Among the approximately 350 feature-length Civil War films made, it is difficult to find ten of any great quality, a wonder considering the rebellion’s inherent emotion. Producers and screenwriters often use the war as a blurred backdrop or a vehicle for careless dramatic license. Despite the underwhelming crop of prospects, the genre provides an intriguing depiction of how Americans perceived the war over time.
During the silent era, the War Between the States was a popular topic, with forty major titles produced. Commonly pitting family against family in a metaphoric blood feud, most of these plots included firefights and acts of espionage. In a display of prevailing American desire, stories typically concluded with forgiveness and reconciliation.1
As the medium matured into talkies in the 1920s, nearly all releases failed miserably. Battle scenes proved unpopular, especially to a country fresh from entanglement in World War I. In the decades that followed, the Civil War faded under the hefty pressure of public indifference, working only as an afterthought in epic love stories and scaled-down westerns.
During the civil rights movement and Vietnam, producers paired the depth of existing social unrest with the breadth of the Civil War. Most storylines dealt with racial injustice, youthful disillusionment, and the horrors of war. At the turn of the millennium, Civil War films have come full circle, returning to the silent era’s use of martial military showdowns and the convenient bliss of eventual reconciliation.
The following are the best achievements in Civil War full-length film production based on quality of writing, directing, acting, and cinematography. Some are compelling portrayals of the war itself. Others are pivotal achievements in film history. Each possesses varying degrees of accuracy, although none is precise. All are required viewing for anyone wishing to comprehend the dynamic union of the war and its place in popular culture.2
1. Glory (1989)
| TriStar | ||
| Producer: | Freddie Fields | |
| Director: | Edward Zwick | |
| Starring: | Matthew Broderick, Denzel Washington, Morgan Freeman |
Glory depicts the mustering, training, and early deployments of the fabled Fifty-fourth Massachusetts. The film climaxes with the ill-fated July 1863 assault upon Battery Wagner in Charleston Harbor, where Col. Robert Gould Shaw (Matthew Broderick) and many of his men lost their lives.
Well directed and executed, the story of the Fifty-fourth stands far above all other Civil War films as the finest yet made. Outstanding within this strong although sometimes melodramatic work are the sights and sounds of battle, which mimic hauntingly the very sensations many veterans described in their memoirs—gleaming bayonets, hissing bullets, and the unworldly spin of artillery shells. For their effort, the film’s creators rightfully landed Oscars in the categories of sound and cinematography.
Glory is by no means a documentary. Aside from Shaw, all other characters portrayed in the unit are fictional. Although the film implies otherwise, most of the Fifty-fourth were freemen, having lived their whole lives in the North. Nor were they the first black regiment raised or the first to engage in battle. A scene where the soldiers refused pay rather than submit to reduced wages is based on fact, but it first occurred with another regiment. The major events in the picture, however, occurred largely as portrayed—the sacking of Darien, Georgia, the assault on Battery Wagner, and Confederates burying Shaw’s body with those of his troops.3
The subtle gems in Glory are readings from Shaw’s letters to his New England abolitionist family. His sincere missives reveal a man both insightful and insecure, trying his best to lead others who had a greater stake in the war than he did. Sadly, these short narratives are underutilized, and the film treats them more as a time-killing montage rather than a profound looking glass.4
Within the ranks of the real Fifty-fourth Massachusetts were two sons of Frederick Douglass.
2. Gettysburg (1993)
| Turner Pictures and New Line Cinema | ||
| Producer: | Mace Neufeld and Bob Rehme | |
| Director: | Ron Maxwell | |
| Starring: | Tom Berenger, Jeff Daniels, Martin Sheen | |
Somewhat less accurate but even larger than Glory is Gettysburg, adapted almost verbatim from Michael Shaara’s novel The Killer Angels. Included in this detailed movie are the scramblings for position during the battle’s first day, the pivotal fight for Little Round Top, and PICKETT’S CHARGE.
Much of the movie examines personal relationships within the carnage, namely between Col. Joshua Chamberlain (Jeff Daniels) and his subordinates in the Twentieth Maine and between the conflicting natures of opportunist ROBERT E. LEE (Martin Sheen) and pragmatist James Longstreet (Tom Berenger). At times these dialogues paint vividly the ad hoc nature of engagement and the human reactions to duty and the unknown. Many of the orations, however, appear contrived and convenient, allowing mortal men to eloquently confess “what it all means” while simultaneously dodging shells and bullets.
There are extremes in the quality of special effects. Firefights, especially the grandiose Confederate artillery assault upon Cemetery Ridge, are impressive. Yet men, ground, and trees stay relatively intact when the actual physical destruction was otherworldly. Such limited damage is excusable, as the producers worked to maintain broad audience appeal.
The weakest facet of the film is the frail performance of Sheen as Lee. The Marble Man appears as a short and simple stumbler, with accent and makeup of community theater quality. Still, Gettysburg is an insightful, moving, and measurably viable rendition of three days that changed and characterized American history.5
Among the thousands of extras in Gettysburg were media kingpin Ted Turner and documentarist Ken Burns.
3. Red Badge of Courage (1951)
| MGM | ||
| Producer: | Gottfried Reinhardt | |
| Director: | John Huston | |
| Starring: | Audie Murphy |
Rendering Stephen Crane’s novel to screen, Red Badge of Courage may be unsurpassed in its portrayal of cowardice, heroism, confusion, remorse, and death within combat. Both the novel’s author and the film’s director consulted Civil War photographs for a better concept of actual imagery, and few war films since, even those aided by special effects, have been as moving.
The central figure is a young private (Audie Murphy) who abandons his unit during the height of a battle. He then plummets into a night of inexorable shame, incapable of determining right from wrong. He eventually resolves his anguish by charging the enemy the following day. To his astonishment, he is praised and rewarded for his brief act of madness.
The studio cut nine minutes from the already brief original, editing scenes of violence and language that would be viewed as timid by today’s standards. Studio head L. B. Mayer had no faith in the film altogether, saying Courage “has got no laughs, no songs, no entertainment value.” Had these nine minutes remained, believed an incensed Huston, Courage would have been the finest film of his illustrious career.6
The film did not fare well commercially or critically. Only after Vietnam was Red Badge of Courage elevated to its current status as an insightful examination of human behavior.7
Actor Audie Murphy was the most decorated American soldier of the Second World War.
4. The Birth of a Nation (1915)
| Epoch Producing Corporation | |||
| Producer: | D. W. Griffith | ||
| Director: | D. W. Griffith | ||
| Starring: | Lillian Gish, Henry B. Walthall | ||
Few films have received as much praise and condemnation as the 1915 silent epic The Birth of a Nation. President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed it was “like writing history with lightning.” Some theaters ran the movie for seven months. Many film historians rank it as one of the revolutionary achievements of the medium. Yet D. W. Griffith’s opus is rarely shown in public.8
When most films were one or two reels, Birth of a Nation ran twelve. When most sets and casts were modest in size, Griffith used huge and elaborate scenes with battle segments involving thousands of extras.
Based on Thomas Dixon Jr.’s novel The Clansman, the film shadows the intertwined fates of the Stoneman family of the North and the Camerons of the South. Much of the plot revolves around the Camerons, who suffer the humiliation of losing the war, the injustices of Reconstruction, and the ensuing fears of slave liberation. The story concludes with the newly created and ennobled Ku Klux Klan riding forward, ready to preserve the integrity of the fragile South against the intruding black race.
Throughout the film, Griffith depicts slaves as almost simian in behavior, playful and childish, with definite animalistic intentions. So venomously racist, so excruciatingly degrading, Griffith’s “masterpiece” sparked riots and protests after its debut. President Wilson and others learned to regret their praises. Theater owners, even those sympathetic or objective, began to refuse its display.9
A landmark in film history, Birth of a Nation was the first epic ever released. It also served as proof that the war continued long after Appomattox.10
One of the film’s many admirers was a young Russian by the name of V. I. Lenin.
5. Gone with the Wind (1939)
| MGM | ||
| Producer: | David O. Selznick | |
| Directors: | Victor Fleming, George Cukor, Sam Wood, William Menzies, Sidney Franklin | |
| Starring: | Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh, Hattie McDaniel |
The most popular Civil War film of all time does not include a single battle scene. Instead, it spends its energies on a tumultuous although compelling love story. Still, the movie remains one of the most significant studies because of its influence on the American public.11
Gone with the Wind forged the enduring mythical image of the cotton South, with ornate mansions and dashing men, healthy and adorned slaves, and sweeping plantations. In fact, there may have been as few as twenty such estates the size of Tara. Many of these suffered much worse shortages, damage, and anarchy during the war than the comparatively tame hardships endured by Scarlett and friends.
Based on Margaret Mitchell’s novel of the same name, the film is rightly criticized for its farcical portrayal of house slaves as panicky comic relief. Nonetheless, the work is remarkable considering its release date of 1939. A piece of such vivid grandeur and moving score had not yet been done, and audiences to this day are enamored by its magnificence.12
Hattie McDaniel’s Academy Award for best supporting actress was the first Oscar ever given to an African American.
6. Andersonville (1996)
| Turner Pictures | ||
| Producer: | David W. Rintels | |
| Director: | John Frankenheimer | |
| Starring: | Jarrod Emick, Frederic Forrest, Ted Marcoux, William H. Macy | |
For pure dramatic effect, few movies can match the offering of Andersonville, a made-for-cable story of life and death in the infamous stockade. The 1996 production could not have come closer to the camp’s actual filth and depravation without effectively harming the actors and repelling most viewers.
