Reactions to the Battle of Gettysburg

[caption id="attachment_2806" align="aligncenter" width="673" caption="From Harper's Weekly, July 25, 1863"][/caption]

Greetings Cosmic Americans!

We all know that Gettysburg was the turning point of the Civil War, right? At least...a lot of people who reminisced after the war would have us believe exactly that. But at the time, things were a little different. Certainly, northerners were very happy with the victory. But many were frustrated with Meade's failure to follow up and crush the Rebels. Whether this was possible or not seemed to escape northerners who were looking for a way to hasten the end of the war. Even Lincoln himself wrote a letter to Meade expressing his dissatisfaction (and never sent it).

In the South, people saw it as a setback for sure. Lee lost his momentum, and the enormous casualties suffered both in men and officers was troubling as well - few replacements were available. Further, if European nations had any remaining interest in somehow coming on board with the Confederate, it was more or less gone. But...Lee was not driven from the field - he left on the day after the battle and crossed the Potomac back in to Virginia virtually unmolested. So was it a crushing defeat?

Here is what the citizens of the United States and the Confederacy did not know in the summer of 1863: Gettysburg was the biggest battle of the war, it was the last time Lee invaded the North, and Lincoln would use the battlefield to redefine the conflict - thus adding to its importance.

Only after the war did Gettysburg serve as the war's decisive turning point. Lost Cause warriors (and some northerners too) saw to it that July 1863 (in Pennsylvania) marked the beginning of the end of the Confederate cause - the high water mark....slighting everything that happened over the next two years. This idea found its way in to popular culture and cemented itself in the national vernacular for quite some time. When you have a few hours to kill, have a look at Gone With the Wind, one of the highest grossing films of all time. In one of the many heated conversations between Rhett and Scarlett, Rhett notes that "a battle was going on that should decide things one way or another...in a little town in Pennsylvania called Gettysburg (cue dramatic music now)." Scarlett was really only worried if her beloved Ashley Wilkes was in the fight (he was - with Cobb's Legion) but despite her disregard, the rest of the film was a downhill slide to inevitable defeat...just like the Lost Cause authors in the 1870s and 80s and so on recorded.

But the Rebs had plenty of fight left in them in July 1863 - and Lee's reputation did not suffer. You will not have to look hard for soldiers' letters late in the war claiming that Lee had never been defeated.

Peace,

Keith

Classic Lost Cause Images

[caption id="attachment_1979" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Lee and His Generals by George Matthews"][/caption]

Greetings Cosmic Americans!

I have been reading a lot these days about some of the relics from the Lost Cause - you know...the myth former Confederates cooked up after the war to help explain defeat. Some of the tenets, as I am sure you know: Robert E. Lee and his peerless lieutenant, Stonewall Jackson were unmatched by any of their northern counterparts. They, with an noble army of southern patriots defending their homes and hearths eventually wore themselves out defeating an army vastly outnumbering them in terms of both men and materiel. Really - they never had a chance. Or so the story goes...

[caption id="attachment_1978" align="alignright" width="223" caption="The Last Meeting of Lee and Jackson by E.B.D. Julio"][/caption]

Here are a couple of prints that capture some of those ideas. Lee and his Generals showing Lee as slightly taller than his subordinates and The Last Meeting of Lee and Jackson illustrating Lee pointing the way to certain victory.

These are without a doubt two of the most iconic Lost Cause images. Want to talk about it? Pitch in your ideas about these and other images of the Lost Cause.

Peace,
Keith

The Myth of the Lost Cause, 1865-1900 by Rollin G. Osterweis

Greetings Cosmic Americans!

Historians have a tendency to explain Confederate commemoration as if it was generally accepted across the nation – as if former Confederates ultimately won the war with the pen. In 1973, historian Rollin G. Osterweis attempted to explain this phenomenon. Osterweis analyzed images, literary and otherwise, of moonlight and magnolias, the “obliging old Uncle Remus,” and, the “good, gray Confederate veteran.” He observes a persistent sense of “southerness” despite a humiliating Confederate defeat and several years of infuriating Reconstruction politics. White southerners, Osterweis suggests, used these images a part of their efforts to romanticize and pay tribute to the antebellum South. He further notes, former Confederates clung fervently to a new American nationalism and, ironically, the righteous, fiercely sectional account of the Confederate States of America “[was] continually belied by the conduct of Southerners themselves.” In this way, veterans involved in Civil War commemorations seemingly connected the New South – characterized by “progress,” industry, and steadfast devotion to reunion – to a benign past that, while virtuous, inevitably gave way to modern America. In short, proponents of the New South who had shouldered muskets for the Confederacy looked to a promising future. They carefully recalled a few scattered memories that helped southerners come to terms with their greatest failure, retain a sense of regional dignity, and embrace a reunited nation.

Osterweis concludes that extensive (and nationwide) admiration of southern generalship, southern courage, and southern chivalry reinforced the myth of the superiority of southern armies in “everything except numbers and material,” thus lending credence to the Lost Cause rhetoric of the day. Ultimately, through vastly popular publications such as the Battles and Leaders series, Osterweis claims, “Yankeedom took to its heart the Lost Cause.” Northerners might have admired certain benign aspects of southern culture and even respected their former enemy’s fighting spirit. However, the implication embedded in many treatments on the Lost Cause – that former Confederates “won the war with the pen” – obscures the anxieties articulated by former Rebels clearly perceiving animosity all around them; that they in fact still fought a war with words.

