels that he should do something about it. This will encourage dessertion. What is the point in fighting a war to protect your family if when you return you will have no family? Women had a huge impact on the Civil war, but they were not the cause of the downfall of the Confederacy. Whatever argument that is brought out to say it was the women who caused the confederacy to lose the war can be traced back to something else if one digs enough. I agree with Rusty that Faust goes a bit far when he says that it the confederate women's lack of support for the war that was one of the more influential reasons the Confederacy failed.

It is particularly fascinating that every history class, every topic studied in history, whether it be European, American, or Asian, invariably raises the same question: "What role did women play?". The intriguing nature of this question lies in its very necessity. Why do we even have to contemplate female importance independently of other matters? The answer is this: gender is as substantial, maybe even more substantial in some aspects, a social barrier as race. For as long as history has been history, women have been subordinate and weak, “the lesser sex”. Suddenly, at the outset of military conflict, they are called upon to become volunteer caretakers—arguably as important a role in some ways as is direct combat service. Granted, many women jumped at the opportunity to help “the Cause”; however, Drew Faust argues that, especially in the Confederacy, turnout was far less substantial than was needed. I totally understand why women would become disenchanted with the entire war effort—their sons and husbands were dying left and right, and everyone was asked to continue helping...steady on!!! For the women that remained loyal to aiding in the conflict, one word can aptly summarize the attitudes and motivation: MOM. Who doesn’t know countless women that love playing the maternal role, even with people that are not their own children? I was delighted to hear Elizabeth Leonard use the word “maternal’; I was hoping that my own opinion was not too rare.

Though I enjoyed much of Drew Faust’s analysis of Confederate women’s role in the war, the notion that their lack of involvement was one of the more influential forces in the Rebel loss borders on ludicrous. The Union had more people, a better navy, the long-established United States government.... I hardly believe that a lack of women’s involvement played more than a slight role in the Confederacy’s ultimate downfall.

Did women profoundly impact the Civil War? Emphatically yes! Less important were women's roles as nurses, spies, and even soldiers. The supreme importance of women in the war was their encouragement and morale support.

One only needs to have a girlfriend to understand the influence women have on men. Both Northern and Southern women encouraged men to enlist and then encouraged desertion.

Faust goes on to argue Southern women impacted the war even more by not having the ability to sustain war. The notion of Southern ladyhood being negative to the Cause (i.e. no hospital workers, revelry, and wealthy women not feeling protected as to the Southern social order) was very interesting and I think has merit. Southern women, by the fact they saw war more by being invaded and had a "Southern Belle" mindset, were more extreme in their impact on the Confederacy. Southern women affected the Cause more positively at the beginning of the war and more negatively at the end of the war than Northern women.

Edited by author 04-10-2002 10:12 AM
On Monday I will be talking about photographic images of Antietam. The complete Library of Congress list of these is available at http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?amme...attle+of,+Md.,+1862)) (if this link creates a query problem, add two right parentheses to the URL and it will work.)

It may be helpful for you to look through all of these beforehand. Which two or three images best capture the impact of the battle, do you think?

You may also wish to look over Vattel's Law of Nations, (http://www.constitution.org/vattel/vattel_03.htm) especially section 24 on the just causes of war and sections 139 through 147 on the treatment of civilian enemies.

I was particularly enthralled by today's readings about emancipation. I never before realized how important it was to the long-term success of the Union in the Civil War. I wasn't really surprised, though, to see that Lincoln was wheeling and dealing his way to emancipation, but that's not really a bad thing. He knew how to work the system, and that seemed to be the only way to accomplish emancipation, which would turn out to be more of a blessing than anyone had ever expected. I think the Glatthaar essay best explains this point. Not only did Emancipation in effect cause 190,000 men (blacks) to "defect" to the Union, but it also gave Lincoln what Glatthaar calls the "high moral ground." So now the Union had a decisive advantage in manpower and a destructive path of sabotage left by the defectors, plus the Union also had now squashed, by means of having the moral high ground, any possible British intervention on the side of the Confederacy. It was amazing and exciting to me that the singular event of emancipation held so much moral and strategic importance that it gave the Union an almost complete guarantee of victory.

Despite McClellan’s military conduct, I believe Antietam was a Union victory in the long run. Marylanders remained in the Union despite their sympathy for the CSA, and Lee’s men never got a chance to threaten Pennsylvania. Antietam also helped detour England and France from offering the CSA recognition and assistance. In conjunction to today’s readings, emancipation also aided towards the lack of European assistance to the CSA. England didn’t want to look like it was supporting, and Lincoln’s emancipation highlighted the fact that the CSA was a slaveholding nation. Britain (and ultimately France) didn’t want to support such an institution or its supporters, and they forsake their own economic gains for morals. Beautiful stuff!

Now, to focus more on emancipation (the issue at hand today), let me just say that reading the letters in conjunction with the Guelzo text and essays was an enlightening experience. They show how complex the whole ordeal was, and they highlight a number of domestic and foreign political issues. Lincoln makes the right decision in emancipating the slaves despite its unconstitutionality (taking away “property” without properly compensating the owners). He gives the war a bigger and more defined purpose, and (as stated before) gets Europe to not support the Confederates.

Perhaps one of my favorite reading today was the Shaw text. It’s interesting to hear a Union representative dismiss emancipation because it’s not “practical.” Another thing: knowing what we know now, it’s almost ludicrous for us to hear him say that Davis will hang all Union prisoners in response to emancipation. It surprised me, but I think I can somewhat understand why Shaw would make such a comment – he was scared. Another piece I liked was the Butler essay. It exemplifies how demeaning, cruel and horrible slavery really was. Were these blacks slaves or people? We all know now that these people were, in fact, human beings, but slavery clouds the issue, saying they’re property and thus “contraband.” This confusion over the issue demeans these black men, women and children, and shows how horrible this slavery institution truly was.

Edited by author 04-10-2002 01:05 AM
My group is alive!
I enjoyed the Paluden article as good insight to Lincoln's purposes and ideas behind emancipation. Especially found it interesting Lincoln's "redefining the meaning of 1776," and how he used history and the ideals of the Declaration of Independence and and the Constitution in his reasons for emancipation. Sorry, I just have to quote him because this is one of the main reasons why I think Abraham Lincoln is so beloved in our country (penny, five dollar bill, monument, Lincoln, Nebraska, etc.), "Near eighty years ago we began by declaring that all men are created equal, but now from that beginning we have run down to the other declaration, that for SOME men to enslave others is 'a sacred right of self government.'"
"The earliest Congress, under the constitution, took the same view of slavery. They hedged and hemmed it in to the narrowest limits of necessity." I think that it is a stroke of brilliance for Lincoln to mention an idea that helped spark of the revolution of 1776 and foundations for a new government as a reason to unite and forward the country. Especially since both sides of the war had declared that they were fighting to uphold the ideas of 1776. This shows Lincoln's need to uphold the Constitution and the Union to prove that the US' new form of government could work. Perhaps he was as unstable on the issue of slavery just like the majority of Unionist, but he also knew what it would take to progress the Union.

Out of the selections from the three chapters, I found chapter six the most interesting. This section deals with Lincoln's strategies as a political leader. It seemed that Lincoln was most concerned with saving the Union at all costs. Ending slavery was secondary, but still very important. He wanted to show the nation that the political system they had could work. Lincoln was fighting to save the nation even before the war started. He was opposed by Stephen Douglas and Robert Taney. Lincoln attacked the Constitution, and defended the Declaration of Independence. He had to show that the Constitution supported his position of "all men are created equal." To do this he said that the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence were essentially the same thing because they were both "bonded in the act of founding the country." Therefore, the the authors of both documents did believe that all men are created equal.

Another thing that was interesting was Lincoln's stance on slavery. Throughout our education, we are told about how much Lincoln hated slavery and how he wanted to abolish it. It was new to me when I read that it was the second issue on his agenda, in a way. Chapter 10 states that some of Lincoln's " initiative was less Bold." This says that his emancipation on January 1, 1863 freed no slaves and didn't help the cause.

Edited by author 04-10-2002 12:56 AM
I found Phillip Paludan's article on Lincoln and the emancipation the most interesting of all the articles read on the issue of freeing the slaves. In this article the the author demonstrates Lincoln's intentions on freeing the slaves and having equality for all by battling constitutional obstacles presented by his opposers. What really caught my attention in this selection by Paludan was the debate over whether Lincoln was a devoted to the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence. These documents stand for what this nation is founded upon. The constitution stands for national supremecy and the Decleration of Independence stands for all men are created equal. Some believe that Lincoln was a defender of the Declaration rather than the Constitution and some believe the other way. But Paludan suggests that Lincoln turned both The Declaration and the Constitution into his devotion. Lincoln, the politician and lawyer, cared about the suffering of the slaves but did it in a way that was not radical. Lincoln did not join an abolitionists group to get his feelings across, he did it in a peaceful and business-like manner which was the emancipation.
  Butler illustrates that during the talk of emancipation and even after it the slaves were still not actually free. Therefore they would flee to the Union camps for protection. They risked their lives trying to escape because they felt a sense of security with the United States and the Union. But Butler is confused and does not know what position the blacks hold, are they slaves, are they free? Butler shows that he takes them in and even employs them as they dig trenches and other things. Does this seem almost as if Butler is using the blacks as slaves or are they being paid or from their own free will?

