The American Civil War -- what's widely misunderstood about it?

Reading quite a bit of Lincoln bicentennial-related stuff in the last week, I'm ashamed to say I may not have ever learned there were 4 slave states that didn't join the Confederacy. Four! DE MD MO KY.

also, the general public seems to think Lincoln entered office as an abolitionist, even that he always was one. He didn't ever favor granting (all) freed slaves full citizenship rights even at the end of the war.

i have heard ppl say that the most important campaigns (also the most insane savage behavior) occurred out west, never looked into this myself.

the good the bad and the ugly's story of civil war battles being fought all over arizona is based on fact btw

You will actually see talk from some crazy cartographer/sociologists that Delaware is part of the South.

because it's south of the mason-dixon line?

some of it is, anyway:

http://images.encarta.msn.com/xrefmedia/aencmed/targets/maps/map/T013968A.gif

Delaware was a slave state. I don't know if it tried to join the Confederacy or not.

favorite Dr Morbius civil war nicknames would be a good thread

i have heard ppl say that the most important campaigns (also the most insane savage behavior) occurred out west, never looked into this myself.

I don't think the far west campaigns were really that important. The amount of troops deployed on both sides there was pretty puny, when compared to the Virginian or Tennessee theatres.

abratwat lincorn

robnerd e. lee

because it's south of the mason-dixon line?

So is Cincinnati!

Stonebutt Jackass

I probably have some from my field-nurse notebook when I was cleaning bedpans w/ Walt Whitman.

OK shut up :)

Seige of Vicksburg was U&K to winning the war. You can read about it in Mark Twain's Life on the Mississippi, further toward the end, after all the grebt stuff about piloting steamboats before the war.

The politics of the war were waaaaay messier than the tidy legend that was built afterward.

abe linCONNED

general george b. mcfelon

we can't have nice threads.

also, the general public seems to think Lincoln entered office as an abolitionist, even that he always was one.

this is true, but the South did kind of think he was entering office as a crypto-abolitionist, which was one reason why they seceded (the other being that they were cockfarmers).

I also think that Lincoln was careful about what political positions he adopted, taking care not to get too far ahead of public opinion while at the same time being happy to lead it. I reckon he would have ended up supporting full citizenship rights for freed sides eventually, had he lived, though this is an imponderable.

also, the general public seems to think Lincoln entered office as an abolitionist, even that he always was one.

this is true, but the South did kind of think he was entering office as a crypto-abolitionist, which was one reason why they seceded (the other being that they were cockfarmers).

I also think that Lincoln was careful about what political positions he adopted, taking care not to get too far ahead of public opinion while at the same time being happy to lead it. I reckon he would have ended up supporting full citizenship rights for freed sides eventually, had he lived, though this is an imponderable.

sorry about double post! I was suffering from fail.

> what's widely misunderstood about it?

"Recreations" of battles are not fascinating and educational.

Stonebutt Jackass

loool

Hon. Horace Greeley:
Dear Sir.

I have just read yours of the 19th. addressed to myself through the New-York Tribune. If there be in it any statements, or assumptions of fact, which I may know to be erroneous, I do not, now and here, controvert them. If there be in it any inferences which I may believe to be falsely drawn, I do not now and here, argue against them. If there be perceptable in it an impatient and dictatorial tone, I waive it in deference to an old friend, whose heart I have always supposed to be right.

As to the policy I "seem to be pursuing" as you say, I have not meant to leave any one in doubt.

I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be "the Union as it was." If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.

I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free.

Yours,
A. Lincoln.

IIRC the splintering of the Democratic party led to the election of the theretofore long-shot Republican (who happened to be Lincoln), which led to SC's secession.

So it prolly wasn't Lincoln's specific views but the notion that any Republican would be elected that led to the outbreak.

And campaigns in the west were strategically pretty important despite fewer people and fewer romantic/heroic/dramatic moments. Grant's clearing the Mississippi split the Confederacy and strengthened the effectiveness of the blockade, etc. And anything happening in, e.g., Tennessee bled troops from the eastern battlefields, changing what could be done there. The situation in the east was on balance mostly stagnant; all those dramatic advances and retreats and victories and defeats happened over the space of about 75 miles.

But. That said, that ground (between Washington and Richmond) is the geography of my childhood; it makes reading about the Civil War feel strangely immediate. The towns are ones I've lived in, the rivers are ones I've canoed in, the mountains are ones I've camped on. So I have a complicated relationship with it.

What always surprises me is how long Lee & co. kept it up given the odds. Mainly that was being lucky in their enemies - Lincoln's struggle to get competent generalship in the east is one of the more exasperating parts of that story (from a Union perspective).