Centering on a Massachusetts unit’s capture, imprisonment, and fight to survive, Andersonville benefits from believable characters in an unbelievable setting. Most impressive are Cpl. Josiah Day (Jarrod Emick) and Martin Blackburn (Ted Marcoux), honor-bound men who find themselves slipping from disbelief into resignation as their bodies and chances fade away.
Certainly, director John Frankenheimer emphasized entertainment over accuracy. The camp was far more crowded than is depicted. At the real ANDERSONVILLE, guards were almost as emaciated and poorly clothed as the prisoners. One scene shows Federal prisoners rejecting Confederate recruiters en masse. Recruiters were actually successful in convincing some Andersonville prisoners to fight for the gray, just as there were Southern prisoners who ended their imprisonment in places such as CAMP DOUGLAS and ROCK ISLAND by volunteering for service in the Union army.
The film’s running time of nearly three hours could have been whittled to two, and minor detractions include the rare clumsy line, choppy editing, and unfortunate gaps required for commercial slots. Yet even a jittery, over-the-top rendition of Commandant Wirz (Jan Triska) cannot dilute the impact of the compelling subject. Most impressive is the set design of the stockade. The high drama of the film replaces the reality of the long, slow death that was Andersonville, but the terrain and walls on screen are very much the same as those seen by the actual inmates.13
Several reels mysteriously disappeared during production of Andersonville. At great expense, the lost scenes filmed in Georgia had to be reshot at a later date in North Carolina.
7. Cold Mountain (2003)
| Miramax | ||
| Producers: | Albert Berger, William Horberg, Sydney Pollack, Ron Yerxa | |
| Director: | Anthony Minghella | |
| Starring: | Jude Law, Nicole Kidman, Renée Zellweger |
Charles Frazier’s first novel proved to be a lucrative one, enough to compel Miramax to gamble $83 million on a film adaptation. It was money relatively well spent.
The story involves the suddenly impoverished belle, Ada, (Nicole Kidman) finding hope and meaning in penniless, reticent Inman (Jude Law). Their bond grows stronger with separation, as he is pulled into Confederate service and the deathtrap of Petersburg, while she is left back in North Carolina to fend off starvation and two-legged predators. Choosing love over war, Inman deserts and returns to her, only to die in her arms.
Historically speaking, Cold Mountain is commendable for its depiction of the July 30, 1864, slaughter at the CRATER, where the Union’s plan to breach the Confederate lines went tragically awry. As shown, chaos reigned after the initial earth-shattering blast and the Federals’ subsequent lemming-dive into the crevasse. Also veritable is the film’s concentration on civilian struggles in hinterland North Carolina, where chronic shortages and the often lawless “Home Guard” destabilized the region for years.
There are weaknesses. The “destitute” main characters have porcelain-perfect skin and teeth, and the omnipresent cries of “famine” are hardly credible from a clearly chunky cast. Though Inman’s long quest back to Ada is compelling at times, his phenomenal string of just-in-time rescue operations make him look like a male version of Lassie. Regardless, the film’s intimate look at loss, poverty, and desertion is a far more honest endeavor than other works that veneer the Civil War in period glam and automatic valor.
More people went to see Cold Mountain in its first ten days of release than have visited the National Battlefield at Petersburg in the last ten years.
| Universal Studios | ||
| Producer: | Robert Arthur | |
| Director: | Andrew McLaglen | |
| Starring: | James Stewart, George Kennedy, Glenn Corbett, Katharine Ross | |
Charlie Anderson (Jimmy Stewart) is widower patriarch to an extended subsistence farm family. The character hopes to stay neutral in a war that eventually destroys much of his life.
An inappropriately flighty soundtrack and a syrupy feel-good ending degrade this brave presentation of unspoken truths: Few people had a role in the war’s initiation, many wanted no part in its continuation, and countless suffered despite their wishes. A fictional character in a fictional town, Anderson is nonetheless an excellent example of many Border State farmers caught in the middle, subjected to the devastating whims of roaming armies and subhuman looters.
Unkind to war as a whole, Shenandoah precedes by years a flood of antiwar films spawned by the American struggle with Vietnam.14
A story set in the Virginia valley, Shenandoah was actually filmed in Oregon.
9. The General (1927)
| United Artists | ||
| Producer: | Joseph Schenk | |
| Director: | Buster Keaton | |
| Starring: | Buster Keaton | |
Keaton plays Johnny Gray, a plucky train engineer who attempts to join the Confederate army but is rejected because his skill is too vital to the war effort. When his love interest is taken captive by a mob of engine-stealing blue bellies, Gray steams to the rescue with an army of Confederates in support.
The work, thick with intricate stunts and impressive cinematography, ends with Johnny saving his girl and the Confederates winning a decisive victory.
The legendary Keaton never made a better film, and The General often is considered one of the top one hundred films of all time, with supreme timing, pace, purpose, and shot variation. Yet this movie is most significant for what it is: the one and only critically acclaimed Civil War comedy ever made.15
Adored today, The General was a commercial and critical flop in its time. Star and director Keaton was devastated by its failure.
10. Gods and Generals (2003)
| Turner Pictures | ||
| Producer: | Ron Maxwell | |
| Director: | Ron Maxwell | |
| Starring: | Robert Duvall, Jeff Daniels, Stephen Lang | |
Incredible how a film can consume more than fifty million dollars, last nearly four hours, and achieve so little. Based on Jeff Shaara’s novel of the same name, the prequel to GETTYSBURG is poorly directed, haphazardly shot, and stifled by weak performances.
The work, however, does offer a fresh and mostly factual treatment of THOMAS J. “STONEWALL” JACKSON. Although not nearly as personable, talkative, nor bipolar as Stephen Lang plays him, the high-voiced, shy, and judgmental Jackson was indeed very gentle with children and his wife. Owning slaves, he did have a personal servant who was a freedman. He readily executed disobedient soldiers, became a new father just before fredericksburg, and was tone deaf. Jackson’s wounding and death happened almost exactly as portrayed, right down to the clothes he was wearing. And yet his true-to-life First Brigade speech appears completely out of context, as are his personal feuds with other Confederate generals. Worse, the film makes him all but invisible at Fredericksburg, where in fact Jackson’s and Jeb Stuart’s men saved the critical south flank after hours of relentless combat.16
Altogether, the script supplants dialogue with diatribe, scenes lack any trace of sequence, special effects are anemic, field hospitals appear comically placid, and ROBERT E. LEE (Robert Duvall) always seems to be on the verge of a nap. Yet the names and dates are accurate if not the personalities. In short, Gods and Generals is made of, by, and for reenactors. Film buffs may have a harder time with it.
Actor Stephen Lang, who plays Jackson, also appeared in GETTYSBURG as George E. Pickett.
WAYS TO BE AN ACCURATE REENACTOR
Reenacting has become an art as well as a science for Civil War aficionados. From the thousands of hobbyists to the legions of expert organizers, these artisans in field theater loyally involve themselves and the general public in the history of sights and sounds otherwise lost.
Not a few of them are full-fledged encyclopedias in the art of Civil War soldiery, skilled in small arms and artillery, fluent in epaulets and chevrons, with exhaustive knowledge of the conflict’s officers and enlisted. Yet most will admit they are not a perfect representation of their subject.
If one is inclined to join up with the local weekend warriors but afraid of sporting inaccurate shoe stitching or implausible canteen covers, here are a few ways to match the most die-hard. Some tricks are more subtle than others, and each is ranked by its respective level of feasibility. If the desire is there to look as much like Billy Yank or Johnny Reb as possible, consider some of the following.
1. Wear Ill-Fitting Everything
Government-issue articles, produced by the thousands, gave little consideration for the variety of body types. Men of all sizes had to deal with clothes of clownish proportions. Shoes were made to fit either foot. There were one-size-fits-all hats. Pants were especially vague in their construction. All combined to rid a soldier of any sense of grandeur.
Tailoring and trade rectified some of the more ridiculous problems. Soldiers with extra cash procured better fits from locals or sutlers (civilian peddlers), and many committed much of their pay for such purposes. Union boys had it better in this case, as their War Department allotted forty-two dollars per year for a clothing allowance.17
If by chance you already have a well-fitted kit but want to look more like a battle-tested artillerist rather than a paper-pushing adjutant, proceed to step 2, going for the worn look.
The term shoddy comes from the Civil War. A fabric consisting of recycled wool and cotton cloth, it was used by unscrupulous manufacturers to make uniforms and blankets.
2. Go for the Worn Look
Most reenactors spend a pretty shinplaster on their replicated duds, subsequently treating their uniforms better than a Sunday suit. Even those attempting to represent the mismatched nature of Civil War outerwear, sporting a homespun shirt or a hand-me-down hat for example, still appear pristine compared to the real campaigners. To an actual soldier, there were four kinds of clothes: lost, tossed, dress, and damaged.
