Greetings Cosmic Americans!
Yesterday afternoon, I sat in the veterinarian's office for nearly two hours. No big deal...just check ups for a couple of my more rambunctious felines. The good news was twofold. One - the cats checked out fine. Two, I had plenty of time to read the April 18 edition of Time Magazine. I was particularly taken by David Von Drehle's article "150 Years After Fort Sumter: Why We're Still Fighting the Civil War."
The answer, Drehle suggests, is because Americans cannot agree on what the war was about...presumably a fact that would "make Lincoln weep."
Drehle issues stern judgment on the contentions spanning the Internet. And rightfully so - "mainstream" historians - as he puts it - have determined beyond any reasonable doubt that the cause of the war was slavery. In Lincoln's words, the nation during the secession winter of 1860-61 was divided by this single issue: "One section of our country believes slavery is right and ought to be extended, while the other believes it is wrong and ought not to be extended. This is the only substantial dispute." Since, there have been plenty who insist that slavery was not the cause of the war - and in fact, merely an incident.
But the author of this article, like many of the self-congratulatory historians of the late twentieth century, obscures the reality of the decades immediately following the Civil War. "For most of the first century after the war, Drehle argues, "historians, novelists and filmmakers worked like hypnotists to soothe the posttraumatic memories of survivors and their descendants. Forgetting was the price of reconciliation, and Americans — those whose families were never bought or sold, anyway — were happy to pay it." Yes, Drehle can join the ranks of those who can feel very good about feeling very bad about the racism of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries.
In Drehle's estimation, even Union veterans were eager to get on with things and smooth over war issues like slavery - in essence erase race from the equation in the name of national reconciliation. Clearly, Drehle has never read a Union veteran's personal memoir, nor has he looked at a Union regimental history, or perused the text of a Union monument dedication. If he had, he would have seen that the cause of the war - slavery, and the noble consequence of the war - emancipation, was a central theme for those who had fought to save the Union. For some - the twin themes of Union and emancipation ran side by side with seemingly equal significance.
In an era of moralizing self righteousness, Union veterans were crystal clear on what the war had been about - and worked tirelessly to ensure that they were remembered for their efforts. Reconciliation from a Union perspective - thus, is not about forgetting as Drehle figures, but about remembering the war on northern terms.
Drehle inexorably marches into his own trap - by seeking to rescue the cause of the war from obscurity (at least among the masses) he obscures the persistent fight to commemorate freedom. "The process of forgetting, and obscuring," he writes, "was long 
and layered. Some of it was benign, but not all...writers and historians kindled comforting stories of noble cavaliers, brilliant generals and happy slaves, all faithful to a glorious lost cause. In the prosperous North, where cities and factories began filling with freed slaves and their descendants, large audiences were happy to embrace this idea of a time when racial issues were both simple and distant."
This painfully simplistic analysis of Civil War memory rotating solely along a racial axis does Time's readers a disservice. Why are we still fighting the Civil War? Because the nation has never moved beyond the sectionalism of the 19th century. Sure - some have glossed a few things over here and there. But there remains a deep-seated sectional animosity that runs through most nationalistic currents evolved since 1865. "Union," while perhaps not as tenuous as it once was, is nevertheless profoundly undefined. That is what would make Lincoln weep.
Peace,
Keith
Peace,
Keith
[...] Simplification Becomes Distortion Over at Cosmic America Keith Harris has a very interesting and telling reaction to his reading of Time‘s effort to address the evolution of Civil War [...]
ReplyDeleteThere is a lot of food for thought in your post. I too read the Time article, and largely found it to be an interesting and thought-provoking piece. (As a matter of fact, it motivated me to write a post on Wilson and the Lost Cause: http://dclawyeronthecivilwar.blogspot.com/2011/04/president-wilson-looking-at-south.html ) As a caveat, I admit that I am not nearly as steeped in the field of Civil War memory as you and others. I see your point about not forgetting that Union veterans kept the memory of why they fought and died alive in the years after the war. However, I think what the Time article is getting at is that on the larger stage, among the general public a reconciliationist and Lost Cause version took hold and gripped the popular imagination. (In fact, I even learned a Lost Cause version in a Northern school as late as the early 80s! http://dclawyeronthecivilwar.blogspot.com/2010/09/civil-war-at-oakwood-ridgewood.html) Racial issues and emancipation were brushed under the rug. This image of the war, when combined with the fact that many whites were less than enlightened on racial issues, enabled the country to let bygones be bygones, particularly as the Civil War became a distant memory and the old soldiers died. By the time of the Centennial, you see the high point of the reconciliationist and Lost Cause view. It seems that when the country began to change in the mid-1960s, and the Civil Rights movement got underway, the tenuous nature of reconciliation, built on the Lost Cause mentality, began to fracture. As more and more became sensitized on racial issues, and new, even more racially open-minded generations took their place, the wounds that never completely healed were re-opened. Now, perhaps, we are willing to remember what the Union veterans themselves wanted us to remember. But for far too long, many generations may have been willing to forgive, forget, and enjoy a more sanitized and less than accurate version of the Civil War.
ReplyDeleteI htink you're way off. The "lost cause" narrative and sweet remembrances of the good ol' south in the good ol' days was very popular in all sorts of media at the time, and it did indeed affect northern remembrance of the war (and/or reflect a willingness or desire to move on). This willingness to forget/move on (collectively, nationally - even if not for many individual soldiers, as you indicate) was a major reason Reconstruction failed. Quite simply, very soon after the war (relatively speaking - say by the 1870s), the masses were just tired of hearing about the South, the war, the freed slaves, Reconstruction....and the "lost cause" narrative found the space it needed to dominate historiography and popular memory for a pretty long time until post-WW2 revisionism started to shift the focus back to the primacy of slavery and the inextricability of the Southern political economy from any of the other stated "causes" of the war. Yet, as reactionary forces grip the South once again with know-nothing states' rights dogma and even secession talk, an article like this seems necessary again. I don't agree with all of it, but I disagree with your post.
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