Reading Lincoln's personal letters to his staff helped to describe the tentative position he was in. He had people from both sides of the slavery debate constantly badgering him and arguing for their case. He knew what it took to keep the Union together and he knew when and when it was not advantageous to declare emancipation. Lincoln was also quick to share military advice although never claiming to have the answers. The Paludan article shows how his undying allegiance to the constitution helped to put his ideas on slavery into perspective. While he disagreed with slavery, he could find no constitutional reason to end it and felt constitutionally obligated to protect it. Paludan was clever in his argument that Lincoln had to emancipate whites from the ideas before he could emancipate blacks from slavery. He had to construe the constitution in order for people to understand the wrongness of slavery and his backing of the declaration through the constitution eventually helps him towards the goal of making all men equal.
     In his article, Berlin makes it clear that the emancipation effort was more powerful as a military move and a symholic gesture ushering in a new round of the war effort and political clashes over slavery rather than a document which made all slaves free. It only applied to slaves in territories that were out of Federal authority and exempted Deleware, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri. Thousands of slaves were not included in the proclamation. Berlin goes further in his article to emphasize the central role slaves played in Union victory and in their own emancipation. Slaves knew a Union victory was imperative to any chance of freedom and they overlooked Lincoln's early plans of allowing the continuance of slavery, believing they held the power to get themselves freed.
   Finally, what I found most interesting I found in the Berlin article. He reveals Lincoln's early reservation about ending slavery. According to Berlin, Lincoln himself doubted whether blacks and whites could live as equals in American society. What the history books usually don't tell us is that Lincoln favored relocation and recolonization of slaves back to Africa. In April 1862, $100,000 was appropriated in Congress for relocation and the Second Confiscation Act added another half million. It was cool to learn something of a different nature about Lincoln.

The Maryland campaign was definitely a complex period, and Gallagher capably explores the ambiguity of the conflict. No clear winners or losers, but certainly major consequences for all concerned, as others have said. What I found most interesting is the fact that this single campaign had such a profound effect on the course of the war and the course of American history. What's even more interesting is the fact that all of these developments hinged on just two men. In their own ways, both men are amazingly headstrong: Lee, brashly pushing ahead into Maryland, knowing he is at a disadvantage; McClellan, opting to stand idle even when the President wants action. Of the two, McClellan had the most far-reaching effect on the war and its aftermath. If he had acted more boldly, the war could have ended soon afterwards and the Confederate states might have returned to the Union under different circumstances. As for which general had the most devastating effect on the Confederate army, the genius McClellan or the fool Lee, I opt for the latter. He dove into the campaign, well aware that he was at a disadvantage. Had Lee been more cautious, as his circumstances seemed to warrant, the "genius" would not have wreaked havoc on the Army of Northern Virginia in the first place.

Lee's and McClellan's letters prior to the campaign are intriguing. Lee clearly knew that he was at a disadvantage, remarking on his limited numbers and resources, yet, in an interesting choice of words, he says the time has come to free Maryland from "oppression." This calls to mind some of the inflammatory language in Longstreet's letter on Monday. While Lee is comparatively mild, it would seem that this is his genuine feeling about Maryland's plight. After all, he is writing to his superior, who probably has his own understanding of the situation and thus needs no propagandizing like the average soldier. Nevertheless, although Lee urges action, he comes across as fairly mild in his letter. McClellan, on the other hand, sounds more like a brazen general. He calls for action, no matter the "cost in time, treasure, and blood." Parts of his letter seem more like a rallying call than a diatribe on grand strategy. Where was this enthusiasm on the field?.

The great rise, but the even greater fall of General McClellan. From most of the material I have seen on General McClellan, I would say that he is actually a well polished general, who for the most part knows his stuff. The common theme in McClellan's inability to get the job done, was his indecisiveness, and not being willing to see things through till the end. McClellan had Lee on the ropes at Antietam, but he was reluctant to deliver the death blow when he had the chance. Antietam could be seen as a Union victory based on the withdrawl of Lee's troops. But in reallity, it was in my opinion a win for the Confederates. Not only did they escape the grasp of the Union Army, but in the process, the Union Army lost a fine General who simply made a few poor decisions.

Ah, subtlety. I enjoyed reading Sean's and Janna's descriptions of the blunders near Antietam Creek, but I think Guelzo has perhaps led them atray in his critique. McClellan was a non-presence on the battlefield that day, 'tis true, and there is his great mistake -- just as in the Peninsula Campaign, he's still trying to lead from the rear.
But his Union commanders on the field were a mixed bag. McClellan did not intend for the attacks to be "poorly coordinated"; he wanted a simultaneous attack across the badly-fortified left, right, and center of Lee's line. It was a good plan, like the Peninsular Campaign. As with that earlier scheme, McClellan didn't what he wanted ... and we will see again the generals who don't get it done: Hooker, Sumner, and (the day's premier idiot) Ambrose Burnside, who fought over a bridge all day when he could have forded the creek almost anywhere else.
McClellan at least had a plan, and the average Union fighting man (at a time when the Army of Potomac was at its smallest and most vulnerable) performed well in the murderous business of the day, standing and dying in all the ridiculous places that his generals put him.
But Lee? Alexander is absolutely right; this was among his his worst hours. Almost destroyed on the first day, he stayed on the field for another day, seemingly DARING McClellan to come after him. McClellan, who loved his men and was probably neck-deep in casualty reports, did not commit ... we could see that coming. But the only Confederate hero we can find at Antietam was A.P. Hill, who marched like Jackson of the Valley to save Lee. Lee had none of his legendary brilliance at Antietam (neither did Stonewall nor Longstreet), and with a handful of talented commanders on the first day (or an ounce of brashness on the second day), McClellan could have destroyed him.
One parting thought: is it a testament to McClellan's genius or Lee's foolishness that McClellan's plan for Antietam, even so poorly executed, STILL managed to wreck havoc upon the Army of Northern Virginia?

How crazy is it that Lincoln and the northerners bash McClellan for his indecisiveness, while Alexander claims that he was full of mercy. It seems so odd that his side is tearing him down while the other is building him up. If the South had won the war, how much more important would this day have been: The greatest general of the Confederate army makes a grave miscalculation, while the disaster-stricken Union general has a perfect opportunity to redeem himself from previous mistakes. The president comes down and gives the order himself to give pursuit one last time and end it all. It’s almost a storybook ending for McClellan. Instead he is dominated by his fear, and the war stretches on for two more grueling years. Imagine for a second, if Lee had joined up with the Union, how would this battle look? Lee probably wouldn’t even let the troops rest under nightfall, so eager to pursue them. Lee would have never would have kept Porter and Burnside at bay, rather sending his entire force upon the fleeing and faltering confederates. And today there would be no debate over Lee, he would be the greatest general ever, the defender of American freedom. Instead we see the cowardice and the foolish decision of McClellan to “stand on the defensive”.

I also think it is very interesting in Lee’s letter to the president, how in the end he ask for more shoes and ammunition from the Quartermaster Department. I wonder how important these two items were, and weather they had a decisive impact on the outcome of many battles. With this new evidence, maybe we should go back and look at those two pictures from class today, and see which one truly captured the war as a whole.

Like Stephanie, I found the debate about Antietam's victor interesting. Both the essay by Gallagher and the assessment of Antietam by Alexander emphasize McClellan's greatest opportunity and Lee's "greatest blunder." Why would Lee risk the lives of Confederate troops when victory was highly improbable? Why would McClellan not seize the opportunity for a decisive and complete Union victory? On page 98 of the Major Problems book, Alexander seems to have finally reached a point (35 years after the war) where he can "gratefully accept things as they were" rather than constantly ponder why or how things happened as they did at Antietam. Like Alexander, I find the "narration" of things that actually happened to be slightly more productive than the contemplation of possibilities. Although Antietam was, perhaps, a big "blunder" (for both Lee and McClellan), its effects on the war's outcome and southern society were significant. Lee's retreat paved the way for Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation (Guelzo 126) that encompassed (officially) the entire "social fabric" of the Confederacy (Major Problems 112). Before Antietam, the possibility of a return to antebellum society through compromise existed for southerners; after Antietam and Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, the only way that southerners could ever return to their old lifestyle was through total defeat of the Union armies (Major Problems 112). Despite the missteps of Lee and McClellan, Antietam served as a pivotal point in the Civil War...