Only after reading Gore Vidal's (superb) Lincoln did I learn that the first three years of the war were a disaster for the Union, what with all those mediocre generals and the plodding manner of McLennan, the self-styled Little Napoleon.

McClellan, not the guy in the Go-Betweens.

haha --"Love Goes On!" was playiing!

the first general worth a shit was meade, whose legacy is mostly gettysburg, and whose actual merit is still debated. basically the only union general everyone gets behind 100% is grant, whereas the south had all kinds of brilliant leaders in the high command. it was pretty lucky that the union didn't get schooled early on despite their superior numbers.

...yes and part of the usual narrative is that what Grant brought to the table was a willingness to be totally and unrelentingly brutal. But that's not really fair to him, I don't think. I believe he would have liked to win more elegantly but it wasn't in the cards.

By that time everyone was exhausted and there was nothing to do but push. Grant's innovation was not retreating after a defeat, but wheeling a little to the left and trying again.

yeah basically the problem with the first union general was being super tentative and more defensive than offensive, and meade's big downfall in the minds of many was his failure to pursue the confederate army after gettysburg and wipe them out, which he probably could have done though after gettysburg i think both sides were thinking they might need a timeout.

by the way, Grant's autobiography is as terrific as you've heard. I don't like blow-by-blow accounts of battles, but his gift for suppressing pathos and colorful adjectives is put to good use.

high casualty rates were because of technological improvements in guns that generals did not necessarily expect, not all because of dumb ideas or bad leadership.

Grant's memoirs are very good and he comes across as clear thinking and a man who was at heart, honest. Bizarre how Grant the General and Grant the President are like two completely different individuals.

Goole's point is a good one; it was pretty late when people figured out how much advantage the Minié
ball gave to entrenched defensive positions. Compare Fredericksburg (where the Confederates sat for hours behind a stone wall easily shooting down wave after wave of Union dudes) to the earthworks at Petersburg. You can still walk around on them; they look like a dress rehearsal for WWI. McLellan had a tough time giving up the idea of cavalry charges.

also, the general public seems to think Lincoln entered office as an abolitionist, even that he always was one.

no one i have ever met thinks this, because it's the most commonly debunked 'fact' in u.s. history this side of "columbus thought the earth was flat."

all the worst understandings about the civil war are promoted by the south, really.

search: the book Confederates In The Attic, which addresses a wide range of historical misconceptions as well as giving some truly surreal glimpses into the ways the war still lives on today.

xp: challops?

One of the more illuminating moments in Confederates in the Attic was the dudes talking about how much the Civil War wasn't about slavery, it was about not wanting the Government coming in and telling you what to do.

And then it's some of these same dudes who decry development overtaking battlefields and they're like OMG what sacrilege, someone needs to stop this and preserve this sacred ground. You mean, someone like... the GOVERNMENT?

what's widely misunderstood about it?

that it's referred to as "the war of northern aggression" in the south, it's taught that way in the schools, and it has way more resonance in daily life than you'd think down there

(speaking as a northerner who lived there for 4 years)

yeah that always seemed so foreign

to me

speaking as a southerner who has lived in north carolina for my entire life, I have never heard somebody use the phrase "war of northern aggression" with anything even remotely approaching seriousness

might be regional

What school did you go to, ed3?

Yeh nowhere in Virginia is that anything but a joke.

I know Richmond-area peeps of my approximate age who had occasionally heard "War Between the States" from unreconstructed teachers or older relatives, but never "War of Northern Aggression."

Another joke-name is "The Late Unpleasantness," which frankly I've always kinda liked.

part of the confusion stems from the union fighting the war primarily to keep the union intact, but the confederacy fighting the war primarily to keep slavery intact.

Another joke-name is "The Late Unpleasantness," which frankly I've always kinda liked.

or The Recent Unpleasantness

part of the confusion stems from the union fighting the war primarily to keep the union intact, but the confederacy fighting the war primarily to keep slavery intact.

uh. . . .it was a lot more complicated than that

I call your Sherman Tank and see you a tank haunted by the ghost of JEB Stuart

http://comicsmedia.ign.com/comics/image/object/081/081730/g-i-combat-v2-1_final-cover-artboxart_160w.jpg

favorite Russian nickname for the lend lease Sherman tank - "coffin for five brothers"

Not everything is about Reagan, Soto.

