From the Archives: Ohio Civil War Veterans on Aging and Union

Greetings Cosmic Americans!

I came across a couple of tidbits in the Cosmic America archives this morning I thought worthy of sharing. The source: testimony form the war papers published in 1891 by the Grand Army of the Republic, Department of Ohio, Fred C. Jones Post, No. 401, Cincinnati. The papers are housed at Columbia University.

The few short paragraphs here are excellent representations of two very important themes in veterans' commemorative activities. One, the rapid thinning of their ranks as the years inexorably passed, and two, their unflinching commitment to Union.

Union, as historian Gary Gallagher has recently pointed out in his book The Union War, has somewhat faded from our understanding of why northern soldiers flocked to the colors. Why, we might ask, would so many risk their lives for something so abstract? Clearly these soldiers did not dismiss Union as an abstraction, but rather stood by the idea as a tangible one - and one worthy of defending.

I will let them speak for themselves...on aging and Union:

The life of the Grand Army is necessarily a brief one. The survivors of the great war of the rebellion are past the meridian of life, and the shadows of the coming night are rapidly rising above them. There is hardly a man among us whose hair is unsilvered with age. There are no means of perpetuating our Order. We draw recruits from a single source, and that a circumscribed one whose limits are narrowing year by year. In a few years the last veteran of the great army will have passed away.

Our nation survived the shock of war largely because of its peculiar structure, which made every loyal man feel that he was part of the Government; that under our system of decentralized power a part of it is lodged in his person. He felt that he was challenged when the Federal Government was defied, and that he was robbed when the Federal forts and arsenals were taken. The quarrel thus became his personal concern, and the people of the North rose as one man to beat back the bold assault upon a system of government which every man of them was inspired to defend by the same feeling which would move him to defend his own hearthstone.

I discuss both of these subjects at length in my upcoming book on Civil War veterans. I will let you know as the publication date approaches.

Peace,

Keith

Gary W. Gallagher's The Union War

Greetings Cosmic Americans!

At long last my much promised look at Gary W. Gallagher's latest, The Union War. If you recall, a few months back I met with Gary and briefly discussed this volume. As you probably guessed, The Union War is a Companion piece to his 1997 publication, The Confederate War, in which Gallagher argues persuasively that the rebs did not pursue the war knowingly against impossible odds. They thought they could win, almost did on more than one occasion, and in the end...held on as long as they possibly could.

In The Union War, Gallagher argues against today's preoccupation with emancipation as the only noble and worthy Union cause. This, he offers, obscures the importance of Union for the wartime generation. The overriding motive for North was restoration of Union, not emancipation.

Now, I think it is safe to say that Americans today want the war to be about emancipation. But as Gallagher points out, even though Union soldiers knew that slavery was the war's cause, only a tiny fraction of the white northern populace hoped to use the war to eradicate the institution. The freeing of slaves, a reality as the Union armies maneuvered in Confederate territory, worked generally as a means to undermine the Rebel war effort. Thus, as a means to preserve the Union.

Detractors have, and will, argue - as has Eric Foner - that The Union War places undue emphasis on the Union Army's role in emancipation. One could indeed question exactly what kind of Union the war was being fought to preserve - and that slavery, the most troubling issue on the table in 1860, was foremost on the minds of the party in power. Unwilling to bend on the prevention of slavery's expansion into the western territories and even with gradual emancipation up for discussion, the waging of war against the seceding states had to mean that a new vision of Union - free from slavery - must have been a principle motivating factor - indeed the only "noble" one, considering that a Union with slavery intact seemed morally reprehensible to the beacon of democracy. After all, Lincoln could have easily preserved the Union by giving in to southern demands in 1861, which he did not.

Now Gallagher admits that emancipation became, as the war progressed, a viable solution to the problem of preservation...one which would have been unnecessary had the war reached its conclusion with Union victory in 1862. But with all of this in mind he reminds us that "Union" has lost its meaning to modern observers. In the 1860s, loyal United States citizens embraced Union above all as paramount - the defining word of American exceptionalism. And so The Union War - using letters, newspapers, and diaries - reviews the centrality of Union in the mid-nineteenth century - a centrality that motivated millions of loyal citizens to rally around the banner...and save the best hope for democracy in the world.

Of course, after the war - as Gallagher mentions - the nobility of emancipation became increasingly popular, at times mirroring the celebration of Union. But this, as I have pointed out ad nauseum (and it seems that Gallagher agrees) was part of a moralizing self-righteousness that swept the nation in the postwar years. During the war, emancipation punished the enemy - in peace, it punished the vanquished.

Peace,

Keith

Guess What Just Came In the Mail...

Greetings Cosmic Americans!

Well - it has finally arrived: my very own review copy of Gary W. Gallagher's new book, The Union War. Yes indeed - it came in the mail yesterday...and to my surprise - I made it in to the acknowledgments! How freakin' great is that? (Answer: pretty great)

So am all ready to have at this one. If you remember, a while back I did a video interview with Gary concerning this very work. You can check it out HERE.

I promised a review and Harvard University Press took notice and graciously supplied the book - so stay tuned. Give me a few days to do a close read and I will fill you in. I have a sneaking suspicion that The Union War will set the record straight on how the loyal people of the United States understood the Civil War.

Until then....

Peace,

Keith