Posting slipped my mind, but here goes for last night. Points of interest: Guelzo gives more of a big picture of the Seven Days' battle than does Thomas. Lee clearly showed the pros and cons of aggressive persistence, as he was whipped, then did the whipping, then got whipped again. His all-or-nothing strategy, while risky and not wholly successful, did the job of keeping Richmond. Don't knock him until you see the results, Dr. Nolan.
     As we have argued often, slavery was not the all-consuming reason for sectional differences and maybe not secession, but it seems that the war saw sectional differences oversimplified, and slavery was the undisputed dispute.
     If Guelzo is right, then Pope was an unmannered punk who murdered civilians and had no concept of wartime etiquette. It looks like he forgot the purpose of the war and became a barbarian for the sake of killing(like Britain's Tavington in The Patriot). I guess his war etiquette was on a par with his war tactics. He got hosed at the 2nd Bull Run.
     McLellan must have been a scrub. He had Lee's private reports, which revealed a very vulnerable Confederate army, and he couldn't close the deal at Antietam. Very interesting how little blunders like losing a private battle plan can lead to the tide turning.
     Lincoln's political awareness(for his own election, that is) damages my heroic vision of him. I would love to just once live through or read about a president who lives with wholly noble purposes and real integrity. I won't just tear him down, though. Lincoln proved himself highly capable in the war effort, as he was involved much more than I would have expected.

Edited by author 04-08-2002 07:15 PM
A lot of interesting stuff in the reading today. First, from the letters from McClellan and Lee: McClellan's assertions that "pillage and waste should be treated as high crimes," etc.(93)--this section definately didn't represent the demonization and "baby-killing" represented in the views of the opposition we looked at today in class; instead, McClellan stressed moderation, saying a declaration of radical views would disintegrate the present armies. On the other side of things, Lee's letter definately represented his opportunistic offensive plan, beginning his line of argument that the armies were weakened and demoralized, that there reinforcements were not yet organized, and that, thus, this was "the most favorable" time for a campaign into Maryland (94).

As goes Antietem, I second Stephanie's choice of quotes, showing the gains for the Confederacy, in a campaign that was ultimately a turning point for the Union, though largely indecisive. A note--Gallagher's statement: "If Lee's gravest error was in striving to do too much with a limited force, McClellan's was in asking too little of a powerful one."(108) In his view, then, it would seem that neither general was really all that good at estimating and utilizing the capabilities he had before him. Was the difference here one of philosophy, Lee taking more of a utilitarian view, sacrificing soldiers in what he thought would be decisive ends, while McClellan had an over-concern which costs him advantages, or was Lee, as Matthew has asserted, the decidely better general of the two?

I think it's interesting that different people had contrasting opinions about the victors of the battle of Antietam. This battle was so indecisive that both sides could say that they had won. I think Gallagher does a nice job of analyzing the battle from both sides by discussing the benefits gained by the Confederates. Although they didin't ultimately win the battle, they did manage to "take the war out of Virginia, gather food and fodder, and threaten Washington from the west". Nevertheless, Antietam represented a turning point in the war that was not advantageous to the South. I can understand that Lincoln wanted to keep McClellan for political reasons, but after Antietam I don't see how he could have justified NOT firing McClellan. It is interesting to note that Antietam did have positive consequences for the North in the long run despite the lack of a decisive victory. If the southerners had won the battle then European countries might have been more willing to come to the aid of the Confederates. Ironically, one of the most important battles of the war was the most debatable.

Edited by author 04-08-2002 04:37 PM
Sorry I'm late posting... I guess it just slipped my mind. The short section we read in CAR was interesting, mainly because of the struggle McClellan faced to maintain his job after his defeat at the Seven Days battle. It was interesting that Lincoln kept him as general of the Army of the Potomac for political reasons. It seems that McClellans army must have really respected him and probably thankful to be under his command. It was also interesting that Lee was much more likely to sacrifice soldiers in a fierce offensive strategy, as compared with McClellan's perhaps overprotection of his soldiers. Lee was the better general of the two and definately proved this in the Seven Days campaign. It appears at this juncture, the Confederacy really had no idea that they were going to lose and had great hope for Lee's Maryland offensive. Looking forward to Antietam.

Paper Comments

This was a complex assignment that produced a stimulating array of responses. The best papers showed the four works in conversation with each other. There were some very sophisticated efforts to combine seemingly irreconcilable interpretations into an integrated model of sectional differences and secession. I was especially curious to see how you would make McPherson's 1980 essay about deep structural differences coexist with Randall's 1940s "revisionist" view that the conflict had no necessary connection to social or economic structures. These authors would see their views as mutually exclusive. With the help of examples from Abrahamson and Ayers/Thomas, however, many of you were able to develop a plausible case for the notion that while differences did not necessitate conflict they were a necessary underpinning for the secessionist's arguments. Other papers made a plausible case supporting Abrahamson's notion that sectional extremism was contingent on local circumstances. Where the political process had become monolithic (deep South, New England), dissenting voices had few institutional means for resisting those who were most ideologically passionate. In the upper South and the lower North (including Franklin and Augusta) the process was much more complex, and sectional polarization only occurred once the crisis had been precipitated by South Carolina and the Republicans. Or so the authors claim. Explicit and thoughtful evaluation of these claims was always a good thing.

Most of the papers respected my frequent injunctions against over-simplifying this process into a conflict between a monolithic region "the North" and a unified entity "the South." Although McPherson adopts this language for the sake of clarity in a short article, he would certainly agree with the evidence presented in Abrahamson and Ayers/Thomas that such differences were often subtle, and that they expressed themselves in complex or even paradoxical ways. Indeed, it is one of Abrahamson's main points that even among the Southern white political elites he focuses upon the reactions to the crisis were many and varied. As he argues, any interpretation of sectional differences has to account for why the views of men such as Rhett and Yancey were rejected by the majority of Southern voters until 1860 (or even after), why South Carolina seceded, Virginia delayed, and Kentucky remained in the Union, and why some Southerners (Andrew Johnson) and Northerners (James Buchanan) supported the dominant views of the other section. Both the Ayers/Thomas piece and Abrahamson book offered explanations of how such diversity was possible. The most interesting papers supported or challenged these models in clever ways.

Three of the four works argued for the importance of slavery and race relations as crucial factors in regional distinctiveness and in the secession process. To the extent that papers contended with this issue explicitly, that was a plus. Here, too, the evidence from Abrahamson and Ayers/Thomas would suggest that no simple answers are possible. Clearly the secessionists considered the Republican challenge to slavery and the South's racial castes to be a significant one. Despite the explicit language of the 1860 Republican platform disavowing any intentions to interfere with slavery in any existing state, Southern radicals understood that Lincoln's patronage power could put antislavery postmasters in every Southern town, serving as a nucleus for a yeoman-based Republican party (i.e. Helper), and allowing, for the first time since 1836, the delivery of abolitionists tracts into the region. Likewise, the President's ability to appoint federal judges who opposed the fugitive slave law, and to chose not to back federal enforcement of such laws against state resistance (i.e. the Anthony Burns case) would be a decisive shift in policy enforcement, regardless of whether any new legislation could be blocked by Democrats in Congress. Finally, the president's ability to appoint antislavery officers in any new territories would effectively prevent Southern slaveholders from having "property" protections. (See Abrahamson, 82-90). Yet despite this overt danger, only the deep South, containing less than a third of the South's white population, saw the need for immediate secession. To the degree that your papers addressed why there were such important differences in the timing and geography of secession, that was a good thing.

I was impressed by papers that had a logical organization, a consistent thesis, and that used good examples throughout (especially from Abrahamson, our largest work). Many of you used quotes from one or more of the works. In general, it was best to do this sparingly. It is usually better in a short essay to put things as much as possible in your own words. It is especially risky to quote the author when he quotes someone else. How do you know whether the quote is representative or not? At the same time, I was pleased to see so many of you approaching these works as interpretive views, containing arguments that needed to be attributed to someone. For example, it was better to say "as McPherson points out, the proportion of Northerners involved in agriculture had dropped to 40 percent by 1860" rather than to just assert the percentage without explaining where you got the numbers. The more conscious and explicit you are about how you came by the information, the smarter you will get, I believe, in critically evaluating these kinds of arguments. Some of you cited the textbooks or lectures -- in a formal essay you are advised to avoid these and seek the sources the text authors or the professor used to construct their claims. Guelzo's "Further Reading" section at the end of each chapter will help you find the sources he relied upon. Since these (unlike the text) contain the supporting arguments and evidence, you can better judge the validity of the claim than you can from his second-hand summaries.

On the technical side, be sure to read the syllabus guidelines before submitting your next paper. There were lots of little problems that could have been avoided by reading the instructions. The guidelines, of course, may need clarification, and I will be happy to answer questions about what I really intended. Woe unto any author next time who flagrantly ignores these. You will want to pay especially close attention to footnote styles. These should be single-spaced, with author's name in normal order (James McPherson instead of McPherson, James), article titles in quotes, book titles in italics or underlining, and the specific page numbers included. Subsequent references should use Ibid<I>., or a short title. The short title should be meaningful and in correct order (so Abrahamson, <I>Men of Secession, rather than Abrahamson, Men.) There are examples in the syllabus, the textbook, and all of the monographs we are using.

