“Oh, I'm so interested in the Civil War. I have been ever since I read Gone With the Wind!”
I have lost count of the number of people who told me that while I was writing this book. Unfortunately, it seems that a great many Americans owe their understanding of the central event in our history to a sixty-year-old piece of fiction.
“Frankly, my dear,” this notion terrifies me. It suggests that legions of Miss Mitchell's readers know as much about the Civil War as Scarlett O'Hara's slave Prissy knew about “birthing babies.” It means that millions of people's notions of the Civil War era and slavery were shaped by a book in which all the white folks speak the King's English and slaves sound like this:
“Runned away? No'm, us ain' runned away. Dey done sont an' tuck us, kase us wuz de fo' bigges' an' stronges' han's at Tara…. Dey specially sont fer me, kase Ah could sing so good.”
Perhaps their views of plantation life derive from this Pulitzer Prize-winning description of an idyllic Georgia barbecue: “Over behind the barns there was always another barbecue pit, where the house servants and the coachmen and maids of the guests had their own feast of hoecakes and yams and chitterlings, that dish of hog entrails so dear to negro hearts, and, in season, watermelons enough to satiate.”
But maybe it wasn't Margaret Mitchell's prose and views on the war and slaves that did the trick. Perhaps they were among those Americans who learned about the Civil War this way: “Slavery died out in the North because it was expensive and inefficient. The African was too recently removed from his tropical home to endure the harsh winters, and even on a farm his labor did not pay for itself. There was no time to train his primitive fingers to perform all the varied tasks required of a Yankee handyman.” (Emphasis added.)
Does that sound like 1859 plantation propaganda? It actually comes from a 1959 McGraw-Hill textbook called The War Between the States.
For a long time, I thought that Margaret Mitchell's famous novel was to blame for the obsession that so many Americans have with the Civil War period. I assumed that Gone With the Wind—still this country's most beloved book and movie—made us a nation consumed by a devastating war.
And consumed we are.
* Early in 1995, a man was killed in a parking lot after an argument that started over a Confederate flag hanging in the back of the dead man's pickup. This incident occurred not long after Virginia's hotly contested 1994 Senate race, in which Republican candidate Oliver North supported those who wish to retain the Confederate flag as an emblem in several southern state flags. It was another skirmish in an emotional war between those who see the “stars and bars” as an offensive racist symbol and those who honor it as a symbol of their heritage.
* Discussing affirmative action policies in 1995, Republican Senator Robert Dole questioned whether “future generations should have to pay” for slavery. Said Dole, “Some would say yes. I think it's a tough question.”
* In June 1995 the Southern Baptists, who had split from the Baptist Church in 1845 over the issue of slaveowners becoming missionaries, apologized to African Americans for the sin of slavery.
* In 1994 the heavily armed Disney divisions were outflanked in their attempt to build an American history theme park and real estate development near the site of a major Civil War battlefield. In the Third Battle of Bull Run, the Fightin' Mouseketeers, holding their banners “High, High, High,” were routed by a regiment of guerrilla historians and roving bands of historical preservationists.
* In Richmond, a bitter dispute ran along racial lines in 1995 over the placement of a statue honoring Arthur Ashe, the late tennis star and a native of the Virginia capital. Some traditionalists—who happened to be white—didn't think a statue honoring a tennis player—who happened to be black—belonged with monuments to the heroes of the Confederacy, Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. Richmond's blacks objected because the young tennis star wasn't welcome in that section of the city in the segregated days of his youth, when he was unable to play on public courts. After an ugly controversy, the statue was unveiled on Monument Drive.
* Two historians recently requested court permission to remove John Wilkes Booth's body from the Booth family plot in a Baltimore cemetery. They suggested that the body is not Booth's and that Lincoln's assassin might have actually escaped. (Quick. Call Oliver Stone!)
* A mock slave auction, reenacted in 1994 at Williamsburg, Virginia, set off a protest by African Americans, who thought the drama was degrading and too painful to repeat.