Marching and fighting were as hard on the weave as they were on the warrior. Brush, brambles, and the jagged ensemble of soldier equipment tore away at cloth. Rain and mud had a particular appetite for cotton and wool. Although regulations sternly recommended he maintain appearances, a soldier became unavoidably haggard while on the move. Yet he managed. Before he learned how to cook, fight, or march, he usually mastered a needle and thread, or developed a talent for finding someone handy with a housewife (slang for a sewing kit).18
Take note: There are comparatively few reenactments of post-1863 battles, when the war transformed to one of attrition. Understandably, not many Confederate reenactors wish to dress the part. For the South, supply-hoarding governors and the oppressive blockade turned whole armies into the walking ragged. Legions of gray and butternut began to resemble a sentry of threadbare scarecrows. In short, battles of 1864–65 hold very little martial beauty or what-if mystique for the reenactor or audience.
When officers and enlisted men donned formal dress uniforms, they called it “ragging out.”
3. Complain of Dysentery or Diarrhea
Sure, it’s not going to win many hearts at the postbattle square dance, but it will sound authentic. A soldier’s chance of getting the “fluxes” during his stint was approximately 99 percent. Most men had it three or four times before being discharged or killed. When commanders calculated how many effectives they had for duty, they first took the sum total of their forces and subtracted the reported cases of the “quickstep.” At sick call, the entry question a doctor asked was, “How are your bowels?” At any one time, 5 to 40 percent of an entire field army could be under its lurid spell. In the war between the blue and the gray, diarrhea won.
The men normally avoided getting chatty on the subject for various reasons. Primarily, news of illness was hardly news, and spreading the word was almost as damaging to morale as spreading the disease.19
A doctor’s cure for the fluxes: opium, quinine, Caster oil, lead tincture, and/or whiskey. A soldier’s cure for the fluxes: fasting, hot tea made from tree bark, flannel cloth around the waist, and/or whiskey.
Although the impetus might be to collect all the right equipment and leave nothing out, the most authentic move is to unload.
When heading off to war, eager volunteers weighed themselves down with perceived necessities: pistols, Bowie knives, overcoats, gloves, compasses, mess kits, spare shirts, spare pants, and for the extra cautious, armored chest plates. On the first mile of their first march, many soldiers must have felt ready for anything. By about the second mile, they were usually ready to convert to the theology of thrift.20
Most men learned to replace equipment with ingenuity. No need for heavy pots when a tin cup worked just as well. Half of a canteen made an excellent frying pan-dinner plate-shovel. The best way to keep food from rotting was to eat it. A few good men discovered that a corked rifle barrel held quite a bit of whiskey.
Soldiers heading for a big scrape also knew to jettison playing cards, pipes, dice, gambling IOUs, anything even remotely associated with sin. If killed in battle and the body identified, a soldier’s effects were sent home. The last thing a private wished to impose upon his mother was evidence that her dear lost boy had succumbed to some seductive vice.
Bare minimum, an infantryman carried a rifle, a bayonet, a scabbard, a haversack with three days’ rations, a cartridge box with forty rounds of ammunition, a blanket roll, and a canteen. Total weight: about thirty pounds.
5. Lose Sleep
More often than not, the possibility of an impending engagement was not a mystery to the men in the ranks, and the time required for preparation left little opportunity for rest.
Prep time superseded sleep: cleaning weapons, limbering horses, filling haversacks, collecting ammunition, picket duty, skirmish duty, and standing by. Officers used the cloak of darkness to mobilize or dig in. Getting ready usually lasted all night.
Federal units were up at 2:00 a.m. preceding the battle of FIRST MANASSAS. THOMAS J. “STONEWALL” JACKSON and his soldiers traveled day and night from the Shenandoah to take part in the Seven Days. Union soldiers were awake twenty hours and more, preparing for a hopeless dawn attack on Cold Harbor. In frigid winters, men stayed up all night to keep from freezing to death. In summer, officers marched men through the darkness to avoid the blistering sun.
Over the three-day battle of Stones River, William S. Rosecrans stayed awake almost the entire time. At the one-day battle of Antietam, GEORGE B. MCCLELLAN slept in and missed a third of it.
6. Lose the Glasses
Pince-nez, glasses, or other eyewear might have conveyed a look of scholastic prowess among the learned elite, but such optical aids were considered a sign of infirmity to the manly sort in the middle 1800s, equivalent to a cane or an ear horn. Accordingly, nineteenth-century spectacles were not designed for excursion. With straight temples and no nosepieces, anything more than a stroll caused the specs to slide down the face. Exceptionally fragile, glass lenses and flimsy frames had shorter life spans in battle than flag-bearers. Soldiers dependent on corrective lenses either opted out, were weeded out, or went without.
For the reenactor who needs vision correction but cannot wear contacts (perhaps an Arkansan with astigmatism or a bifocaled blue-coat), there are many sources of period frames. Antique stores are the least expensive, and most optometry suppliers can custom fit new lenses. Web-based providers of period eyeglasses are plentiful. Some reenacting suppliers can be of service. Choose oval glasses or octagonal. Circular frames were available during the war but were out of style.
Examine closely any military portrait or group photo during the war. An extremely rare find is the sight of a Civil War soldier sporting eyewear, literally one in a million.
7. Lose the Weight
The average soldier was a scant 145 pounds. Questionable rations, hard labor, marches in excess of twenty miles, bouts of illness, and tough outdoor living kept the fighting man lean, even gaunt. As early as antietam in 1862, Northern soldiers and citizens remarked how thin the Confederates looked, a condition soon shared by field soldiers on either side.
Wartime desk clerks might have allowed themselves the pleasure of a little pudge, some officers might have taken the better portions of issued fare, but the infantry rank and file lived underweight despite a diet laden with fat and grease. However frail he might have appeared, the soldier with the diminutive carriage tended to last longest. Diaries are ripe with stories of giants in camp, but the same accounts praised the thin, more efficient soldier in the endurance events of marching and fighting.
Two soldiers not on the diet plan were Gens. Winfield Scott and George H. Thomas. Scott topped three hundred pounds at the beginning of the war, and Thomas reached the three-hundred mark soon after the war ended.
8. Neglect Your Skin
Constant exposure to the elements ravaged the skin of any private or sailor. Burning sun, driving winds, cold rain, and frigid winters aged a soldier’s complexion well beyond his years. Working in, marching through, and sleeping on brush and dirt accelerated the process further.
Adding to the misery was a soldier’s uniform. Collars, cuffs, and waistbands, many of them wool, became greasy with sweat, mud, rain, and dirt. Inevitable chafing rubbed certain areas raw and made them susceptible to infection. A regular concern for orderlies and doctors was the problem of boils around the areas where clothes sanded away at the flesh.
On top of all this, and usually worse, were the eternal companions of vermin. Mosquitoes, ticks, mites, fleas, chiggers, lice (a.k.a. graybacks, rebels, or tigers), and the occasional rat would tear at a soldier’s hide, especially at night. Even in the coldest winters, a man’s coat was a tenement of gnawing little beasts, driving the most pious to fits of colorful blasphemy. Most soldiers preferred to fight soldiers rather than insects, as there was a measurable chance of victory with the former. In the war against the wigglers, the contest was an inglorious, infectious degradation, ceasing only after death or a hot bath and a new suit of clothes.21
Although few soldiers in the war routinely bathed, even fewer were inclined to brush their teeth.
9. Display a Sense of Depression after the Battle
Veterans from many wars describe battle with disturbing similarity. An initial fear often fuels a heightened sense of readiness. Entering the firestorm triggers an intense, almost maniacal force of concentration. Many speak of hearing nervous laughter emanate from themselves or others. A strange numbness prevails. Gone is any perception of time.
After participating in mock combat, many reenactors speak of sensations mildly resembling the above, an honest adrenaline rush that leaves several feeling as if they had indeed “traveled through time.”
Of course, the two experiences are oceans apart and completely unbridgeable. Reenactors shake hands, set off for a nice meal, visit the sutler’s store, or get ready for a formal dance or a box social. For Civil War soldiers and many like them who survived moments of elongated terror, there was commonly a postcombat letdown, apparently similar to running into a wall. A deep, quiet sadness prevailed, with threads of guilt and despair dominating the psyche. Men spoke of a tiredness somehow deeper than exhaustion.22
According to the Medical and Surgical History of the Rebellion, soldiers most prone to depression were those with “highly developed imaginative facilities” and “young men of feeble will.”
10. Be Absent
When picturing a typical infantry regiment in the Civil War, keep in mind that most of it was not there. Ideally numbering one thousand to eleven hundred men (Confederate regiments were intended to be larger), such units typically hovered around half to quarter strength. Thus any reenactor can add a sense of realism by subtracting himself from the equation.
Furloughs were common, where a few men or a few hundred from a regiment were on leave for two hours to two months. Naturally, sickness thinned the ranks. One in ten who served was captured sooner or later. By 1865 the dead and the wounded constituted one million men.
For a sincere display of realism, show up for the weekend activities but don’t take part in the battle. Every battle produced stragglers, men who failed to keep up with the marching columns, whether by injury, illness, fatigue, or choice. Within this last group were “skulkers,” men who conveniently slinked off and hid once the front came into view. Of like nature were “skedaddlers” who made it as far as the shooting, then flew rearward in a panic.23
Altogether, an estimated 200,000 deserted from the Union Army and Navy. Some 120,000 did the same from Confederate forces.