This was a stimulating batch of papers to read. Even the least well-developed, well-organized, and well-documented papers gave evidence of engagement with our authors and approached things with an interpretive sophistication appropriate to the materials. None of the papers was sub-par. All of you had at least one original twist on the material, and some insights, even in improvable papers, were dazzlingly good. Thanks.

Lloyd Benson

I thought the section on the politics of war was really intteresting. I hadn't thought about the difficulties Lincoln faced not only with the shooting war but the political war which sounds just as complicated if not more so. Although he was criticized at the time, it seems that he was successful in keeping up civilian and soldier support and morale more than people realized. The slowness of his success, however was slowed by his inexperience with national politics and his remaining Whiggish principles about his excetuve position. But at least he regcognized his limitations and surrounded himse;f with people like Salmon Chase, Stanton, Meigs, Taylor, and Ripley, all who played very important roles in making the federal cause work. I noticed when reading that many of the federal strenghts were the Confederacies weaknesses. The railroad system and the manipulation of it for example was a critical northern advantage. The kind of talent that Lincoln recruited was also lacking in ther Confederacy with the exception of Davos himself. I was surprised at similarities between Davis and Linclon. It's ironic that in trying t solve the "problems" of the Confederacy, the South ended up becoming more and more like "the very centralized nation-state that the seceders had been fleeing in 1861."!!!!!!

It is interesting how Lee is much more offensive in strategy than some of his counterparts like McClellan. He also seemed to learn from previous Confederate experiences like Manassas, and after wounding McClellan's army, Lee "scenting blood" went after the retreating army to try and crush them and Union morale. As a result of Lee's persistance and other previous battles Lincoln became aware that the Confederacy was not going to surrender because of a few defeats. Lincoln also seemed to realize that the Confederacy was not going to be nice and civil in war and was tired of being bullied around. So Lincoln hired Pope to command the Union forces; and Pope would not follow any of the polite rules of war while in Confederate lands.

It was also interesting that even though Lincoln wanted to get rid of McClellan he did not because of political reasons. His reasoning was that with the upcoming elections he needed to make sure he kept all his votes is understandable, but I guess I never thought about how big a part politics plays in wars. However, it was to Lincoln's advantage that he did not can McClellan because shortly thereafter he would lead his army to face a dilapidated Confederate army led by Lee.

it's easy to defend some of the actions of Mclellan in battle but it's easier to call Lee a great general. Lee's strategy was obviously the superior one. i think Lee's strategy and how it affected the morales of both armies is also important. it also greatly influenced Lincoln's decision to get rid of Mclellan. for political reasons, however, Lincoln was forced to delay the inevitable. this, of course, caused more problems for the union as Lee foresaw Mclellan's inability to fight and attacked Pope's army before it could gain more troops from Mclellan's diminishing army. Mclellan was able to somewhat redeem himself after finally taking the offensive and fighting back Lee's troops. apparently his success at this was also due, in great part, to luck as he found a paper with Lee's orders on it. this section pretty much affirms the idea that Lee was one of the greatest generals in american history, and Mclellan was simply a great paradox. a general who cared too much for his soldiers to let them get hurt.

I know that a lot of people think it was a mistake for Lee to continue on his offensive despite the increasing difficulty for him to do so, but like Mike I think he was justified in those actions. But not just for the practical military prospects of undermining your enemies ability to attack, but also for the morale aspect. I think that hearing that you've been unable to take a piece of land or stratigical position from the confederates would be a lot less demoralizing than hearing that you've just lost an important railroad and have a powerful confederate army which has not been driven out despite the efforts of your own forces. I don't think it's just that the offensive was an addiction for Lee, I think he saw the powerful effect it could have on the Northern mentality.

Edited by author 04-07-2002 09:49 PM
There really wasn’t that much reading this time but there are a few things I found interesting. McClellan, unable to reach Richmond, became a discredited general that Lincoln wanted to get rid of. Lincoln was unable to do this, mainly for political reasons, and this seems to be some good luck for McClellan, Lincoln, and the Union. He had put John Pope in charge of the army of Virginia. Lincoln slowly moved McClellan’s troops to Pope. Lee took advantage of the situation and caught Pope before his army was big enough and while McClellan was inactive. This allowed for the second Manassas. This one was an even bigger upset. Lee moved into Maryland and Lincoln was forced to ask McClellan to go after him. Aided by a letter found by a Unions soldier in which Lee discussed his troop placements, McClellan was able to pin Lee down Sharpsburg, Maryland.

I think this is a continuation of the passages we read late week about Lee. Here, Lee went on the offensive. The first move was one of pure offensive-defense. I don’t think it can really be argue otherwise. Lee knew that if he struck when he did he would have a much better chance at victory. He did. Then, though, he continued. I think this was a good strategy but I think it borders on the offensive more than defensive. He went into Maryland to try and garner support from locals and to attack a major supply line (railroad junction) in Pennsylvania. This turned out to be a bad move, but Lee, I think, was justified in his action. He wanted to make some advances that would hurt his enemies and make them less able to mount an attack.

The screens for today and next week are located at (http://history.furman.edu/~benson/civwar/cw6.htm)

The battle quotes for Monday are located at (http://www.quicktopic.com/12/H/xQ2dPUD86sav2/p153.145#QTmsg149)

Edited by author 04-03-2002 05:33 PM
From day one, we've seen how the Civil War is far too complex to simplified into general explanations, and that any number of interpretations are valid. We've seen how this complexity extends to the men in the field and now, in an abrupt (and maybe Austin's right -- disorienting) turnaround, we see that the men at the top defy simple explanation.

Nolan effectively demonstrates Lee's dedication to the offensive strategy. What struck me the most about his discussion was the argument that Lee was well aware of his limitations, and yet continued the offensive until it was impossible to continue. According to Nolan, Lee was well aware of the manpower difference and the threat of a siege and yet he continued to advocated keeping his army in the field at all costs. Was it the addiction to the offensive that kept him on this course? I tend to agree with this assessment. If he knew the limitations inherent in an offensive strategy, and if, like Nolan says "To insist on the offensive, regardless of a defensive opportunity, is simply not strategically sound,” then there must be something in Lee's nature that drove him to go on the offensive: audacity, competitiveness, "addiction." I like Matthew Heathman's assertion (pages and pages ago) that Lee, as a Virginian, was also disinclined to go on the defensive on his home soil. Lastly, I think Shannon (and Nolan, for that matter) have correctly hit on how Lee's dedication to the offensive proved to be a fatal flaw, in that the strategy was incompatible with the broader strategy of the CSA.

Like Elizabeth and Alex, I too was surprised at the level of miscommunication in the Seven Days as described by Thomas. Lee's strategy seemed fairly clever until a series of blunders (especially Jackson: what was that guy doing?) threw the plan off balance. That's not to say that Lee was blameless (Malvern Hill and Glendale come to mind), but the Thomas piece shows that Lee's failings were due at least in part to circumstances in addition to his inordinate desire for offense.

Thats right Austin, lots of Lee today. When you are as famous a figure and as big a player in the war, like Lee was, people seem to find a way to write about every little thing you did wrong. So much for wanting to be famous. I think Lee is a misunderstood soul. I think the the confederate break from the Union was harder on Lee and his family than many would venture to say. He was a west point man, a U.S. Army man that loved his country. But his love for his motherland Virginia was just much greater. Many of us has commented to the fact that Lee's offensive tactics were a mistake. Yes his forces were inferior, but I don't think his tactics were out of desperation. For the South to really make a statement in the war, and show that they could win it, Lee was going to have to go all the way to Washington. You don't march into Washington playing defense my friends. To think that Lee could use denfensive tactics throughout the war is ubsurd. The Naval blockade was choking the Confederate Army. The North controlled most of the supply lines, serverlly hurting the Southern defensive positions. Lee was right to go on the offensive.