* In the Republican Congress elected in 1994, there was a concerted move to return certain powers to the states. About the same time, the Supreme Court issued several decisions questioning the extent of federal powers. The “states' rights” tune is on the Hit Parade once more.
And you thought the Civil War was over.
Back in 1970, I spent the summer in Wilmington, North Carolina, tutoring children under the auspices of a historic black church that had been a station on the Underground Railroad. A young New Yorker who had never been in the South, I got my first surprise from a highway billboard: THE KU KLUX KLAN WELCOMES YOU.
My next dose of culture shock came when we took a group of black children on their first trip to the ocean. Several young men who preferred the days when the beaches were closed to blacks screamed ugly racial epithets at the children. My third eye-opener came during a trip to a prominent “white” church to hear its magnificent pipe organ. As the black children settled into the pews, an older member of the church stormed down the aisle. His face purple with anger, this good Christian man furiously demanded, “What are these”—the N word was on the tip of his tongue, but he caught himself and spit out—“people doing here?”
I, too, had thought the Civil War was over.
The Civil War lives on. In American politics. In our social consciousness. In popular memory. America's favorite movie hero of 1994, Forrest Gump, was named after a slave-trading Confederate general who was responsible for the massacre of black soldiers and helped found the Ku Klux Klan. A four-hour movie about the Battle of Gettysburg made a best-seller out of The Killer Angels, the novel on which the film was based. Gettysburg remains the most visited historic site in America outside Washington, D.C. In 1995 plans were announced for a multimillion-dollar museum on the site of Georgia's notorious Andersonville Prison. Dedicated to the prisoners of all wars, the museum will focus on the thousands of Union prisoners who were held and died there. And tens of thousands of “reenactors” keep this history alive by donning Civil War uniforms and recreating the battles of the war.
A sense of romanticism was present from the war's outset. Mark Twain once said that there was a Civil War because Southerners read too much Sir Walter Scott, the nineteenth-century author of Ivanhoe (1820). Twain meant that all of Scott's notions of chivalry, courtly love, and honor clung fast in the planter's world and had a great deal to do with the ill-fated Confederate “Cause.”
Obviously, it was far more complex than that. But in thinking about the Civil War at the end of the twentieth century, it's important to remember the vast difference between our modern cultural attitudes and those of Americans in 1860. It was a far more romantic and patriotic age. The country was younger and emotionally closer to its founding. The ideals of the American Revolution were stronger, more palpable. Many men who fought in the Civil War were direct descendants of veterans of George Washington's army, and their grandfathers' swords hung over the fireplace. On both sides of the conflict, they saw themselves as guardians of the Revolutionary spirit, custodians of liberty. The very idea of the United States was still new, and an American identity had not yet been forged. Certainly, our modern cynicism did not yet exist. War was still glorious and heroic and offered boys one of the few opportunities to escape the routine of the farm. Before the Civil War, warfare was not as horrifying as we have come to view it today. The Civil War, the first “modern” war, had a lot to do with changing people's minds about the “glory” of war.
Even today, that sense of glory is part of the Civil War's tug. For me, it began in 1963, on a family camping trip to Gettysburg during the hundredth anniversary of the battle there. I still have my souvenir from that trip—a wooden pistol with the battle dates printed on the barrel: July 1, 2, 3, 1863. But more important is the recollection of Gettysburg that was permanently seared in my memory. To walk those green fields, climb the hills, squeeze into the narrow crevices in the rocks of Devil's Den, and feel the summer heat in the Peach Orchard is to touch history.
Many Americans share a fascination for the Civil War's supposed glory: a deep, passionate interest in a war that split the country, pitted families and former comrades against one another, and left lingering wounds for decades. No other period in our history has generated so many books—histories, biographies of the legendary and the infamous, guides to battle sites, genealogies, almanacs, battlefield atlases, diaries of generals, infantrymen, slaves, and plantation owners. One recent book even dealt with sex in the Civil War! The list goes on without signs of slowing. Add the magazines devoted to the war, videotaped tours of battlefields and reenactments of the battles themselves along with board games, puzzles, and computer software that allow people to “relive” the “War Between the States” and you have evidence of a popular obsession that defies the notion thatAmericans aren't interested in history. But this intense fascination has also obscured the horrors of the war—the lives lost, the economic devastation, and the long-lasting effects of the Civil War on American politics, society, and life.