Bloody Hill at WILSON’S creek, the Bloody Pond of shiloh, the Bloody Angle of SPOTSYLVANIA—these places still exist, although their preservation was slow and uncertain and many like them are gone. For years, Americans wanted to forget the war, sharing in ROBERT E. LEE’S postwar wish “to obliterate the marks of civil strife and to commit to oblivion the feelings it engendered.” Some traveled to hallowed grounds but did so to find bodies of loved ones and return them home. Others visited with the intent to reap the soil of its valuable scrap iron and lead.24
No national process existed to save land for posterity, except for burial sites. In July 1862 the U.S. Congress granted executive authority to buy and receive land for the creation of military cemeteries. Using rather morose wording, the legislation read, “For the soldiers who shall die in the service of their country” (italics added). In doing so, Northern legislators unwittingly created the nucleus for future national military parks.25
Cemeteries became rendezvous points for aging veterans. By the 1880s full-fledged reunions emerged, and with them a desire for reconciliation. Concurrently, many former soldiers were successful businessmen and politicians. Armed with the levers of law and money, veterans worked to preserve land sewn with the bones of their comrades. In 1890 Chickamauga and Chattanooga became the first federally protected battlefields in the United States.26
Of the hundreds of local, state, federal, and private holdings, the following are the ten best in terms of preservation of landscape, size, quantity of markers and information, accessibility (parking, trails, ramps, etc.), and viewshed (sight line of surrounding area). All are protected by the National Park Service.27
1. Gettysburg National Military Park and Cemetery (Gettysburg, Pennsylvania)
What began in 1895 as an eight-hundred-acre park is currently six thousand and growing.
In 2008, the park celebrated the grand opening of its new $100 million Museum and Visitors Center, situated just south of the main battlefield along Baltimore Pike. A masterfully designed, barnlike exterior houses twelve galleries, a movie theater, a computer resource room, a conference center, and over 300,000 unique historical objects. Also featured is the Cyclorama “The Battle of Gettysburg,” a massive and breathtaking 360-degree rendition of the battle, recently restored by technicians and artisans from North America and Europe.
Over the last century, the park itself has become less of a destination and more of a pilgrimage. Days are needed for the grounds alone. There is the geological oddity of Devil’s Den, the stone-crowned Round Tops, Meade’s headquarters, the Wheatfield that changed hands six times, and the fateful mile of open ground between Seminary and Cemetery Ridges. Also within the grounds is the national cemetery where Lincoln delivered his immortal address. To the east of town is the East Cavalry Battlefield Site, where Union horsemen intercepted Jeb Stuart’s cavalry attack on the final day.
The surrounding viewshed remains reasonable, thanks to strict zoning laws in the borough of Gettysburg. Outlying areas are less restricted, which has prompted bitter fights between preservationists and real estate developers. Yet officials have been actively restoring and improving the surroundings, including a park-wide project to reestablish tree lines to their 1863 configuration, right down to the open view from Oak Hill to the northwest, to the Peach Orchard along Emmitsburg Road.
Understandably, crowds can be a potential distraction. More tourists come to this small Pennsylvania town each year than there are residents of Nebraska—nearly two million. This influx and attention, however, translates into the largest budget of any Civil War site. The park contains more than twenty-six miles of roadways, with more than fourteen hundred markers, monuments, and memorials. There are picnic areas, walking paths, an amphitheater, and licensed personal tour guides for hire.
Gettysburg hosted the largest Civil War reunion ever. On the fiftieth anniversary of the battle, more than fifty thousand veterans of blue and gray traveled to take part in a weeklong commemoration. Due to an oppressive heat wave, nine veterans died.
2. Shiloh National Military Park and Cemetery (Shiloh, Tennessee-Corinth, Mississippi)
Established in 1894, Shiloh remains the most serene and least encumbered of the inaugural battlefield parks. Its four thousand acres of groves and fields stand nearly as they did in April 1862.
Shiloh’s distinctive landmarks and well-planned tour route make the battle easy to visualize. One can traverse the road known as the Hornets’ Nest and look out upon the row of artillery that finally broke this Union line. To the south grows the Peach Orchard, where Confederates hit the Union left flank in force, sending a hail of bullets through the blossoming trees. Nearby is Bloody Pond, an eerily placid pool once turned red from the corpses of horses and men. Last stop is Pittsburg Landing, where Union soldiers cowered from the Confederate onslaught and Don Carlos Buell landed twenty thousand reinforcements to turn the tide of the fight.
Shiloh’s visitors’ center has an orientation film and museum, with a bookstore in an adjacent building. There are picnic tables and a pavilion. Seasonal activities include rifle-firing demonstrations and other interpretive programs. Summer weekends have ranger-led activities and periodic living-history events. The auto tour is more than ten miles long, and numerous footpaths accompany the fourteen stops. The grounds contain 150 monuments, 217 cannon, and 450 informational tablets. More than 320,000 visitors come to the park each year.
Twenty miles to the south, the recently constructed Corinth Civil War Interpretive Center features 15,000 of historical exhibits on both Corinth and Shiloh, including two new films, a spacious auditorium, interactive displays, and a research room. Nearby are remnants of original Union and Confederate earthworks. As with Shiloh, Corinth is also home to a Civil War national cemetery.
In 2007, the National Park Service conducted a solemn reburial of two Union soldiers found at Corinth. Archeologists discovered their remains in 1999 when investigating the proposed site for the new Interpretive Center. The two soldiers were laid to rest in their original graves.
3. Antietam National Battlefield Site and Cemetery (Sharpsburg, Maryland)
The battle of ANTIETAM lasted eleven hours. The fight for the Antietam battlefield has been ongoing ever since. Fortunately, private and government efforts to save the area have thus far succeeded.
As with other national sites, Antietam began as a cemetery. The state of Maryland set aside eleven acres in 1865 to inter the Union dead of Antietam and other battles. In 1890 Congress declared the site a federally preserved battlefield. The park has grown over the years, from eighteen hundred acres in 1960 to thirty-three hundred acres in 2010.
The area’s greatest attribute is its enduring faithfulness to appearance. The town of Sharpsburg retains a provincial character, even though the park attracts 330,000 visitors yearly. The horizons are largely free of modern construction. Miles of snake-rail fences continue to wind around fields. Melancholy and narrow, BURNSIDE’S BRIDGE remains astride Antietam Creek.
The park contains an eight-mile driving tour, battle markers, monuments, and an observation tower. The existing visitors center, set to be replaced by a state-of-the-art facility, has a small museum, an orientation film, and an hourlong documentary at noon. Summer activities include guided tours and living-history presentations. Unique to the park is the historic Piper family home. Now a bed and breakfast, in 1862 the house served as Confederate Gen. JAMES LONGSTREET’S headquarters.
At the center of Antietam Cemetery stands The Private Soldier. The granite statue stands more than twenty-one feet high and weighs over thirty tons. In tribute to the 4,776 Union soldiers buried there, the statue faces north.
4. Pea Ridge National Military Park (Pea Ridge, Arkansas)
Site of the March 1862 battle that secured Missouri for the Union, Pea Ridge is considered by many to be the best preserved battlefield in the United States. Shelved away in northwest Arkansas, the site of forty-three hundred acres is a healthy distance from excessive civilization. It is also free of stifling crowds. Yearly attendance of the park does not exceed ninety thousand.
A late addition to the family of military sites (1956), the park contains a seven-mile auto tour with ten stops. The most stunning is certainly Stop 7, the East Overlook. It is the finest panoramic vista of any Civil War park, providing almost a full view of the battlefield as well as the heights and valleys of a remarkably pristine horizon. It was from this point and nearby Elkhorn Tavern where nine thousand Federals pushed nearly fourteen thousand off Pea Ridge and deep into the Arkansas interior.
New to the park in 2010 is a completely reconstructed museum, featuring multimedia and interactive displays, as well as permanent and traveling museum exhibits. The park also has picnic areas and ten miles of hiking and horse trails. There are living-history presentations in the summer. The Elkhorn Tavern has been reconstructed and is open for tours from June to October.
Protected within the park boundaries are two and a half miles of the 1838 Trail of Tears, the route of the Cherokees forcibly relocated to Oklahoma.
5. Vicksburg National Military Park (Vicksburg, Mississippi)
Established in 1866, it is the largest burial site of Union soldiers in the country, with more than 17,000 interments.
Also in the park are twenty miles of original and reconstructed trench works, 144 cannon, hiking and equestrian trails, seventeen miles of paved road, picnic areas, and a visitors center with several exhibits. Summer activities include guided tours and presentations on the weekends, including demonstration firings of cannon and rifles. The thirteen-gun behemoth ironclad Cairo, resurrected from the murky Yazoo River in the 1970s, and recently renovated into a walkthrough museum, is on display near the national cemetery. Over a million tourists come to the park each year.
The first resident commissioner of the military park was William Rigby, who held the position from 1899 until his death in 1929. Rigby had worked for the government before, as a soldier of the Twenty-fourth Iowa at the siege of Vicksburg.
6. Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park (Chattanooga, Tennessee)
In 1889 area residents and veterans from North and South petitioned Congress to spare the unique landscapes and battle sites along the Chickamauga River. By recommendation from the House Committee on Military Affairs in 1890, Chickamauga and Chattanooga became the first Civil War national battlefield parks in the United States. Totaling more than eighty-four hundred acres, they remain the largest.28
Of the two places, Chickamauga benefited from its rural location and remains far more contiguous. Chattanooga had 2,500 residents in 1860. In 2010 the city surpassed 170,000. With the exception of Lookout Mountain’s peak, preserved sections along Missionary Ridge and in town are modest in size.