Alex began to hit on this in his posting, but I thought the levels of miscommunication among the Confederate officers in the Seven Days War was atrocious. The Thomas excerpt especially highlighted this point. He even states, "Lee was altogether ignorant of A.P. Hill's attacks." Unaware of his own army's manuevers and establishing poor lines of communication between troops, Lee seems to have opened the doors to defeat in this battle. In his defense, Lee did appear to try and clear up communication on day 6 of the Seven Days Battle-- however, his efforts were too late.
He also seems to have flawed operations by acting on assumptions at times. He assumed that Jackson would have no trouble making it to the battlefield, and later he assumed that rumors about a Federal retreat and ordered a general charge. Both of these assumptions were incorrect and cost Lee a shakey start to the battle and a disastrous finish.
Both excerpts we read today made the point that Lee felt that the Union army had to be completely crushed in order to have a true, ultimate Confederate victory. This seems to be somewhat of an extreme idea.... perhaps a little overambitious in day to day battle. I guess I have the image of him taking huge, sweeping steps, when what the Confederacy needed at the time was smaller, calculated steps. He seemed to be stubborn in sticking to his "big-view" plans as well, trying to avoid backing down from any of his original plans and strategies. Perhaps this view of Lee as a reckless abandon leader is a little extreme. Nolan paints the picture of Lee favoring offensive attack foremost-- but he also gives Lee a little more credit than Thomas does concerning the level of control Lee exerted over the intensity of his offense. I think this seems to be the more balanced view.... and i agree with rusty's synopsis of Lee as "an oxymoron, a conservative risktaker."

To kind of synthesize what Nick and Craig have said (and follow some of the same path as Chris), I think today's reading show why many characterize Lee as among the greatest in military history. Before I get into his offensive strategy, I just have to say that, throughout the Thomas reading on the Seven Days Battle, I was amazed by the tenacity and tactics employed by Lee. Though I understand such is the life of a general, it is just amazing that one person can maintain any sort of strategic thinking in the kind of situation they are placed in, and to maintain it during that campaign at least relatively well does justify Lee some mark of greatness.

As far as Lee's love for offensive strategy (as is presented in the Nolan reading), I believe Lee's continued toughness in this front is notable also. In taking the conflict as what it essentially was, a fight between two independent nations, the South had, from the very beginning, sort of attemptive a preemptive strike on the rising challenger to their beloved slave society status quo, the federal union. With this in mind, it is somewhat reasonable to see Lee as a champion of the offensive, wanting to "drive the armies of the enemy from the field" (NOLAN 99). The problem, though, was, as the reading discusses, that the CSA's "Lost Cause" grand strategy was not nearly as assertive as Lee's offensive technique. Their aim, at base, was simply to convince the Union forces to give up, to allow them to continue their way of life, as a separate nation (a great victory, and an interesting situation as concerning international recognition, among other things). As the challenged state, the CSA did not seek to defeat their Union foes, but rather contain them, and preserve their own power (constitutional rights, etc . . . ring a bell?). Much of the problem here may be filtered through the idea that the actualities of power are not nearly as important as the perceptions of such, both in Lee's case, and in some of his luckiest assumptions, including McClellan's belief that he was outnumber during the Seven Days (as mentioned in the Thomas reading). On a final note, Lee's concern with creating a victory by causing Northern support to wane, thereby gaining Southern peace (either through convincing the Northerners that the CSA would return to the Union for peace, or that the costs of trying to regain the Union were too high) are extremely well-thought-out political aims, another point that allows me to give him some respect, despite his many losses. While ours is to analyze, I find interesting our ability to second guess Lee this many years later, and think it reasonable that his vision of the day and his proximately to the passions of the conflict made his offensive strategy altogether not unreasonable.

The Nolan chapter made me feel that Lee shouldn't be as celebrated as he is. I'm not from the south so I don't feel I know a lot about Lee but I've always respected him as being the better general. Perhaps he was and he was just dealt the lesser hand. The chapter does talk a lot about his loses and lack of reinforcements. There was the one statistic that pointed out that even when the Union had a loss that was 1000 more people, it was only 13.3% of the the army while the confederate army lost 19%. But despite Lee's struggle with his own military the article seemed to point out his mistakes. His offensive strategy came across as being somewhat hasty and overconfident. At times it was all that he could do. It said thought that when he did switch to the defensive for the last two years it worked a lot better.

I agree with Rusty and his assertion that Lee was a realist. He is one of the most revered men in southern history, and I don’t see much in these two chapters that should take away from that. He did more than could be expected of him, and even though he didn’t win the war, he brought the south much further than they ever should have gone. Craig mentioned how Lee “frittered away” his army of 90,000 men with an offensive mentality, yet he saw it as the only way to have any chance at defeating the north. His offensive strategy at least gave him an attempt to decide where and when the battles are fought, but this obviously failed when Lee admitted that he wasn’t ready to fight in the big battles.
Nolan mentions that Lee had an “impulsive nature”, but what he doesn’t realize that impulsivity is not only what the south needed, but it was an essential characteristic of the secessionist movement and the entire army itself.
Saying that Lee was wrong simply doesn't address the issue. Looking back of course we can say that he was hasty and wasted the lives of good soldiers, but what we don't see is what would have happened with a different, defensive minded general. The north would have overrun the south and ended the war years earlier, without giving the south the slightest chance. Granted, Lee was not a perfect general, and yes he probably did order needless death, but the south was doomed from the start, he simply delayed the inevitable.

Maybe it's true that Lee apparently made mistakes, several crucial mistakes. However I would tend to agree with Suzanna that you have to analyze the elements present at the time, such as poor communication and simply generals who did not come through for Lee. It seems from reading these two chapter that the Lee myth has been rather blown out of proportion, but not as blown out of proportion as the author of the "Lee Condidered" chapter. I did find it interesting in the "Lee Considered" chapter that one of the general's main goals was to sway Northern opinion. He thought if he could make people in the North uninterested in supporting the war then the South could remain free peacefully. This is an interesting tactic. The "Lee Considered" chapter sets up the fact that Lee's strategy was based on the offensive. I think from reading both of these chapters Lee's main strategy could be one more defined by mobility that offensive drive.

Wow, Lee gets a whole day to himself in this class! What an interesting (if a bit disorienting, for me) shift from the bottom of the ladder to the top. Like Nolan, I wonder what made Lee tick, what force drove him to fight the Army of the Potomac like he did. He was at a pretty daunting disadvantage the entire time, what with inferior numbers and not much margin for error due to the lack of potential recruits to replace lost soldiers. Yet Lee's army suffered about the same amount of casualties as (if not more than) the Union. I think that, in a way, Lee may have been fighting defensively. Knowing he was at a disadvantage, and not wanting to become besieged by the Feds at Richmond, he had to make a stand, because that was his only (perceived) chance at winning the war for the Confederacy. I see as kind of a wounded-animal-in-the-corner situation. So I certainly disagree with Vandiver's assumptions as Nolan records them ("addicted to the offensive").

Now, the Thomas excerpt. The lengthy summary of the Seven Days' Battles, to me, is solid proof that Lee concentrated on the offensive. I think that's obvious to anyone. What is not so obvious is why Lee went on the offensive when he knew that his forces were inferior. Again, I think Lee's possible desperation comes into play here. While I admit that 1862 is a bit early in the war, I cannot overlook Lee's apparent audacity. One thing that Nolan did not point out was Jackson's ineptitude, which came to a climax at Malvern Hill. Thus we have another factor to contend with. First, Lee mounts a daring offensive as the only way to defend his Confederacy in hopes that fortune might favor the bold, but all those hopes were dashed in the face of incompetent or lazy subordinates, namely Jackson. Even though Lee managed to rout the Feds, he suffered too many casualties to make it worthwhile (those Pyrrhic victories Craig was talking about). In conclusion, I think these two pieces together paint an important picture of Lee as the general who fought for the survival of his nation even though he knew the numbers were against him.

Craig's right. Lee was wrong. So was every general at some point, but Lee made a handful of mistakes, in some cases overriding the protests of his subordinate commanders, that cost the Confederacy any chance of "winning" the war. Lee's chronic desire to crush his enemy once and for all, and his recurring belief that his opportunity to do so was at hand dominated his strategic thinking. On several occasions, Lee's impulse to press an advantage, percieved or real, and obliterate the Union army, seems to have gotten the better of his judgement. The second day at Gettysburg is certainly the most famous and the most glaring example of this. Almost to a man, Lee's subordinate officers seemed to know that to attack the Union position was madness, but the enthusiasm of the previous day's success and Lee's belief that this was his opportunity to deliver a decisive and crushing blow carried the day. All this is not to say, as Alli pointed out, that Lee was not a great general. He had many other attributes critical to success as a military leader, and his popularity with the troops under his command is astounding. Unfortunately for the confederacy, the mistakes he did make came at the wrong times and places, and their consequences were infinitely significant in the Confederacy's effort to win its independence. This from someone who grew up playing underneath giant twin portraits of Lee and Jackson hanging in the living room. Its hard for a good southern boy to accept, but Lee's strategical blunders may well have cost the Confederacy its objectives in the eastern theater.