God, you're so obsessed.

well it certainly worked, didn't it.

excellent article on the enduring, somewhat inexplicable hero-worship of r.e. lee: http://www.neh.gov/news/humanities/2011-07/RobertELee.html

via that washington post myths link upthread just wanted to say 'the civil war wasnt really abt slavery because most people didnt even own slaves' is the stupidest just not understanding how humans do misunderstanding

3. Most white Southerners didn’t own slaves, so they wouldn’t secede for slavery.

Indeed, most white Southern families had no slaves. Less than half of white Mississippi households owned one or more slaves, for example, and that proportion was smaller still in whiter states such as Virginia and Tennessee. It is also true that, in areas with few slaves, most white Southerners did not support secession. West Virginia seceded from Virginia to stay with the Union, and Confederate troops had to occupy parts of eastern Tennessee and northern Alabama to hold them in line.

However, two ideological factors caused most Southern whites, including those who were not slave-owners, to defend slavery. First, Americans are wondrous optimists, looking to the upper class and expecting to join it someday. In 1860, many subsistence farmers aspired to become large slave-owners. So poor white Southerners supported slavery then, just as many low-income people support the extension of George W. Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy now.

Second and more important, belief in white supremacy provided a rationale for slavery. As the French political theorist Montesquieu observed wryly in 1748: “It is impossible for us to suppose these creatures [enslaved Africans] to be men; because allowing them to be men, a suspicion would follow that we ourselves are not Christians.” Given this belief, most white Southerners — and many Northerners, too — could not envision life in black-majority states such as South Carolina and Mississippi unless blacks were in chains. Georgia Supreme Court Justice Henry Benning, trying to persuade the Virginia Legislature to leave the Union, predicted race war if slavery was not protected. “The consequence will be that our men will be all exterminated or expelled to wander as vagabonds over a hostile earth, and as for our women, their fate will be too horrible to contemplate even in fancy.” Thus, secession would maintain not only slavery but the prevailing ideology of white supremacy as well.

salon's michael lind on the relationship between then and now:

http://www.salon.com/2012/10/10/slave_states_vs_free_states_2012/

I made a similar comment years ago on one of the politics threads - that the country's respective economic interests are the same as they were then, they've just switched parties.

I'm reading Team of Rivals and can't believe I've got 80 more pages til Lincoln fires this idiot McClellan.

ken burns' the civil war drinking game: take a shot every time you hear some variant of "but mcclellan elected to remain in washington"

too bad the whole Kearns Goodwin book won't be an 8-hr miniseries... Salmon Chase running to topple Lincoln in 1864 from inside the Cabinet is prime comedy material.

lol. started reading Team of Rivals then took a break to re-watch Ken Burns. McClellan so useless. Also love the little digs at Custer that pop up every now and again.

also wish I could find that clip from the Simpsons of Moe reading Team of Rivals.

in 'battle cry of freedom,' james mcpherson includes a bunch of hilarious quotes from mcclellan's letters to his wife. there's one that goes something like 'i'm so popular, i could be a dictator! good thing i don't want to be a dictator!'

150th anniversary of gettysburg today!

gettysburg was a pretty fascinating battle beyond even its status as the 'high water mark of the confederacy.'

DE MD MO KY - The Mid-Atlantic and Lower Midwest Will Rise Again!

i read the killer angels a month or so ago, the little round top section is one of the most effective into the midst of things battlefield scenes i've read in fiction i think. and i have no idea how historically accurate it is, but the pathos of the union soldiers not wanting to use their bayonets during the charge, basically just running and yelling at these other guys who at close quarters quickly surrendered... all war is horrible, but rifles and the mechanization of war just make it horrible for more and otherwise decent people.

the opening scenes with the confederate spy were also good, just the image of 100,000+ man armies with wagon trains etc moving on either side of a piddling mountain range without each having any idea of the other's whereabouts is pretty crazy.

i like the 1993 film, for the most part. i mean the facial hair is notoriously bad but many of the performances are incredible and it's fairly intense for a PG film.

It wasn't a very civil war now was it

grim lol

I was Ken Burnsing it up on 4th of July watching Dust Bowl & Mr Veg reminded me if i'm gonna watch anything I should be watching Gettysburg stuff, so I put on the Gettysburg ep of KB's Civil War.

aaaaand now I'm hooked. I don't think I've watched it all the way through before (which is kinda weird but oh well).

can I get some new reading recommendations? i've got Grant's memoirs, Battle Cry of Freedom, The Glorious Cause on my list...I think we have Killer Angels somewhere, I need to give that a go... any other recommendations welcome!!

i know TNC likes Drew Faust Gilpin a lot, but i've never read her.