Yet Chattanooga must be seen to be comprehended. Missionary Ridge runs for twenty miles and slopes four hundred feet upward. Lookout Mountain towers twenty-one hundred feet above sea level. From these vantage points, it is easy to see how thirty thousand blue-coats could get trapped in the valley. Once more, the successful Federal breakthrough on November 25, 1863, appears all the more remarkable.
A short drive south, Chickamauga provides a different scene altogether. The dense underbrush, dark woods, and irregular clearings of the park illustrate how this September 1863 battle devolved into a frightful hive of disjointed, confused, hand-to-hand fighting. Together, Chattanooga and Chickamauga provide unrivaled opportunity to compare extremes in terrain and, for that matter, results.29
The parks contain 250 cannon, 700 monuments, and 650 markers. Both have self-guided driving tours and miles of footpaths. Situated atop Lookout Mountain, the Chattanooga visitors center displays the historic James Walker painting, The Battle Above the Clouds. The Chickamauga visitors center on Lafayette Road features a multimedia presentation and an exhibit of more than 350 shoulder arms. Summer activities at both sites include living-history presentations and military reenactments. On average, 790,000 people visit the parks each year.
August 19, 1890, President Benjamin Harrison signed the bill that formed the national battlefields of Chickamauga and Chattanooga. A great grandson of a signer of the Declaration of Independence, Harrison was also a Union officer during the Civil War.
7. Petersburg National Battlefield (Petersburg, City Point, and Five Forks, Virginia)
Few remnants of the Civil War are as haunting as trenches and forts. Miles of these mounds and walls, scraped from the soil of the Confederacy, remain visible, but time and urbanization are steadily pressing them back into the earth. For the best collection of these fading structures, look to the Petersburg National Battlefield.
The siege of Petersburg lasted five times longer than Chattanooga, six times longer than Vicksburg, and nine times longer than Yorktown. There were eleven major offensives, countless skirmishes, constant sniper and artillery activity, cavalry raids, and the tunneling of mines and countermines. At stake was Richmond’s last rail lines south, protected by more than seventy miles of trenchworks and forty thousand soldiers.
Petersburg National Battlefield is by necessity a collection of several protected areas. Ten miles northeast is City Point. A wharf on the James and Appomattox Rivers, City Point was the supply depot for 120,000 Union troops. Present are ulysses s. grant’s headquarters and a preserved plantation homestead.
The main park is just northeast of Petersburg. At the visitors center maps, exhibits, and displays provide background to the siege. There is a four-mile auto tour, with stops at two preserved batteries, eight forts, and the crater. Southernmost on the loop is Poplar Grove Cemetery, where more than six thousand Union soldiers are buried. Two of every three bodies there were never identified.
During the summer months, park rangers provide short tours of major points of interest. There are also living-history programs, plus rifle, mortar, and cannon demonstrations. The main park is one of the few that cater to cyclists, with miles of park roads having bike lanes. In addition, there are many hiking and equestrian trails.
In terms of viewshed, the park network fairs well considering its proximity to populous Richmond. Petersburg itself is not overly intrusive. In 1860 the city numbered eighteen thousand. The population has not quite doubled in 140 years. Yet the diffuse locations of forts and trenches make Petersburg expensive to maintain. The park has half the annual budget of Gettysburg but one-twelfth the number of visitors. Despite the cost, preservationists continue to seek ways to improve the park and protect trenches and forts still on private land.30
President Lincoln spent two of the final three weeks of his life at City Point near Petersburg, overseeing the final push against the Army of Northern Virginia.
8. Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield (Wilson’s Creek, Missouri)
Little beyond tree lines have changed around the meandering stream and rolling hills of southwest Missouri, where on August 10, 1861, Union Brig. Gen. Nathaniel Lyon and six thousand Federals attacked twelve thousand Confederates under Sterling Price. In terms of pristine beauty, the site rivals Pea Ridge.
A five-mile driving tour around the seventeen-hundred-acre park documents the fateful day. Tour Stop 5 (Franz Sigel’s Final Position) marks the critical Union flank attack, doomed to failure when the German general mistook an enemy column for his own troops. Centerpiece of the park and the battle is appropriately named Bloody Hill at Tour Stop 7. Lyon’s main force of forty-two hundred tried to hold this ground. Hopelessly outnumbered, Lyon lost the hill, nearly 18 percent of his force, and his own life.
At the visitors center, brief video and fiber-optics presentations describe the contest. Over the summer months, the Ray House (used as a Confederate hospital after the battle) is open weekends. Sundays have living-history cavalry drills plus rifle and artillery demonstrations. There are picnic areas and seven miles of trails for hiking and horseback riding. More than two hundred thousand people come to the park every year.31
The Union lost a higher percentage of soldiers at Wilson’s Creek than at Antietam.
9. Manassas National Battlefield Park (Manassas, Virginia)
Established in 1940, Manassas is a place where destinies change at the eleventh hour. In both battles, Union generals telegraphed Washington to declare victory only to be corrected soon after by grand Confederate counterattacks. In the late twentieth century, last-minute public intervention ceased construction of a mall and a theme park nearby. Despite tremendous odds, Manassas has grown to five thousand acres. Only Chickamauga-Chattanooga and Gettysburg surpass its size.32
The visitors center has a small museum and shows a short audiovisual presentation throughout the day. A forty-five minute documentary, The End of Innocence, can be seen for a nominal fee. Along the rolling hills and fields near the center, a footpath leads to the most prominent points of FIRST MANASSAS. On the thirty-minute walk is the grave of Judith Henry, the only civilian to die in the battle. Behind the Henry House is the high ground where THOMAS J. JACKSON earned the nickname Stonewall. Visible to the east is Chinn Ridge, where the Union right flank began to collapse.
A driving tour of twelve miles covers the ground of SECOND MANASSAS. Among the twelve stops is the unfinished railroad bed to the northwest, where desperate hand-to-hand fighting produced thousands of casualties. To the south and west are the New York monuments. On this low hill, 123 men of the Fifth New York regiment died in five minutes, the worst loss of any Union regiment in any fight of the entire war. To the east the Henry Hill marks a successful last stand of Union forces.33
The driving tour reveals a third battle, a continuous struggle with development. Virginia Highway 234 and Highway 29 intersect the otherwise grand park. The Stone House, a two-story building used as a hospital during both battles, shakes from the intersection just paces away. The Stone Bridge over Bull Run, a key attack and escape route in both contests, today cowers under the shadow of a highway viaduct. Despite the most noble and diligent work by preservationists, the westward expansion of population and development continues to envelope the area, much the same way Cold Harbor and FREDERICKSBURG have been overrun.34
From 1921 to 1935, a private organization—the Sons of Confederate Veterans—bought and preserved the buildings and land on Henry Hill.
10. Stones River National Battlefield and Cemetery (Murfreesboro, Tennessee)
Saved as a military park in 1927, when the population of nearby Murfreesboro hovered around 10,000, Stones River today stands valiant against an over-spilling city of 100,000. Despite the nearby “growth,” the park maintains much of the land’s appearance of 1862, down to the fields of unpicked cotton among the cedars. Although modest in size (600 acres), the battlefield remains one of the most beautiful and interactive among federally preserved sites.
A primary site on the driving tour is Sheridan’s Stand, where a Union division withstood close-range artillery fire and three infantry assaults before it fell back. Also on the route, the national cemetery holds more than six thousand graves. During the battle, Federal artillery fired from this high ground, covering the last line of Union defenses. Key to the park is the stop at the infamous Round Forest. This tree-capped knoll anchored the Union left flank. On the first day of battle, four Confederate attacks tried to take the hill and were slaughtered.
Several stops contain short walks on flat ground. A few paths may be difficult, since they pass over the same limestone outcroppings that trapped caissons and ricocheted shells lifetimes ago. Marginally distracting is U.S. Highway 41, passing near the main section of the park. Crossing the north side of the grounds are the busy Nashville Pike and a rail line, the same road and rail beds that existed at the time of the battle.
Inside the recently expanded visitors center, three exhibit galleries and a new movie give an engaging synopsis of the battle and its far-reaching impact. Further improvements of the parks road and trail system are also in the works. During summer and autumn, ranger-led walks happen daily, and living-history programs can be seen on most weekends. Stones River sees 180,000 visitors each year.
Inside Stones River National Cemetery is a monument to the Union’s Hazen Brigade. Erected in 1863, it is considered to be the oldest Civil War monument in existence.
Few remnants offer a more tangible image of the war’s sheer enormity than the multitude of graves. Armed engagements invaded private homes and community churches, family farms and quiet towns. When the corpses massed, bewildered armies and citizens were left to shallow-bury the dead wherever and however they could. Sometimes by ones and twos, sometimes by the hundreds, more than a half million bodies were piled into croplands or tucked along roadsides, settled into gardens or shoved into ravines.
Such disorder soon proved hygienically and emotionally problematic, especially for those who found their towns surrounded and out-populated by corpses. Erosion, construction, the farmer’s plow, and ravenous animals unearthed these remains with disturbing regularity.