I'm going to have to agree with Nick that General Lee must have been a great military leader in some respect. Sure, legends grow, but 1)they need a foundation of greatness and 2)the Civil War is pretty highly documented. I think Nolan's "Lee Considered" chapter is overgeneralized and biased towards the purpose of proving Lee to be impulsive and rash in battle because of his nature. The Thomas stuff seems to give a more accurate picture of Lee as a leader because it includes the difficulties of communication between leaders and the frustrations of delegating orders to men who do not come through. Even through the blunders of the "lemon sucking" Jackson and Magruder's failure, Lee held the upper hand until the last day of the seven. He showed his abilities as a strategist an an overseer of large forces by taking a smaller army and mearly hosing the Union forces. Granted, the last day's charge was errant, and he gave us a close-up of his humanity(as opposed to legendary divinity) by being impulsive, but he had received false information about the Union's retreat. The Thomas article shows the failure of the team. Lee just valiantly held himself fully responsible. Nolan's argument would be much more effective if he presented the notion of Lee's overaggressive methods without beating the man into the ground and blaming him for Confederate defeat. Maybe he puts some positives in the rest of the book, but I have a hard time swallowing the argument. Lee was clearly fallible as a general, but he was not totally depraved.

While its true that Lee did make many mistakes and was disorganized, I think it's unfair to criticize him for pursuing an offensive policy. While its true that obscene numbers of people died in the pursuit of an offensive strategy, I think it was realistic for Lee to consider it the only real way to be victorious. Most wars are won by offensive strategies and not defensive ones. Of course in the individual battles defensive positions will have to be taken at many times, but overall it just doesn't seem like the war ever could have been won based on a defensive strategy. Also keep in mind that the longer the war went on, even without battles, the South would have been suffering economically from naval blockades (which although weak, it seemed that the British weren't going to violate) in addition to not having their normal avenues open for commerce open in the North. The South had a major interest not just in ending the war, but in ending it quickly, and the only way to do that was an offensive strategy. It was just unfortunate for the Confederacy that nothing seemed to fall into place like it was planned.

  I agree with everyone else that these excerpts were extremely straightforward and dispelled many of the myths about not just Lee but his underlings as well. I think that Thomas said it perfectly in refering to Lee and his top men as the "Southern pantheon." We have all heard of their greatness and many people try to emulate them but most importantly, I think we should realize that they were REAL people who were flawed. In the Thomas article especially, flaws were abounding. The account of the Seven Days campaign seemed to list out one flawed action or decision after another with nothing that Lee ordered ever really coming into fruition. Both articles showed Lee as being thoroughly involved and committed to the war, I just think that the main problem was execution and things not falling into place when they should have. Lee ordered what he thought was best for an army to win the war, mainly being his grand strategy of maintaing an offensive. Unfortunately, this is shown in the Nolan article to be flawed as well. For example, Lee had a smaller army, an irreplacable army, and a problem with desertion which led to not enough men to forge effective offensives against the Union army. Lee had the right idea, but it was applied to the wrong situation. In conclusion, I think both of these articles show the top men of the Confederacy in a true light and as in our other readings, bring the war to a more personal level.

Edited by author 04-03-2002 04:01 PM
i would tend to agree with anyone who characterizes General Lee as one of the greatest in american history. of course my understanding of Lee is biased due to my years of education in the great southern city of columbia, south carolina. if my history 21 class taught me anything it's to not always trust what you hear. history has a tendency to be romanticized and great people have been elevated to unwarranted heights. however, i still believe much of the praise Lee receives is far from excessive. of course he made mistakes in judgement as he had to take many serious risks. war has a tendency to be a fairly risky game of chance. as the Thomas article proves, each battle relies on a number of factors to work out perfectly so that the result you want becomes a reality. the first few days of the seven days battle did not work out the way Lee had hoped because of such factors (namely Jackson and his late arrivals to battles). shit happens and when it did Lee and the confederate army felt the full effects.

the northern army's superiority in terms of numbers of soldiers and other resources is an important factor that Lee was not unaware of. although his "attack grand strategy" seemingly contradicted his awareness of inferior manpower, he stuck with his belief that the south had to strike a decisive blow against the north to win. his decisions to attack when it was seemingly unwise to do so simply provide evidence of his thirst for victory and his somewhat stubborn determination. his plan to strike the north a decisive blow did not work due to consequences from this very decision (i.e. decreased number in manpower due to not only casualties but also desertions). perhaps this road that Lee took was the only one that the south had a chance to win with. Lee certainly seemed to believe this. although the man did make mistakes in judgement, many of these mistakes were due to unforeseeable problems. as fate would have it, the south was defeated but Lee was not. his memory survives, at least in the south, as one of the greatest generals in american history.

Edited by author 04-03-2002 03:46 PM
Once again the readings show the lack of experience, men, etc. The Confederacy may well have defeated the Union in the Seven Days' war basically ending the Civil War altogether, but once again the sloppiness and lack of preparation which riddled all aspects of the war shone through. Lee's reorganization of the Confederate army and the battles which proceeded were one big mess. His strategies were developed allowing little error, which rarely if ever worked. Jackson's failure to make it to the beginning of the battle due to the usual lack of maps and uncharted, strenuous terrain, and Hill's starting of the battle on the assumption Jackson would be there, were both grave mistakes which cost the Confederate army dearly. The confederate loss on that day was four times the Union loss. Continual blunders and sluggish movement by Conferderate Generals, mainly Magruder and Huger slowed a movement which could have caught Union soldiers running. It seems as though everytime the Confederacy had a chance to score big, someone or something let them get away. Jackson's presence was basically non-existent. He spent his time resting and rebuilding a bridge when he should have been fighting. The killer for the Confederacy was faulty communication which resulted in a disfunctional offensive and mass execution of Confederate soldiers which according to D.H. Hill was "...not war...It was murder."
    That gets us to the point of Ali and Sara. Lee had quite a load on his shoulders and had no kind of war and defense staff to help him devise strategy. Lee himself realized that he could not handle everything himself as he ran back and forth in the crisis that was the Seven Days' war. As to his strategy, I would agree with Kenneth and Janna in saying that he was all out offensive. He felt the only end to the war could result from all out attack and complete victory. Nolan relates this in plain english on page 78: "He believed that the South's grand strategic rule was offensive. He had consistently planned and advanced the offense." He felt that the Confederacy must annihalate the enemy army in one foul swoop or victory was out of hand. Taking into account the limited men in the Confederate army, Lee felt like they could not withstand a defensive war.
     Both Nolan and Thomas show quite a bit of failure in the strategy of Lee, but we have to take into account all that went wrong which I mentioned earlier. His strategy was good, but it could not be carried out to his design at all. The campaign was sloppy with too few men and too few artillery. He probably should have withdrawn to regroup, but his idea of annihalation pushed him on. The thought of complete victory influenced all of his campaigns and seemed to envelop his conscious to the point of making irrational decisions. At Gettysburg,he "Failed to accept reality...He simply wanted to go on and attack because he wanted to attack." It seems his goal got the best of him and cost too many lives for the Confederacy. He knew that he could not be resupplied with men and he forced attacks anyway. He was a good general, he just got overzealous with too little to work with.

Edited by author 04-03-2002 03:40 PM
I took Alan T. Nolan's consideration of Robert E. Lee as yet another verbose exploration into the psyche of a prominent figure. Granted (no pun intended), Lee was the most important Confederate leader and is one the most revered men in the annals of American lore. Even so, attempts to indirectly penetrate the mindworkings of historical figures is often quasi-futile. The principle point that I gathered from the Nolan pages was that Lee was an oxymoron, a conservative risktaker. He was portrayed as always wishing to be on the offensive--usually feeling aggression and assertiveness as the best means of success. However, Nolan suggests that Lee was somewhat of a realist in that he knew what levels of offense were needed in certain situations. Also, Lee feverishly strived to get the most effort out of whatever men he had at a given time. It seems as if no number was too small or mountain too large. My only gripe with Nolan--and not so much Nolan in particular, but these types of pieces in general (again, no pun intended)--is that they sometimes overestimate the importance of "Commander's psyche". Regardless of what a General orders troops to do, the ultimate outcome of the battle will FOREVER be determined by the mindset of the soldiers, the men with the guns, aptly described by Sara as the "pawns".

Emory Thomas's treatment of the Seven Days ordeal was simultaneously puzzling and refreshing. The alledged ancident in which Stonewall Jackson sat "sucking lemons" while slackily overseeing the repair of a bridge is quite disturbing. The refreshing part, though, comes from the pages on Lee's mistakes. In accordance with Stephanie and Eric, I also find it a nice detour to consider a historical God as a fallibe human being. Lee was not perfect; he made many miscalculations, assumptions, and took many risks. The slaughter suffered at Glendale seemed to really shake him up and resonate within him. I would be willing to bet that it greatly affected his future decision-making and strategy.