Although I believe that Osterweis misses this glaring problem in postwar commemoration, the book is well worth reading. It is an important piece of the reconciliation story - one that is currently under revision. Sometimes there are a few copies available on Amazon - click HERE to grab one before they are all gone!

Peace,

Keith

Did Former Confederates Think the Cause Was Lost After All?

Greetings Cosmic Americans!

Historians of Civil War memory write often of the phrase “Lost Cause,” so much so that it has become an agreed upon fact – that southerners commemorating the war understood – or the very least, spoke of the conflict as a war lost from the beginning…a noble pursuit against insurmountable odds that illuminated the honor of the southron people, fighting for what they “thought” was right. Fair enough: many former Rebels couched their commemorative rhetoric in exactly these terms. But was this a consensus among ex-Confederates? Perhaps not. Evidence suggests that within the broader context of the commemorative ethos, many former Rebels disputed this phrase – in fact denounced it. Below is an excerpt from my soon (hopefully) to be released book on the subject of Civil War commemoration and reconciliation. It offers a number of challenges to the Lost Cause argument from prominent former Rebels, not all of whom can simply be written off as unreconstructed anachronisms:

The idea that Confederates fought for principles “they knew to be right” rather that principles they “thought” right (or just) pervades the commemorative literature of the era and shows how the words of men such as [George L.] Christian reflect a broader sentiment among Confederate veterans. Statements concerning the rightness of Confederate principles mirror arguments made shortly after the close of war and follow a familiar pattern in to the twentieth century. As one Confederate veteran suggested in 1867, no one would ever “question the correctness of the principles we have laid down.”

John Herbert Claiborne, a former surgeon with the Army of Northern Virginia and author of several books and articles on the Civil War, took such a stance and professed before a gathering of veterans early in the 1890s. “Away the maudlin confession that we fought for what we thought was right! We fought for what we knew was right,” Claiborne argued, “We yielded, not convinced, but conquered.” Claiborne, a prominent postwar politician who held multiple honorary degrees and served on numerous medical boards, wrote often of the war. Of particular interest was his effort to bolster the Confederate fight in print: a comprehensive collection of reminiscences in which Claiborne lambasted the northern fighting man.

While former Confederates talked themselves hoarse telling and retelling the stories associated with the somewhat less vitriolic Lost Cause rhetoric, they also resurrected Confederate principles that they insisted had not perished in 1865. John S. Beard, for example, agreed in typical form with many ex-Confederates arguing, “that the Southern armies really exhausted themselves gaining victories over the Northern armies. I say all of this is matter of such notorious history that it cannot be denied.” The term “lost” however, rankled some who had followed their states out of the Union. Well into the twentieth century, former Confederates gathered in town squares, meeting halls, and other public places not only to “grasp the fraternal hand [and] revive our olden friendships,” but to “reassert the justice of the cause which was never lost, only delayed for a time, that future wisdom and patriotism may lay deeper and stronger a willing union of the states that shall be perpetual.”

In an undated Memorial Day address, published in 1906 with a collection of speeches and other writings paying tribute to Confederate women, Alabaman John Levi Underwood fleshed out the “cause not lost” theme succinctly. Underwood was an ordained Presbyterian minister who had enlisted as a private in the 20th Alabama in 1861 and eventually became the regiment’s chaplain. As a veteran, Underwood focused on highlighting Confederate resonance in the postwar United States. “People are prone to allude to all Lee fought for as a ‘Lost Cause,’” he stated, yet “Lee has accomplished what he fought for.” Underwood clearly stood behind the United States, rejoicing that echoes of the Confederacy remained. “Who would dare to-day to wipe out a State’s individuality?” he asked, “and do we not find to-day, instead of a centralized power in Congress adjudicating things pertaining to the States, the States themselves settling these matters?”

Bradley T. Johnson, an exceedingly vocal former Rebel, had made such claims at least since the 1870s. “I do not believe that we fought in any ‘lost cause,’” he told the members of the Association of Confederate Soldiers and Sailors of Maryland in June 1874 to great applause, “I denounce the phrase as unworthy of our people and their position. Our cause was that of every lover of liberty, in all time, the world over, the right of a people to govern themselves, and it never has been, never can be ‘lost.’” Later in the century, he assured his followers that all joined, or would soon join former Confederates in celebration of a cause above reproach. “There can never be two rights and two wrongs,” he argued late in the 1890s, “this is so of every question of morals and of conduct.” But for anyone confused regarding the righteousness and soundness of the Confederate cause, he quickly pointed out,  “The world is surely coming to the conclusion that the cause of the Confederacy was right.” All “true men and women…will never believe that ‘we thought we were right.’ They will know that we were right, immortally right and that the conqueror was wrong, eternally wrong.”

Elaborating further, Robert E. Lee. Jr., reminded the veterans gathered for a reunion in Richmond in 1907 of what they must certainly have accepted as fact. “Let us not be content with the lukewarm and, if you please, molly-coddling expression that the Confederate soldier fought for what he believed to be right. If precedent is a guide, if argument has any convincing force, if approving consciences any solace, if subsequent approbation by those who once disagreed with him any justification, if duty magnificently performed any indication, then we can assert without fear of any successful contradiction that the Confederate soldier fought and died for what he knew to be right.”

I expect that many will disagree – but the above testimony makes one wonder if those who “knew” their cause was right thought that their cause was indeed lost; that perhaps there was fight left in the South beyond the battlefield, whether political, economical, or social. I welcome any and all comments.

Peace,

Keith