While the war was still in motion, both sides tried to solve the problem by reburying the dead into central locations. In 1862, to facilitate the process, Congress established a national cemetery system. The initial assumption was that a dozen such cemeteries would be needed. By war’s end, there were seventy-three. The majority were placed in the South, where most of the war’s fighting and dying occurred.
In a move that would perpetuate feelings of hostility for years to come, Congress forbade the interment of Confederates at these sites. Lacking a strong central government to create an equivalent system, Southerners were left to expand their existing graveyards. As a result, roughly seventy-five percent of CSA soldiers were eventually laid to rest in city cemeteries. Another fifteen percent or so were placed in churchyards and private family plots.35
Due to the large numbers of dead, and the lack of standard identification on either side, many of the deceased were buried in unmarked graves. Others became anonymous when thieves or the elements ravaged their makeshift headboards. As a consequence, approximately forty percent of Union and well over fifty percent of Confederate dead were buried as unknowns. Perhaps worse, tens of thousands of fallen soldiers were never found at all.
Following are the most populated of these “final campsites,” according to their totals by 1875, when most of the large-scale reburial operations had ended. Some have accurate counts, while others were so inundated with partial remains and mass graves that their totals will forever be approximations.36
1. Blandford Church Cemetery (30,000), Petersburg, Virginia
On the east side of old Petersburg stood the village of Blandford. Its church, constructed in the 1730s, sat atop lofty Wells Hill. A solemn brick cottage structure with slender, arched windows, the modest temple had been vacated long before the war, but its cemetery started to take on new parishioners as soon as the conflict intensified.37
By June of 1864, Blandford Church had become the front line of the war itself, a key piece of high ground protecting the last rail lines into Richmond. For nine months, Union forces besieged the area, and the Confederates held on. In their standoff, the two sides mutated Blandford and the surrounding countryside with miles of trenches, artillery nests, bomb proofs, mud-slopped rifle pits, and spiked abatis. By the time the Army of the Potomac broke through in April 1865, Lee’s once mighty Army of Northern Virginia actually had more men buried along the Richmond/Petersburg corridor than were marching away from it.
From the vast devastation left behind, civilians had to contend with thousands of scattered graves. Among those who led the effort were the Ladies Memorial Association of Petersburg, established in May of 1866. Raising funds and forming burial parties, they re-interred some 12,000 CSA soldiers into the eastern section of the Blandford Church Cemetery. Also transferred were Petersburg natives lost in more distant theaters. In the years to follow, other groups gathered the Confederate dead from surrounding areas, until the cemetery outpopulated the city.38
As with many mass graves of the Civil War, it is uncertain how many soldiers actually rest within Blandford. Most frequently cited as 30,000 interments, the total is possibly lower. An article from the Richmond Daily Dispatch in 1890 listed the sum as “Nearly twenty thousand.” Whatever the actual count, it is far beyond anything that citizens North or South could have imagined at the war’s inception.39
When Unions General AMBROSE E. BURNSIDE launched his ill-executed BATTLE OF THE CRATER on July 30, 1864, his primary objective was to break through and hold the high ground at Blandford Church.
2. Hollywood Cemetery (18,000), Richmond, Virginia
Established as a rural cemetery in 1850, and named after the groves of holly trees gracing its hillsides, Hollywood along the James became the prestigious final resting place for Richmond’s well-to-do. The ensuing war transformed it into a city of its own, where the famous mingled with the unknown ever after.
Many of the fresh graves came by way of the vast network of hospitals inundating the area. By 1862, there were more than forty hospitals in Richmond. As patients died, their internments started to overflow nearby cemeteries, including Hollywood. In the heat of the summer campaigns of 1862, corpses literally began to pile up, and it was not uncommon to see scores of bodies laying in wait, as overworked crews hurried to find open ground. Out of desperation, they started planting bodies closer and closer to the neighboring city reservoir, endangering the city’s water supply.40
In 1865, Richmond possessed seventy hospitals large and small, and was undergoing the longest siege in US military history. By then an entire section in Hollywood had been committed to the steady influx of dead. 41
A year after the war, understanding that there was more work to be done, women of the area formed the Hollywood Memorial Association of the Ladies of Richmond. They collected money, organized search parties, and gathered the Confederate dead from miles around, including thousands of bodies from Gettysburg battlefield 180 miles away. Because of these burials, and the generals and statesmen also resting there, Hollywood may rightly be considered the Arlington if the Confederacy. 42
Hollywood Cemetery contains the graves of Presidents James Monroe and John Tyler, as well as Confederate President Jefferson Davis. In addition, more Confederate generals are buried in Hollywood (25) than anywhere else.
3. Oakwood Cemetery (17,200), Richmond, Virginia
A decade before the war began, the thirty-year-old Oakwood Cemetery was already running out of room. After 1861, it burst its borders. For much of the war, the nearby battles were not the chief cause of this overload. Instead, the flood came extensively from the adjacent facility called Chimborazo Hospital.
Establish in the autumn of 1861, Chimborazo appeared to be on ideal land. Blessed with easy access via the James River and main thoroughfares, it also rested on high ground, providing abundant fresh air, dry ground, and good drainage. Its collection of over seventy separate wards helped minimize the spread of contagious diseases. Supremely organized, the hospital maintained its own cattle yard and dairy, and had a staff of over 300 nurses (mostly male slaves). Despite its advantages, the encampment suffered as the South did, from want of trained staff, medicines, doctors, and eventually food. Due to an influx of refugees, Richmond tripled in population, which further depleted supplies. The ever-worsening war turned a once efficient and effective treatment center into a warehouse for the sick and dying.43
Board markers for Confederate dead in Oakwood Cemetery, circa 1865.
The breaking point for both the hospital and Oakwood came with the wilderness campaign in the spring of 1864. U. S. Grant’s relentless push for Richmond produced over 35,000 Confederate casualties in slightly over six weeks (higher losses than the U.S. experienced in Battle of Iwo Jima). Many of Oakwood’s unknowns come from this period, when shorthanded burial crews were forced to pile the dead into mass graves.44
During the war, Chimborazo Hospital processed some 76,000 cases, and lost more than twenty percent of them. Such a mortality rate was considered commendable at the time.
4. Vicksburg National Cemetery (17,077), Vicksburg, Mississippi
Situated on what used to be the extreme right flank of the Union Army, where it besieged Confederate Vicksburg in the summer of 1863, is a sprawling 166-acre burial ground containing the largest number of Union soldiers of any national cemetery. Symbolic of the Union Army’s struggle with the mercilessly steep hills and overlapping ravines that skirted the high citadel, the cemetery itself had to be carved, terrace by terrace, from the hillsides overlooking the winding Mississippi below.45
Its markers originally consisted of thousands of white-painted headboards, buried deep and lettered in black, to identify those collected from the Vicksburg area, as well as from sites across the river in Louisiana and Arkansas. When the elements rotted the lumber with unnerving haste, the federal government decided in the 1870s to replace them with permanent white marble tombstones—upright slabs for the known, and small cubes for the unknown. The latter were enumerated twice—once on the top to indicate marker location, and a number on the side as a body count of those lying beneath.
Of the burials, approximately one-third are African American troops. Overall, seventy-five percent of the bodies at Vicksburg are unknown, including a staggering ninety-eight percent of the African Americans.46
Despite its massive number of interments, Vicksburg National Cemetery holds few high-ranking officers. Highest is Brevet Brigadier General Embury D. Osband, who led U.S. Grant’s cavalry escort during the siege, and later commanded a brigade in the Third U.S. Colored Cavalry.
5. Nashville National Cemetery (16,485), Nashville, Tennessee
Now enveloped by the city, the national cemetery used to be miles beyond Nashville’s northern boundary. Major General GEORGE THOMAS selected the burial site, an area that rested right along the rail line descending from Louisville, so that any Northerner entering the Tennessee capital would be reminded of the war’s heavy price.47
Many of the troops interned had succumbed in nearby military hospitals, as Nashville served as a major staging area for the Federal operations in the West. Also buried are Federals who died in operations in southern Kentucky, as well as those who stopped John Bell Hood’s late 1864 drive into Middle Tennessee. In all, 12,486 known dead and 3,999 unknown are interred there. For Confederate losses in the area, their main resting places were the ornate and placid Mt. Olivet, the old City Cemetery, church yards, and family plots.48
While many of the Union dead from the battle of Franklin are interned in the national cemetery, their counterparts from that five-hour struggle reside primarily further south, eighteen miles away at the McGavock family plantation of Carnton. On land donated and maintained by the McGavocks following the war, 1,481 of the battle’s 1,750 Confederate dead are buried. It is the largest privately owned military cemetery in the United States.
The soldiers in Nashville National Cemetery represent 730 different regiments and were found in 251 different burial sites.
6. Arlington National Cemetery (16,000), Arlington, Virginia
Though born in Georgia, Union Quartermaster General Montgomery Meigs held a deep resentment toward his fellow Southerners, especially after his soldier son died in Confederate captivity. It was through this loathing that, in June of 1864, he recommended the establishment of a 200-acre national cemetery on the property of Mary Anna Custis Lee, granddaughter of Martha Washington and wife of robert e. lee. The act was something of a formality. The Union Army had confiscated the land early in the war, using the home as a headquarters and constructing two forts on its 1,100 acres of ground.