Thomas shows us Lee's Pyrrhic victories in the Seven Days, and Nolan reveals Lee as a general obsessed with the offensive (even as his beloved Stonewall Jackson was); in a wonderful bit of French that so characterizes military history, the offensive was Lee's "idee fixe" [Nolan 77].
In the interests of stirring up even more debate, I contend that Lee was simply and absolutely wrong. At the one place where an offensive move might have won the war (Antietam/Sharpsburg), Lee fought a defensive battle (with some help from McClellan) on untenable ground. The best he could get was a stalemate, I argue. And why? Because he lost the Seven Days.
After that week of battle, the Union army on the Peninsula withdrew, it's true, but Lee frittered away an army of 90,000 men (more than he'd ever have again) to scare off Little Mac. The offensive is ideal, but the Confederacy could never replace those men. (I find myself agreeing with Longstreet and J. Davis on this matter more and more as I get older -- a frightening trend.)
With Washington, D.C. an impregnable target by 1862 and Gettysburg a very long way from Lee's supply line, the Confederate command (as Longstreet suggested) should have taken up more defensive positions, assuming the strategic offensive only when the terrain and circumstances allowed it, to exploit the Federal errors that would certainly occur. If Lee wanted to fight an offensive campaign, he should have named Joseph Johnston (the defensive mastermind) to succeed him in the East and gone west to Chattanooga with Stonewall. Lee at Perryville instead of Bragg ... ah, what might have been.

It is very interesting to me that about a year into the war one Lee, of the South's most prominent generals, had seen less of the war than his wife. This just proves to further my opinion that even though the war was directed by generals it was the everyday soldier with a family back home to worry about that was the backbone of the war. I completely agree with Janna that the soldiers seem like chesss pieces in the way that they were thoughtlessly moved around and manipulated about the batlefields. On the other hand generals seem to get all the credit from the war even though some of the time they never even stepped foot on the battlefield. For example, the expectations put on Jackson and his troops were preposterous to say the least. They were supposed to, "march 15 miles, deploy his troops for battle, engage the enemy" and somehow get inspired to pursue a defeated foe by something their leader Jackson would say. As it turned out Lee was counting on this to happen and to me it seemed like he didn't think this was a long shot or anything out of the ordinary.

Also, it is very intriguing that Lee had never commanded a battle in combat before this and he began with close to 100,000 men. Maybe its just me but that seems like a ton of pressure for your first time. Next, the level of communication in the war was unbelievable. For instance, McClellan thought he was up against 200,000 rebels when it was half this in reality. Overall it is just interesting to see these generals in a different light than they are normally portrayed.

I really enjoyed the human-ness of Lee that was portrayed. The information about Lee's family was interesting. Through history many figures have become so elevated that we forget they are real people, like us. I appreciated the level that Lee was brought down to. We need to remember that Lee made mistakes. So, I agree with Sara and Ali.

I think it is obvious, even with his mistakes, that Lee had a great mind militarily. That is evident in both the readings for today. As with most things we've read so far, I've enjoyed the different spin than previous classes I've taken. It kind of makes you wonder about what exactly you learned in high school.

I'm going to have to back Ali up all the way here. I too have seen Lee as "THE" general, and probably all my information I learned about him was romanticized until now.
You have to admire Lee for being human, mistakes and all. All of the leaders and commanders involved in this war were far from perfect (ahem ahem... coughMcClellancough), and yet previously history has viewed them as Gods on Mount Olympus waging war with the Titans. However, the Nolan article does a good job of reminding us of how misleading it is to make Gods and Heroes out of simple men trying to do their jobs as best they can.
Perhaps it was suicide at Malvern's Hill, or to even start offensive tactics in what was for the Confederacy, at the beginning, a merely defensive war. However, for a man who forgets that his own grandson is dead, you've got to think he's got nothing but war on the brain. The goal was to win your battles, put a dent in Union forces, and send good news to the homefronts, through defensive or offensive tactics.
And to agree with Janna, yes this sounds like one big old game of chess. In fact I saw a Civil War chess set at the mall, and was reminded of it while reading the assignments for today. Lee was king on one side. The generals may have been the brains of the manuevers, but the pawns carry it out and view the whole panorama of war.

I actually read the Emory Thomas book fall term for a research paper and it really provides an interesting description of General Lee. Like Eric, I think many people see Lee as an invincible character who was the hero of the South. I think these readings help to show that he was a regular person who made mistakes like everybody else. The chapter out of the Thomas book not only shows the disorganization of the Confederate troops, but it also shows how the war consumed Lee's personal life to the point that his family had to take second place to his job. This is obviously to be expected when your job consists of commanding an army during a war, but Thomas shows how Lee swtiches from his role as the head of an army to his role as the head of a family by using the scenarios with his wife, grandson, and son. I agree that Lee preferred the offensive to the defensive position which may have cost him certain battles. The second reading even says, "Lee believed that the South's grand strategic role was offensive". Unfortunately, this didn't work for him because the North had more men. Lee was obviously aware of this problem, but he was still devoted to the offensive strategy. Perhaps this represents a fallacy on his part or perhaps he truly thought he knew the best approach. Either way, I think both these readings show Lee's weaknesses as a general as well as his strengths and his devotion to his battles.

James, I don't think Nolan is saying at all that lee was not a good general. It seems to me that Nolan is simply trying to dispel some myths. i think Nolan can be critical of some of Lee's decisions without saying that he wasn't a good military leader. I've always thought of Lee as "THE" general of the war, so its interesting to learn about his actual accomplishments and mistakes. I iamgine that the myth of Lee is arguably just as prominent in the average person's mind as the images from Gone With The Wind. The excerpts we read don't devalue his accomplishments, but it's interesting how his mistakes (significant ones it seems from our readings last night) have been forgotten or skimmed over. The psychology of those who have sort of rewritten the character of Lee is, to me, just as fascinating as the heroic figure himself. Why Lee? Why not Longstreet for example? Nolan does a good job in humanizing Lee. Just as in the letters we read for yesterdy, when it came down to it, Lee had ambitious goals and concern for rank, etc.. just like every other soldier, so recognizing certain characteristics like this as factors for his motivations in strategy, etc.. is significant to understanding his actions. I'm having a hard time deciding what I think about Lee's supposedly overly offensive tactics. I keep trying to think of the big picture and what would have been better in the long run. Did the offensive tactics drain the confederacy? Would a more consistently defensive strategy have put a greater strain on the Union and, therefore, have helped the Confederacy? Thomas said, "Lee could hardly afford many more victories like Gaines mill" and yet he kept taking risks. Is success at the expense of waste ok?

I agree with Jenna that today’s readings were fairly straightforward. I particularly liked the Thomas text and the way he organized his description of the Seven Days Battle. I was able to get a real sense of what the general’s strategies were and why they did what they did. It ties in nicely with some of the themes of communication and battle strategy. The Nolan chapter was fairly insightful into the Lee’s strategy. I particularly liked the way he researched his argument: using Lee’s occasional communications indicating how the war could have been won, military movement and actions, and battles north of Virginia. It’s a great example of how a historian can make statements and conclusions based on random pieces of evidence.

With that being said, on this message board we’re debating a lot about how Lee was either offensive or defensive. I think I’ll partially disagree with Neal’s argument and agree with the notion that Lee was mostly an offensive minded individual at first. However, each situation called for a different strategy as a general must adapt to his environment, so he would have to go on the defensive from time to time. But that didn’t make Lee an offensive-defensive general early in the war. I believe Nolan makes a fairly good and well-supported argument that Lee was an offensive general, and one of the only things that hindered his strategy was the numbers. As we read about the Seven Days Battle in Thomas, would Lee have continued to be on the offensive if his numbers got too low? Probably not. However, McClellan underestimated his chances of success and retreated, thus allowing Lee the opportunity to win the battle despite his causalities. Had this not have happened, he’d be forced to go on the defensive. Does this strategy make him ruthless? Not quite since he was forced into it. According to the readings, Lee lost 120,000 lives in his first six battles, but the offensive strategy was the best as it served the Confederacy the best in my opinion. However, as the war dragged on and (as Nolan claims) Lee was forced into the north, that’s when he became an offensive-defensive general. I believe Lee was attacking the north to defend the south in the grand scheme of things.

I feel like the readings for today were fairly straightforward in pointing out that Lee was, in fact, an offensive general. The offensive-defense strategy that we discussed in class is evident throughout the depictions of various battles. However, I would have to agree with Neal about chapter 19 of the Thomas book (which portrayed Lee as quite disorganized in terms of battle plans)...Lee's "plans were never followed with perfection." So is it really fair to blame Lee's lack of organization for the mistakes of the Confederate forces? Wasn't it Jackson that didn't show up (Thomas 236)?
There were a few details that caught my attention while I was reading, especially in the Thomas book. First, Stuart's "Ride Around McClellan," desribed on page 232, made Stuart an "instant hero"...not because he had necessarily accomplished anything...just because the country was "desperate for anything but more bad news." Interestingly, Lee achieved similar hero status after the Seven Days, despite the fact that he "committed his army to suicide" at Malvern Hill (243). Although thousands of soldiers died under Lee's command, Lee was still revered by Confederates who were just happy not to have been entirely defeated by Union forces.
One more thing: as I was reading, I got the sense that the generals (both Union and Confederate) moved their soldiers around like little chess pieces or something... This depiction of soldiers as nameless, faceless "things" to be moved around at the generals' whims contrasts greatly with the depiction of soldiers that we read in the Major Problems book for yesterday. I think it's important for us to examine both the generals' views of the soldiers and the soldiers' views of themselves...the perspectives seem to vary greatly...