There was nothing civil about the Civil War.
It was a long, bloody, murderous affair. The fighting left more than 620,000 American soldiers dead and hundreds of thousands more crippled and maimed. As many as 50,000 civilians in the Confederacy may have died. It wreaked utter havoc on a good portion of the South—a scourge of economic devastation from which it took decades to recover. It left even deeper wounds on the national psyche.
For more than 130 years, writers, historians, sociologists, novelists, and poets have attempted to explain the Civil War in military, economic, social, and political terms. But the roots of this terrible war are still misunderstood by too many Americans. And there are all those who still know nothing at all. For in spite of all that has been said and written, far too many Americans still don't have a basic grasp of the Civil War, the central act in the drama of this nation. Much attention has recently been paid to the shocking deficits in American schooling and particularly in our knowledge of our nation's history. We are, as New York Times columnist Bob Herbert recently put it, “a nation of nitwits” when it comes to understanding our past. That is why, even with so many books already lining the shelves, here is another Civil War book.
The chief reason so many of us don't know and don't care about history—and the Civil War in particular—is plain boredom. Let's face it. Most of our schoolbooks were dull, dreary collections of dates and facts. A young woman, interested in my earlier book Don't Know Much About® History, asked me, “It's not just a bunch of battles, is it?” She is not alone. Many readers have dozed off under the influence of the weighty textbook histories, with their armies sweeping across flanks and wheeling to outmaneuver an enemy. Too many Civil War books look at the war with the clinical detachment of a description of a chess match or the official scorer's account of a baseball game.
Instead, I have tried to give the Civil War a human face while defining the essence of what the war was about and how it affected America. In Don't Know Much About® History and Don't Know Much About® Geography, I tried to humanize these subjects, so often viewed as boring, by showing that the participants in history were real people with human qualities. While even I confess it is tough to make “nullification” sound like fun, textbooks that emphasize facts over understanding have drained the lifeblood from history. I have tried to present the historical icons—Lincoln, Lee, Grant, Sherman, Frederick Douglass—as people. Like all of history, the Civil War was about people. And for every story of heroism, there is one of cowardice. For every example of sacrifice and devotion to duty, there are stories of corruption, money-grubbing, ambition, and double-dealing. But these tales remind us that the Civil War happened to real people. It's not just a bunch of dates and battles and speeches.
This is where even the most ardent Civil War buff will find what I call the hidden history of the period. Students of the Civil War may know every strategic detail about Gettysburg and what went wrong for the Confederates. They may not know that Robert E. Lee was suffering from severe diarrhea. Did this ailment, which was actually the leading killer of the Civil War affect Lee's judgment at this crucial moment? Is it widely known that disease was responsible for twice as many deaths as battle wounds? Do people know that Ulysses Grant once expelled all the Jews from the territory he commanded? Or that a wartime riot in New York City by Irish workingmen left 150 people dead and was far more savage than the recent riots in Los Angeles? Have they heard of the atrocities committed on both sides of the war, especially in Kansas, where civilians were murdered without remorse?
This touches on another reason for this book: the Civil War has been the spawning ground for many myths—old ones that often die hard. But new ones come along all the time. This is particularly true during the current debate over the study of American history. The grievous oversights and misguided teachings of the past—especially as they relate to blacks, women, and Native Americans—need to be addressed. For instance, during my school days in the 1960s, I never read the works of Frederick Douglass and heard precious little about him; never heard of Fort Pillow, where surrendering black soldiers were murdered by Confederate troops; and never learned about the exploits of the black troops depicted in the film Glory. We never heard about what half the country—the female half—was doing while the men were off fighting. In fact, the women were running the farms, taking jobs, or following their men into battle and nursing them. We did hear about the millions of immigrants who came to America during the war and were conscripted for service in a war they didn't understand. Sadly, we didn't hear the other side of the story—about the estimated one in twenty immigrant women who were forced into prostitution.