Looking to make a statement, Meigs gathered Union remains from the battlefields of manassas, spotsylvania, and wilderness, and reburied them within site of the Lee mansion, so that no one would live in the house again. By 1865, Arlington contained nearly 5,000 bodies.49 Two years later, the total exceeded 15,000. 50
Arguably Meigs’s most transcendent commemoration to the Federal deceased came in 1866 through the Tomb of the Unknown Dead, a large masonry monument standing upon what used to be the Lee family rose garden. Inside the ten-foot deep vault are the remains of an estimated 2,111 soldiers.
Though scores of Confederate dead also lay within the cemetery, their families were officially forbidden to adorn their graves. In some instances, relatives were denied access altogether. A generation later, the unifying experience of the Spanish-American War led many to reassess old divisions, leading Congress in 1900 to authorize the inclusion of Confederate remains from nearby Alexandria and the Soldiers Home north of Washington. By 1914, enough of the old rancor had died away that President Wilson could publicly dedicate a new 32-foot monument to the 482 Confederate soldiers and civilians newly buried amongst their former adversaries.51
Today, Arlington contains over 300,000 gravesites of veterans and their family members, statesmen, astronauts, and justices. On average, six thousand new burials are conducted every year. Available ground for new burials will likely run out by 2060.
7. Fredericksburg National Cemetery (15,068), Fredericksburg, Virginia
Established by act of Congress only a few months after the war’s end, the national cemetery at Fredericksburg has one of the most paradoxical locations for Union dead. It is situated on MARYE’S HEIGHTS, the very hillside the Union Army tried and failed to capture during the Dec. 13, 1862 battle.
While most of the Civil War’s dead succumbed to disease, those buried here are primarily combat casualties, sifted from the battlefields of CHANCELLORSVILLE, SPOTSYLVANIA, THE WILDERNESS, and of course Fredericksburg, where nearly 13,000 soldiers were killed, wounded, missing, or captured in less than a day, the bulk of whom fell before a long stone wall at the base of Marye’s Heights.52
Nearby is the Confederate Cemetery, holding 3,300 bodies. Of their dead, thirty-three percent have been identified, while only twenty percent of the Union troops are known.53
At the entrance of the Fredericksburg National Cemetery is a gatehouse. It is constructed largely of stones removed from the famous wall at the base of Marye’s Heights.
8. Memphis National Cemetery (13,962), Memphis, Tennessee
Originally known as the Mississippi River National Cemetery, the Union burial on the western edge of Tennessee grew around the intersection of the Memphis and Ohio Railroads, which once stood several miles outside of Memphis proper. Consisting of nearly forty acres, the cemetery remains a testament to the combined efforts of the U.S. Army and Navy to recapture “the Father of Waters.”54
By 1869, the manicured grounds contained a gunboat mortar and four army siege guns silently watching over 9,754 white and 4,208 black troops. Of these dead, two-thirds are unknown. The lion’s share of the deceased were taken from multiple camp, hospital, and combat sites all the way from Hickman, Kentucky, over 170 miles to the north and Helena, Arkansas, seventy miles to the south. Many of the discovered were initially buried in marshy plains and along riverbeds, leaving search parties to wonder how many more bodies had been consumed by the soil or swept away by rushing waters.55
In addition, the cemetery took in the dead from the six-week battle for Island No. 10 on the Mississippi, the neighboring fight at New Madrid, and the infamous slaughter at Fort Pillow at Henning, Tennessee, in 1864. Also laid to rest were many of those who perished in the Sultana tragedy, when the riverboat, overloaded with recently released Union POWs, exploded and sank days after the war’s end, taking nearly 2,000 souls with her.
Union soldiers buried in Memphis National Cemetery hailed from every state in the Union, and from six states that had seceded—Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Texas.
9. Andersonville National Cemetery (13,363), Andersonville, Georgia
The national cemetery at ANDERSONVILLE is unlike most mass burial sites of the war, in that a remarkable 96 percent of dead are known. This provision of closure was due in large part to CLARA BARTON, who led a Federal effort to construct headboards for each grave, and Dorence Atwater, a Union survivor of the camp who had kept a ledger of those who had perished and where they were buried.
Work began in July 1865, as Barton, Atwater, and a team of over forty made their way to the remote site deep in the southwest reaches of Georgia. The region was so destitute that freed slaves had taken residence in the camp’s abandoned hospital barracks, locals had long since ransacked the prison warehouse, and the stockade’s filthy innards were, in Barton’s words, “horrible beyond description.” Adding further misery to the scene, daytime temperatures were breaching one hundred degrees.56
For more than three weeks, often laboring into the night, the detachment piled tons of clay soil upon thousands of sunken and eroded graves, and fashioned new headboards for each one. Barton and Atwater diligently confirmed and catalogued every marker’s name, date, and location. The exhaustive work took its toll. The veteran Atwater suffered at least one emotional breakdown, and one laborer died of typhoid.57
Despite the scale of death at Andersonville, where nearly one in three prisoners did not survive, the crew assigned to find and inscribe their final resting places achieved extraordinary results. Of 13,363 bodies in and around the massive camp graveyard, Barton’s crew successfully identified and marked 12,912 of them.58
At twenty-eight acres, Andersonville National Cemetery is slightly larger than the prison stockade of Andersonville itself.
10. Chattanooga National Cemetery (12,863), Chattanooga, Tennessee
Slotted in the narrows between Lookout Mountain to the west and Missionary Ridge to the east, and standing along the principle route between Nashville and Atlanta, Chattanooga was all but fated to host major engagements in the Civil War. It was here that Union forces retreated when pushed back from CHICKAMAUGA in September 1863. A series of brawling fights two months later released the Federals from the grip of a Confederate siege, and the decisive Union drive into Georgia resumed.
It was after this battle for Chattanooga that U.S. Gen. GEORGE THOMAS ordered the creation of a Union cemetery on an oak-treed hill fixed between the city’s high points. Two years after the war, Chattanooga National Cemetery was born from these initial burials.
Over the next three years, crews fanned out to gather the scattered Union remains from nearby skirmishes, the 1862 battle of CHICKAMAUGA, and the 1864 push towards Atlanta. By 1870, the total number of burials reached 12,800, of which nearly 5,000 are unknown.59
Among the buried at Chattanooga National Cemetery are four recipients of the Medal of Honor who took part in the “Great Locomotive Chase” north of Atlanta on April 12, 1862.
In effect, Americans are already involved with the Civil War. Millions vote for representatives and pay taxes determining the future of historic sites. Millions more are descendants of Union and Confederate veterans. Every citizen is an heir to the social, economic, and constitutional changes created by the sectional struggle.
Of course, one of the best ways to better comprehend the war’s place in the past and present is to do exactly this—read—but sometimes there comes an urge to step beyond the bookstore, to encounter the tangibles of the past. Thankfully, nothing has brought the past closer than modernity.
The Civil War is more accessible now than it has been for generations. Several of the activities listed here were not available a decade ago. There has been a steady increase in the number of publications and educational television programs over the years, and the Internet has become the principle means of communication between buffs, historians, and organizations.
Following are ten among many pursuits for beginners, hobbyists, schoolteachers, and students wishing to expand their Civil War horizons. Ranking is according to the minimum investment in time and funds required for participation, from least to most.
1. Join a Civil War Round Table
In 1940 a handful of people gathered in a Chicago bookshop to share their interest and curiosity in the Civil War. From those humble beginnings grew a vast network of round tables, currently topping three hundred in number, dotting the United States and several foreign countries.60
Far from being exclusive, such discussion groups welcome all levels of appreciation. Activities vary, but most round tables schedule guest speakers, review the latest films and books, share news and experiences, and are involved in historic preservation. Some organize field trips and restoration projects.
For a modest membership fee, a round table is the least expensive and best gateway to a wide range of opportunities, perspectives, and information. Check the Web or local newspapers to find the closest group. If there are none in your area, consider creating one. Contact local historical societies or collegiate history departments to seek out meeting places and potential recruits. All that is needed is two or more people and a topic for conversation.
Award for the round table farthest from Chicago goes to the American Civil War Round Table of Australia, which holds meetings in Sydney and Melbourne.
2. Donate Money
When time or location limit chances for greater participation, contemplate a donation. Reputable organizations turn dollars into preservation programs, land acquisitions, site restoration, research grants, and other means of protecting national heritage. Look for an IRS rating of 501(c)(3). Donations to these not-for-profit organizations are tax-deductible.
A modest sum can buy membership into a wide selection of trusts, such as Franklin’s Charge (www.franklinscharge.com), Friends of Resaca Battlefield (www.resacabattlefield.org), the Salisbury Confederate Prison Association (www.salisburyprison.org), and the Friends of the Wilderness Battlefield (www.fowb.org). Along with gaining the satisfaction of preserving a part of history, there are perks for various levels of contribution. Almost all programs distribute newsletters and progress reports to members.
Not a joiner? A small collection can help public libraries replace worn or outdated Civil War materials. University and college history departments are in constant need of financial support. There are “adoption” programs for monuments, positions, cannon, etc. Contact local and state historical societies for opportunities or get in touch with the National Trust for Historic Preservation (www.preservationnation.org).
The National Trust for Historic Preservation has more than 270,000 members—roughly the same size as the entire Confederate army in 1862.
There is nothing quite like owning a piece of history, and history often neglected is that of commemoration. After the horrors of the war dissipated, nostalgia took over, generating an extraordinary mixture of images, keepsakes, mementos, and in the case of Lincoln and Lee, a slew of iconography.