Is there a good book on Andersonville? I know there's the memoirs of the one guy who survived (name escapes me)

I think a lot of folks would enjoy - 'The Story of My Campaign: The Civil War Memoir of Captain Francis T. Moore, Second Illinois Cavalry' (full disclosure, the historian who put this together is my brother-in-law). It's an actual field journal of a Union Captain that serves as a memoir of a journey into Confederate territory as war rages all around. The style sticks with the language of the time, and that's entertaining and sometimes challenging. Just to read about terrain and communications challenges will satisfy any armchair historian or civil war buff.

good article on "what should we call it?"

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/17/the-name-of-war/?_r=2

the pennsylvania patriot-news retracts its original bad review of the gettysburg address:

http://www.pennlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2013/11/a_patriot-news_editorial_retraction_the_gettysburg_address.html

whew what a relief

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/15/us/150-years-later-wrestling-with-a-revised-view-of-shermans-march.html

happy to have quoted sherman in a toast for a wedding in atlanta

The American Civil War -- what's widely misunderstood about it?

That it was actually about ethics in games journalism.

john c calhoun was a scary motherfucker

https://31.media.tumblr.com/965276cffe9067f85cce4c986490f797/tumblr_inline_miwzrdXok01qz4rgp.jpg

http://www.nndb.com/people/902/000043773/calhoun55.jpg

that is one smooshed looking head

http://img1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20121108014856/christmasspecials/images/7/78/Sam_the_Eagle.jpg

irl lol

150th anniversary of lincoln's second inaugural today -- always worth a reread:

http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/inaug2.htm

walt whitman covered the inauguration for the NYT:

http://www.nytimes.com/1865/03/12/news/washington-last-hours-congress-washington-crowds-president-incident-capitol.html

Where can I read a account of this that does thorough justice to every flavour of villain involved in the Compromise of 1877

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compromise_of_1877

^^^ seconding this request

You might start with this book I read a few years ago. Prefatory though. Ignore the title.

Also: Gore Vidal's 1876.

the novel builds to that election

i'm always amazed how well-preserved many of the battlefields are. take the bodies, do some repairs, preserve everything.

https://www.battlefields.org/sites/default/files/styles/scale_crop_1280x450/public/thumbnails/image/Antietam%20Battle%20Page%20Hero_0.jpg?itok=NG6j4-zV
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/63/Antietam_National_Battlefield_Memorial_-_Dunker_Church_02.JPG

it's interesting what goole noted upthread about the advances in battlefield weapons vs the lack of preparedness generals had in dealing w/those advances when deploying their own troops. assuming there was that disconnect it does explain a lot about the bloodiness of certain battles but it doesn't explain how it wasn't forecast more accurately.

sherman saw it

The weapons the Union and Confederates faced were pretty much the same as those for the Crimean War of the prior decade. In both cases the wars bogged down into entrenched siege, with trenches snaking from the Potomac inland. Much the same could be said for the land portion of the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-5. That didn't stop generals from both sides marching battalions in column into machine gun and breech-loaded artillery fire in 1914, as if it was still 1814.

Most generals are slow on the uptake, in any era. Not just fighting the last war, but fighting the wars that produced their curriculum as cadets.

Sherman saw that in fully industrialized warfare, the goal should be destroying the economy of the adversary. But his men still fixed their bayonets and charged.

the battlefields are preserved cos everything else got destroyed, often on the way to the battlefields

at least in GA where there were a lot of scorched earth & pillaging tactics in use all around

But his men still fixed their bayonets and charged.

he didn't know another way to fight, but iirc he was closer than his classmates to understanding the sheer volume of death required by the way they did know? maybe just by dint of tending to misery anyway. immediately after fort sumter he was predicting a v long and terrible war. i guess such pessimism (or resignation) prob became less unusual after bull run 1?
but sherman's still enough of an outlier to get relieved for suicidal depression, and back home "convalescing" he's talking+writing outright apocalyptically, which was prob the sane frame of mind. of course by then the war was going on, for anyone to see.

Buy this:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07D6QQT77/ref=oh_aui_d_detailpage_o00_?ie=UTF8&psc=1

(not a part of this current discussion)

Recommended -- I read a couple of outstanding Civil War books by Stephen Sears: "Gettysburg", and "Landscape Turned Red" (which is about Antietam.) This is very much blow-by-blow, field level stuff, blood and violence and fools and cowards and incompetent leaders and natural-born genius strategists.

On the strategy side, Sears takes a fairly harsh view of McClellan, views Meade very strongly, gives Lee solid marks but not as strong as others might. He saves a lot of his sympathy for the soldiers who were thrown into what seems like the most hellish battles anyone had ever seen up to that point. The guy is a very very good writer imo.