Of course, problems arise when revisionists play as fast and loose with the facts as the old historians did. There is little good in history standards that include the legendary escaped slave Harriet Tubman and pioneer feminists at the expense of George Washington or Robert E. Lee. That simply trades one deficient mythology for another. So my interest isn't in a “politically correct” view of the Civil War but one that is historically accurate.
Like most conflicts in history, the Civil War was essentially a struggle for power, which comes in many forms. These happen all the time in every level of life. In 1994 and 1995 Americans watched a power struggle that produced a seemingly unthinkable baseball strike and the cancellation of the World Series, which had previously survived two world wars and an earthquake. (While on the subject of the Civil War, baseball, and myths, let's get rid of the Abner Doubleday story once and for all. A Civil War general—and ancestor of the current owner of the New York Mets—Abner Doubleday did not invent baseball.) In a power struggle like this, what seems like a good idea on both sides goes downhill fast, like a child on a sled. Knowing he's going too fast, the child panics but then realizes there are no brakes.
The Civil War was no baseball strike. But there are parallels in the way these conflicts played out. Positions were staked out, leaving no room for retreat. Any sign of compromise was taken as a sign of weakness. Intractable, the two sides ride the brakeless sled. Before the Civil War, the two sides had marked their territory in a quest for power and were unwilling to budge in spite of the consequences. Once the sled was going downhill, it was impossible to stop.
The runaway sled in American history was slavery, and it is necessary to examine it to understand the power struggle that made the Civil War. For hundreds of years in America, slavery represented power, power over another human being. But far beyond that slavery meant economic, cultural, and political power.
When I was in school in the sixties, I recall that it became fashionable to say that the Civil War was not about slavery. Instead, “The War of Northern Aggression” was brought on by other issues, such as “states' rights,” “nullification,” and “preservation of the the Union.” There are still people who cling to the idea that the Civil War was not fought over slavery. They criticize such modern historians as James M. McPherson or the documentary filmmakers Ric and Ken Burns as “neoabolitionists.” These critics often point to the fact that soldiers on both sides were fighting neither to free the slaves nor defend slavery. Clearly, many Union men, like General William T. Sherman, had no argument with slavery and were downright racist in their attitudes. But this argument confuses two issues. The many reasons why men fought in the Civil War do not explain why there was a Civil War. A lot of young men picked up weapons back then for the same reasons that young men have gone to war for centuries—adventure, glory, duty, manhood, or “three squares” and a paycheck. Yes, many of those young men serving in the Civil War were not fighting for or against slavery, just as many of the young Americans who enlisted after Pearl Harbor didn't go to save the Jews from the Holocaust, rescue democracy in Europe, or save Asia from Japanese control. As most men on both sides saw it, their homeland had been attacked. “God and country” called and they answered.
Even so, the Civil War was clearly a war fought because of African slavery. All the other justifications come down to political differences, reflecting the social and cultural gulf between the free and slave states that might have been bridged if not for the deeply divisive issue of slavery. One way to approach this issue is to turn the question around: Without the division slavery caused, would the Confederate states still have left the Union?
Finally, the question of slavery raises what I think is the most important reason for this book. The Civil War never really ended. More than 130 years after the guns were silenced, we're still fighting over race in America, a dangerous fault line that threatens to split the country. It is clear that this deep-seated racial chasm is the most pernicious legacy of America's slave past and the Civil War. Until we all understand that chasm and how it has been part of the American experience since colonial times, this country will never heal the wounds, get over them, and move on.
*
Author's Note: The word nigger is an offensive vulgarity. And in the current age of “political correctness,” it has become unfashionable to even mention such a word or teach a classic like Twain's Huckleberry Finn because of its use in that book. However, nigger is frequently used here in its historical context. I apologize to those who find its use painful or take offense.