The years between 1880 and 1930 offer some of the best material, the decades when veterans were still alive and wanted to remember. Reunions produced patriotic ribbons and buttons, regimental reports and rosters, and moving photos of aged comrades.
Images are enlightening and readily available. Early twentieth-century postcards and stereoviews show famous towns, battlefields, and monuments untouched by tourism and real estate development. Late nineteenth-century lithographs of pivotal engagements are peculiar, depicting neat and tidy trenches, geometric attack formations, and not a spot of blood. As for paintings, some twenty different renditions exist of Lee and Grant’s historic meeting at the McLean home at Appomattox. Each image is different, as there were no artists present, and souvenir hounds gutted the room soon after.
Sheet music, veterans’ badges, lead soldiers, and tintypes: history itself is often not how it was but how following generations perceived it to be. Helpful guides to this examination include Warman’s Civil War Collectibles Identification and Price Guide (2010) and Stuart L. Schneider’s Collecting Lincoln (1997).
There are over one hundred billion likenesses of Abraham Lincoln in existence. Most of them are in the form of U.S. currency.
4. Collect Artifacts
In the process of forging two nations into one, and supplying the effort through the mass-production machine of the Industrial Revolution, the Civil War produced a king’s ransom in relics. In bayonets and buttons, muster sheets and musket balls, legal tender and letters home, there are finds to acquire and deals to be made.
Swap meets, antique shows, and weekend reenactments are common sources. For the fortunate few, discoveries still happen at estate sales and in family attics. Beware of Internet auctions, as they are high-risk ventures. The best defense against mistaking replicas for the real thing, or overpaying for authentic pieces, is prudence. Work with reputable dealers, never let excitement cloud judgment, and consult the following: James P. Mesker, A Practical Guide to Collecting Civil War (2001), and Francis Lord, Civil War Collector’s Encyclopedia (2004).
Lincoln’s personal copy of the EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION would be worth millions if it were available. Donated to the Chicago Historical Society in 1864, it was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1871.
5. Visit a Historic Site
When asked how to study a great event of the past, historian Barbara Tuchman offered one simple piece of advice: “Go to the place.” Text, photographs, and maps cannot replace a firsthand education of the five senses. Opportunities are plentiful. Hundreds of forts, prisons, cemeteries, birthplaces, homes, and battlefield sites live on in public and private hands. Incredibly, each of the forty-eight contiguous states possesses at least a few historic sites related to the war.
Any chance to personally experience these places is worth the effort, whether it requires a drive across town or a long weekend. To walk the hallowed fields, to look upon the historic artifacts, to feel the cold headstones—such experiences provide an education unobtainable by other means. Consult the following to get started: Michael Weeks’s The Complete Civil War Road Trip Guide (2009); Frances H. Kennedy’s The Civil War Battlefield Guide (1998); and the Civil War Preservation Trust’s Civil War Sites (2003).
In the United States there are more than twenty federal historic sites, fifty museums, and seventy national cemeteries dedicated to the Civil War.
6. Donate Time
Many of the people assisting archivists, painting cannon carriages, manning desks, and maintaining trails at parks and facilities are volunteers. From cleaning monuments to repairing fortifications, on projects lasting a few hours to several months, charitable work has been and remains a pillar of preservation.
For the activist, there are editorials to write, legislation to monitor, and representatives to influence. Too often public officials and the public at large dismiss the value of history in schools and historic preservation in communities. Historical advocacy can turn general indifference into communal interest.
Consult the nearest Civil War round table or local and state historical societies for information on how to help. For opportunities in national battlefield parks, please consult the National Park Service Web site (www.nps.gov).
Of the three million soldiers in the Civil War, approximately 1 percent were regular army, 9 percent were draftees or substitutes, and the rest were volunteers.
7. Trace Genealogy
By marriage or direct lineage, millions of Americans have forefathers who were veterans of the Blue and the Gray. German, Mexican, African American, Irish, Welsh, English, Dutch, Native American, Russian, Spanish, and dozens of other heritages served in the Brothers’ War.
Descendants of Union soldiers are at an advantage, as Federal record-keeping surpassed the detail and preservation of the Confederate infrastructure. Likewise, the paper trail on officers, their assignments and promotions, is an easier road than searching for an enlisted man.
Even if there is no long-lost uncle to be found in uniform, the search will still produce results. Revealed through family trees, letters, newspapers, marriage records, and fading portraits, history takes on a dimension much deeper than that of lists of famous names and dates.
To organize the search, consider purchasing genealogy software. Try the following for guidance: Betram H. Groene, Tracing Your Civil War Ancestor (1995); Barbara Renick and the National Genealogical Society, Genealogy 101 (2003); the National Park Service Civil War soldiers and sailors database (www.itd.nps.gov/cwss); and the National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C. (www.nara.gov).
There is no living descendant of Abraham Lincoln. The last surviving member of the line was great-grandson Robert Todd Lincoln Beckwith, who died in 1985.
8. Join a Descendant Organization
When veterans of the war passed away, their children formed heritage associations. These leagues of lineage endure today, maintaining the memories and promoting the ideals of their predecessors.
Seeking membership indicates one is far beyond a novice level of Civil War involvement. To be admitted, applicants must prove they are direct descendants of a Civil War veteran or a veteran’s sibling. Some groups allow nondescendants to join as associates rather than as full members.
Heavily patriotic if not dogmatic, these organizations conduct regional meetings and annual conventions, participate in living-history programs, and conduct community service. A few provide academic scholarships to descendants, and nearly all assist with further genealogical research. To find out more, consult the following: Daughters of Union Veterans of the Civil War (www.duvcw.org); Sons and Daughters of U.S. Colored Troops (www.sdusct.org); Sons of Confederate Veterans (www.scv.org); Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War (www.suvcw. org); and United Daughters of the Confederacy (www.hqudc.org).
In September 1994 the United Daughters of the Confederacy celebrated its one hundredth anniversary. The organization received several letters of congratulations, including one from Southerner President William Jefferson Clinton.
9. Reenact
For generations no one thought to try to duplicate the tough look and hard life of Civil War soldiers. But when a few skirmish societies formed to commemorate the war’s centennial, a handful of rifle demonstrations planted the seed of what is now a multimillion-dollar industry of replica equipment and period uniforms.
It is a deceptively expensive hobby but a remarkably flexible one. Contrary to popular belief, opportunities for reenacting go far beyond battle simulations and can involve the whole family. Along with the stereotypical infantryman, reenactors portray marines, shipmen, politicians, clergy, telegraphers, doctors, nurses, and blacksmiths. Events are held at plantations, forts, private homes, and public parks during historic festivals or on anniversaries. They can involve groups of a handful to several hundred.61
The best way to start is to attend an event and speak with the participants. Take note of the demands on time, money, and especially the body. Spending hours and sometimes days in all types of weather, being weighed down by heavy wool and accoutrements, eating period grub, and walking for miles are all part of the experience. Many companies and groups are eager for new recruits so long as the rookies are ready and willing to spend hours and hours in preparation and practice. The payoffs include the gleam of bayonets, the sounds of the charge, the twirl of hoopskirts at the formal dance, and a few other perks not found at the usual business office. See William C. Davis, The Civil War Reenactor’s Encyclopedia (2002); Robert L. Hadden, Reliving the Civil War: A Reenactor’s Handbook (1999); and the Civil War Reenactors home page (www.cwreenactors.com).62
There are more than forty thousand Civil War reenactors in the United States, a total larger than the armed forces of Austria.
10. Find and Save an Unprotected Site
In 1991 Congress authorized an assessment of Civil War battlefields. A commission of authorities, including filmmaker Ken Burns, prolific author Ed Bearss, and Pulitzer Prize winner James M. McPherson, collected and presented the findings. Out of 384 principal battlefields, one-third were completely lost due to real estate development, an additional third were under immediate threat, and just one-sixth were under some degree of public protection.
These were just the battlefields. The commission also expressed concern over other places of Civil War relevance, such as historic homes, trench works, forts, birthplaces, campsites, monuments, memorials, and prisons.
As it is not economically viable for federal, state, and local budgets to save and protect everything pertinent to history, compromises are made and much is left to individual citizens. Unfortunately, many Americans have little concept of their own history, partially because so much of it has disappeared.
Some places are irretrievable, such as Big Bethel, Virginia, site of the first land battle of the war, now covered by a man-made reservoir. But there are still innumerable candidates for search and rescue. The Friends of the Florence Stockade saved a large portion of the land where the sixth deadliest Civil War prison once stood. An artist and his wife purchased forty acres of the battleground of Cross Keys—by accident. Scores of Civil War field hospitals and headquarters are still around because they remain as they always were—private homes.63
For inspiration and instruction on how to recover treasures of history, please see: Frances H. Kennedy and Douglas R. Porter, Dollar$ and Sense of Battlefield Preservation (1994); the National Trust for Historic Preservation (www.preservationnation.org); and the National Park Service Battlefield Protection Program (cwar.nps.gov/civilwar/ battlefieldprot.htm ).
Sometimes Mother Nature plays a hand in destroying historic sites. Don’t bother looking for the battle sites of Belmont, Missouri, or Island No. 10 in Kentucky. Both have been swept away by the Mississippi River.
