Killer Angels and neo-Confederate Multiculturalism

Looking over the first page of the Introduction to The Killer Angels, I am -- no surprise here -- displeased with Shaara's characterization of the two armies.

Of the Army of Northern Virginia, Shaara writes:

They are rebels and volunteers. They are mostly unpaid and usually
self-equipped. ... It is Anglo-Saxon and Protestant. Though there are many
men who cannot read or write, they all speak English. They share common
customs and a common faith...

Of the Army of the Potomac:

It is a strange new kind of army, a polyglot mass of vastly dissimilar men,
fighting for union. There are strange accents and strange religions and
many who do not speak English at all. Nothing like this army has been seen
upon the planet. ... They are volunteers: last of the great volunteer armies,
for the draft is beginning that summer in the North.

Aside from beating these two descriptions up with big sticks of scholarship that, admittedly, have come largely since Shaara wrote, I have another important question. Would the modern neo-Confederate movement agree with this characterization of the Confederate Army anymore?

I pose this stemming from Jonathan Sarris' lovely characterization of the neo-Confederate movement's recent obsession with finding -- creating -- "Black Confederates" as an effort to find a "multicultural" Condfederacy and thereby counteract their well-deserved stigma of racism. Has the Anglo-Saxon Protestant A.N.V. been replaced by the equally mythological enlightened paradise of a rainbow coalition army fighting for libertarian values?

My my, What would the old boys think?

Interpreting Wiley's Material Culture.

During the Bell Wiley Panel last Saturday afternoon at the Southern, Pete Carmichael posed the interesting question of interpreting the evidence that Wiley had used descriptively. That is, how can historians use the material culture of the soldier - what he ate, what he wore, etc. - to better understand (and in the case of both the park service and the academy, to better teach) the dynamics of wartime life. Earl Hess raised the valuable point of the "battlefield detective" type work that has been done on some Civil War battlefields, but that is, of course, straying from Wiley's methods and sources, therefore being rather out of the spirit. Carmichael was on to something using sources like Wiley's letters and diaries.

I think that material culture has two important interpretative uses. 1) Strategic. As anyone who has been on one of Jim Ogden's staff rides at Chick-Chatt can attest, the materiel of the Confederate soldier is a window into the political economy of the Confederacy, Chattanooga being the gateway into the industrial heartland of the Confederacy. A Johnny writing home about the abundance of goods - and, yes, that happens despite mythology - reveals the extent of the (to quote The Ogden) "Confederate military-industrial complex."

2) Social. What do clothes say about the man? What prewar associations did soldiers make between cloth and status? Is the fact that the Confederacy resorts to the cotton-wool blended jean cloth vice the all-wool uniforms of regulation (and their U.S. counterparts) significant? I think it is, particularly with this army emerging from a southern slave society. How do Confederate soldiers, particularly those from elite backgrounds, react when they are issued uniforms of jean cloth? Is it degrading to wear the material often associated with "jeans wearers," a term antedating "redneck" and "hillbilly"? Is it more degrading when, after hauling off large quantities of jeans from the 1862 Kentucky Campaign, slaveowning Confederates are issued suits of the same goods marketed as "negro cloth" before the war?

This is, also, something I've been playing around with recently. I mentioned a while back poking around on a project on the relationship of the 5th Ky. Inf. to the rest of the Orphan Brigade. That issue of interpreting material culture, using it for more than its purely descriptive, "wonder what it was like..." value. In a paper I'm prepping for the Appalachain Studies Association's meeting in the Spring in Dahlonega, I bring out Kentucky Confederates' association of cloth and class. One brief illustrative point from my paper, my take on an account of the 5th Ky. joining the rest of the Brigade, which by that time was uniformly uniformed in what is now known as the "Columbus Depot" jacket.

"'Say, there backwoods, bawled one [Orphan], 'any more butternut jeans where you
came from?' And such attacks came quick and fast." Such attacks, of
course, associated both class - jeans coats - and space - the backwoods - with
the men of the Fifth Kentucky and as a consequence with the mountains as a whole
without regard to material evidence of the Fifth's actual range of sartorial
class presentations.

Lee, if I remember correctly, has found some similar evidence of disdain for rough jeans from his South Carolinians. Any more we're aware of?

Southern Recap and Some Postwar Musings

Freshly back from the Southern Historical Association's meeting in Louisville this weekend, I find myself thoroughly refreshed. The last few months have seen me studying for my PhD qualifying examinations in January and estranged from the archives to any meaningful extent. But, the scholarly environment of the Southern has rejuvenated me, and I figure that while I've got this burst of creative energy I could blog a bit, right?

Among the panels I attended was a session on the rise of a professional/middle class in the antebellum South. The standout presentation, in my opinion, coming from Jennifer Green, whose new -- excellent -- book traces the emergence, preservation, and reproduction of the southern middle class through the means of military education. It was my favorite new book this year. She ably used the case of brief Western-Theater-attendee Micah Jenkins to demonstrate the difficulty of distinguishing between middle class men and planters. Jenkins came from a wealthy planting family, but unlike his brothers attended the Citadel, a military school where Green shows he far outranked his classmates in land and slave ownership. After his graduation he both talked of buying land for a new cotton operation and opening a military academy of his own, having a foot in both the world of the planter and the middle class teacher.

