I was fortunate to visit Gettysburg National Military Park for the first time six weeks after the centennial of the battle. Two years earlier I had turned myself into a Civil War buff. I read Fletcher Pratt and Bruce Catton, and collected Civil War trading cards and the six issues of Life magazine devoted to the war. I was a kid, meaning war was excitement and adventure, the realm of fantasy, not slaughter. My brother and I were staunch Union partisans. My most vivid memory from that first visit is of using a long stick as a ramrod in a cannon in Schultz Woods. Yellow jackets had built a nest in the bore of the barrel and swarmed after us.
Recently I read a Confederate
account of the war by Brig. Gen. John B. Gordon, Reminiscences of the Civil
War (1904). Gordon was struck by three Minié balls at Antietam, but
had recovered sufficiently by July 1, 1863, to lead a detachment to occupy
Wrightsville on the Susquehanna River, the easternmost point in Pennsylvania held
– briefly – by Confederate troops. Gordon is a true believer in the Confederate
cause, a slave owner from Georgia. Here he begins his chapter on the Battle of
Gettysburg and what it signified for many in the South:
“From Gettysburg to
Appomattox; from the zenith of assurance to the nadir of despair; from the
compact ranks, boundless confidence, and exultant hopes of as proud and
puissant an army as was ever marshalled--to the shattered remnants, withered
hopes, and final surrender of that army--such is the track to be followed
describing the Confederacy's declining fortunes and ultimate death.”
To his credit, Gordon
knows how to tell a good story:
“Late in the afternoon of
this first day's battle, when the firing had greatly decreased along most of
the lines, General [Richard S.] Ewell and I were riding through the streets of
Gettysburg. In a previous battle [of Second Manassas] he had lost one of his
legs, but prided himself on the efficiency of the wooden one which he used in
its place. As we rode together, a body of Union soldiers, posted behind some
buildings and fences on the outskirts of the town, suddenly opened a brisk
fire. A number of Confederates were killed or wounded, and I heard the ominous
thud of a Minié ball as it struck General Ewell at my side. I quickly
asked: ‘Are you hurt, sir?’ ‘No, no,’ he replied; ‘I’m not hurt. But suppose
that ball had struck you: we would have had the trouble of carrying you off the
field, sir. You see how much better fixed for a fight I am than you are. It don’t
hurt a bit to be shot in a wooden leg.’”
I had never heard of this memoir but it is an entrancing read. Gordon wad undoubtedly an all-around despicable human being but a taut analysis like this shows he understood the foundations and paradox of America more clearly than many of our government officials today do—and I can only wonder what that means, altogether:
ReplyDelete"The causes of the war will be found at the foundation of our political fabric, in our complex organism, in the fundamental law, in the Constitution itself, in the conflicting constructions which it invited, and in the institution of slavery which it recognized and was intended to protect. If asked what was the real issue involved in our unparalleled conflict, the average American citizen will reply, "The negro"; and it is fair to say that had there been no slavery there would have been no war. But there would have been no slavery if the South's protests could have availed when it was first introduced; and now that it is gone, although its sudden and violent abolition entailed upon the South directly and incidentally a series of woes which no pen can describe, yet it is true that in no section would its reestablishment be more strongly and universally resisted. The South steadfastly maintains that responsibility for the presence of this political Pandora's box in this Western world cannot be laid at her door. When the Constitution was adopted and the Union formed, slavery existed in practically all the States; and it is claimed by the Southern people that its disappearance from the Northern and its development in the Southern States is due to climatic conditions and industrial exigencies rather than to the existence or absence of great moral ideas."
Nice to see you mention Pratt, who is mostly forgotten today (except among fantasy buffs - he wrote two great ones before the genre was popular or profitable). His short history of the war is a fine piece of work; his summary of the character and weaknesses of the South is one of the sharpest I've ever read.
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