I found the readings on Lee to be very interesting and informative of his character and actions. Through the years I have been taught that Lee was a general who was unfalable and made great decisions. Furthermore, I was taught that he was a hero to the Confederate cause. Through this reading my opinion changed due to Lee's decisions on the battlefield. In "The Federal Army Should Have Been Destroyed" I learned that Lee was not all cracked up as everyone made. Throughout the reading I observed that Lee was a general who made bad decisons at crucial points and also was not well organized. Lee was never in close contact with his commanders on when to attack and what plan to follow. He was always wondering where hsi fellow troops where located, especially during Mechanicsville. Jackson was one commander which Lee never new what location he was at and did not follow orders well. Jackson was always slow in getting to battles which cost the Confederates lives and crucial land. Furthermore, Lee's mistakes of attacking and when to lay low cost him dearly. Almost on every battle Lee lost more troops than the Federals. Lee made some bad decisons which committed his army to suicide.
  The other reading explained to me that Lee was a determined and ruthless general. Unlike what Neal said, I feel that Lee only believed in attacking and not playing the defense, which ultimatly cost him in the long run. He was always wanting to attack the Federals somewhere and would not rest until they were "driven from the fields." Lee believed that the only way to restore peace was by driving out the Federals from the fields. Another thing that caught my attention was lee's trouble with dealing with runaways from the army and the stragglers. Lee lost many troops from people fleeing, not wanting to fight anymore. This ultimatly caused Lee's downfall because he never had enogh troops to have equal fighting strength against the Federals.

I agree a lot with what Neal said; Lee was a defensive general, who needed to make offensive moves. Through much of the Nolan passage, he discusses the offensive defense as not very defensive. He believes that Lee is an aggressive fighter who wants nothing more that to charge the enemy. Nolan gives a lot of information to support this. Lee at many times was ambitious in his offensive moves and many times these moves backfired. However, I think it is unwise to assume that Lee looked at the Southern forces and believed they were up to an offensive strategy when he admits that they were not. They lacked in numbers, they had poor morale, and they were weak. Nolan writes, “there were at least four aspect’s of Lee’s own assessment... that ran counter to the logic of his grand strategy of the offensive.” This is true, and I don’t think that Lee would have a strategy of the offensive if he knew it weren’t possible. Lee’s offensive moves were only used in time where he needed to.

Thomas brings this fact out in chapter 19. Lee’s attack, which started “the Seven Days,” was attempted because “he wanted to...strike a decisive blow before it was too late.” He planned for a long time, and sent out many spies to see if he was right on all issues. All of his attention was on this one thing. As is seen when Lee forgets that his grandson is dead, when he writes his daughter a letter. Lee was focused on preparation. Even though there were some kinks in his plan, as became obvious later, all the information Lee had gathered said this would work and this was the time. Lee did this many other times, he wanted to attack specific points of interest, like supply line hubs. He knew these were key elements and if he didn’t use the offensive the confederates would never survive. He had to weaken the opponents as much as he could, or the Confederate defense would be up against a very strong Union offense.

This reading gave me a different perspective on Lee. Lee has always been known as a great general throughout history. Yes, Lee did do alot for the Confederacy and won many decisive victories, but his losses seemed to be very devastating to the cause. Nolan's article shows that Lee's strategy was offensive throughout most of the war. Sometimes Lee's strategy seemed to cost the Confederacy more lives in battle. One example of this is the Battle of Gettysburg. I have watched the movie Gettysburg numerous times, and have read the book a couple times, and I still cannot figure out some of Lee's decisions. I can't understand why Lee didn't see Pickett's Charge as committing suicide, which is what it actually did. Not only did these devastating blows hurt the army's numbers, it also hurt their morale. The Confederacy also suffered a high rate of desertion. Many soliders would just leave the army and go home. I wonder why General Grant is known for the high number of casualties in his army and Lee isn't. Nolan points out a number of battles where the Confederates percentage of losses is significantly higher than the Union's.

Thomas' article brings up another interesting point. This article shows the amount of confusion and miscommunication that went on in the Civil War, probably in both armies. The name of the article is fitting, if Lee's plan could have been carried out. The article also shows how much of a toll the war took on the soliders. While in persuit of McClellan's troops, Jackson had to stop to rebuild a bridge, but mostly because they were tried of there long march. Jackson was crucial in the Seven Days Battle, and stopping his march really hurt the Confederacy's chances to win and destroy McClellan.

I would have to disagree with James' summation and with Nolan. Nolan is well-intentioned to point out possible mistakes by Lee. Nolan has two flaws in his assumptions however. One, he has perfect, errorless hindsight. Second, I think he misses why Lee is admired. Nolan was too specific in the reason for Lee's admiration resulting from Lee's audacity or his offensive mind. His admiration flows from his results. He withstood a far superior army for three years. The fact that we can study the Civil War and the length of it is notable. Lee took charge in 1862 with his army defending Richmond's gates. Not only did he defend Richmond but he developed the opportunity to invade Northern territory.

I don't agree Lee had a offensive grand strategy. I do think he had an defensive-offensive strategy. I think it's wrong to look at specific battles as proof without understanding each situation. During the Seven Days, as Matthew said, was Lee's sole intention to defend and fortify Richmond or to expel the Union from Confederate territory? Another issue that makes the question of Lee's true strategy hard to ascertain was that his plans were never followed with perfection. Gettysburg, as Nolan and James say, was the epitomy of Lee's aggression. Lee however did not have the intention to fight at Gettysburg. Nolan continues "even during the final days of the war, Lee attempted the offensive" as if something was wrong with that. Should Lee have given up his army? I think - much like the complex issue of the reasons for secession - the true strategy is complex. One must look at each situation militarily, strategically, politically, and with morale, foodstuffs, and following of orders also as factors.

The reason this issue is complex is stated clearly by Nolan, "whether these qualities were wise or unwise, would seem to depend on one's criterion."

Sorry for the late post, I'll try to be more punctual with this stuff in the future. After seeing what has been posted it's difficult not to repeat what has already been said. I too was struck by how the soldiers were abondoned by society. Why would people turn on the men they sent to fight for their principles? I think the main reason for this might be that the war took place on American soil and that it just seemed to drag on and on. War became far more tangible for the general populace during this period, and thus the romanticism attached to soldiers and fighting was destroyed. To normal people, it could easily seem that the only thing that kept the war going on were the men who fought in it. In many ways it reminds me of Vietnam, which although it didn't take place on American was soil, was made more tangible to the American public through a media which wansn't available during the nineteenth century.

 I believe that it would be hard for anyone to argue that Lee was a defensive general, he took the initiative in many of the battles and as we all know he invaded the North on multiple occasions. Although he invaded the North, Lee had the opportunity to fight defensively, he could have easily listened to Longstreet and moved down south of Gettysburg and found good defensive terrain to defend, but he did not. I totally disagree with Nolan for saying that Lee was reckless. Lee knew exactly what he was doing with his army. As we all know each man fought in the Civil War for a different reason, many times people having their own motive, before one accuses Lee of being a poor general or being reckless one must examine Lee’s motive for joining the Confederate forces. Nolan goes astray here; he does not pay attention to Lee’s reason to join the war. Lee could have been the top dog in the Federal army if he had wanted, but alas, he turned down this great opportunity nearly any man in the service would jump at, why? one asks. It is because Lee would not fight against Virginia. Therefore the first thing on his agenda was Virginia. If there was a forge in force in your territory and you wanted them to leave, how would you go about it? Would you sit around waiting for them to attack? Or would you attempt to drive them out? Of course you would attempt to drive out the invaders. Lee could have easily fortified his position around Richmond and protect it for a couple of years, but this would not get the invaders out.
 If one were to map out the battles of the Easter Theater nearly all of them would be in Virginia. Having two armies from 30,000 strong to 120,000 strong living off this land for a short period of time, much less 4 years would do a number on this land, not to mention fighting battles here. Virginia was becoming barren, Lee knew that to protect his home and to supply his troops he had to take the war elsewhere, which is why he fought so hard and spent so many lives in the attempt of taking the fight to the North.
 More strategic reasons for Lee to be offensive were that the morale is higher in an offensive campaign, morale would soar when Union forces were driven off the field, but morale did not grow when the Confederates would stay in trenches and repel a Union advance. The gaining of territory helps morale. Tied into that is desertion and recruitment. People will not volunteer for a war that is not moving anywhere, during the siege of Petersburg, Lee got no recruits, no one wanted to join and sit in a trench, they wanted to drive the Federals from the field. As for desertion, as bad as war is, the soldiers would rather fight than sit around and do nothing as Brewster told us.
 Lee also had political reasons for being offe