Green challenges us to think of military schools not as bastions of Southern landed wealth and privilege as often seen in the late nineteenth- and twentieth centuries, but instead as academies of discipline, order, hard work, and a middling position of both subordination to higher authority and some independent command -- all demanded of both junior officers in the field and of the professional men of the South.

Given this training, I wonder what we might see if we take (if I remember correctly) Ken Noe's suggestion during the Bell Wiley retrospective panel on Saturday afternoon to understand more about the immediate postwar lives of the well-studied Johnny Reb. My own work on Kentucky's Ben Buckner -- though not a Johnny certainly a member of Green's Southern professional class and Kentucky Military Institute alum -- has revealed some interesting things about Blue-Gray reconciliation and cooperation to pick up the pieces of the old order. The formation of the Kuklux in a law office in Pulaski for similar ends might suggest the same. In the wake of the collapse of the plantation system was the county-seat-dwelling professional class all that was left to restore the what was salvageable of the status quo ante bellum? Can the rise of the New South in the latter part of the century be attributed to the leadership of this group, already rising in prominence by the 1850s and still standing in 1865?

Certainly, the post-Appomattox South is a cloudy picture and all these claims can be asterisked, complicated, and expounded upon. But that's no reason not to try to pitch in and find some answers. Please, Civil War public, let's not stop caring about the lives of these soldiers when they take off their uniforms.

The Simple Fifth Kentucky and Appalachian Otherness

In 1914, veteran of the 4th Ky. Infantry (CS) Lewis C. Garrigus wrote a series of articles in his (then) local paper, the Portland Morning Oregander. In one of these, Garrigus recalled nicknames that each regiment was given within the brigade.

Lieutenant-Colonel Phil Lee, of the Second Kentucky, was quite a wit and something of a wag as well, and after the Fifth came to use, he characterized the five regiments as follows: The "honest ninth," the "theiving fourth," the "supple sixth," the "invincible second" and the "simple fifth." The fifth had been recruited in the mountain counties of Kentucky, and we called them "seng diggers" when they first came to us, but we soon learned to respect them for their prowess, their indomitable courage notwithstanding their want of culture.

And in so doing, Garrigus joined what was, by then, a cultural phenomenon that considered the American mountain South another America, a retarded frontier, the contemporary ancestors of the country permanently locked in their Elizabethan past. This is not surprising for 1914 as many scholars who study the evolution of the idea of Appalachia will point out. But what is most interesting is that Garrigus' claims are backed up by wartime accounts that disparage the soldiers of the Fifth as jeans wearing, uncultured, ginseng digging, persons outside the mainstream Kentucky. The development of an Appalachian other has been linked to mountain unionism during the war, but I can't help but wonder if there are also roots of an Appalachia-as-other in intra-Confederate criticism of the mountaineer as well. I have decided to start poking around this idea this semester in a seminar with Dwight Billings to see if it has legs.

My exploratory steps thus far has been to see if the 5th was really a "mountain" regiment. Using E.Porter Thompson's 1868 annotated rosters, here's where the Orphans hailed from. Update: New maps! Red counties sent a company-sized contingent, Orange counties sent a significant (~15+) group, and Yellow counties sent a small number of soldiers into the unit:

The "Simple Fifth." While there are the large groupings from Morgan and Breathitt (2 companies in that case), there are certainly large contributions from non-stigmatized Northern Ky. Certainly, though, the 5th is the most tightly grouped of any of the units.

For comparison:

The "Invincible Second"

The "Thieving Fourth"

The "Supple Sixth" (not as South-Central as I had previously assumed)

The "Honest Ninth"

A New Important Reference

A few days ago I received a copy of Bruce Allardice's CONFEDERATE COLONELS: A BIOGRAPHICAL REGISTER. This is going to be right up there with GENERALS IN BLUE and GENERALS IN GRAY. It gives short bios on every full colonel that served in the Confederate armies, excepting, of course, those that were promoted to General. Anyway, here is a small sample:

Field, Hume R. Born Sept. 11, 1834, Pulaski, Giles Co.,TN. Attd. KMI. Druggist in Giles Co. prewar. Md. Henrietta Cockrill, Capt. Co. K, 1st TN, May 2, 1861. Major, date not specified. Col., May 1, 1862. Regiment consolidated with 27th TN, Jan. 1863, with Field heading the combined 1st/27th. WIA Kennesaw Mountain. Led Gist's Brigade at Bentonville. Paroled May 1, 1865, Greensboro. Farmer in Union City, TN, postwar. Died June 17, 1921, Union City, of a cerebral hemorrhage. Buried East View Cemetery, Union City. Sam Watkins claimed Field, a crack shot, killed 21 Yankees by himself during the war and called Field "the bravest man, I think, I ever knew."

Rudler, Anthony Francis. Born Antoine-Francois Rudler June 14, 1820, Bitteschwiller, Alsace, France. Came to the US in 1845. Bookkeeper in Augusta, GA. Officer in Mexican War. Filibuster with William Walker. Rudler was Walker's second in command, and his imprisonment in Honduras became a local cause celebre. Unmd. Capt. Co. G, 3rd GA Inf. Bn., Sept. 29, 1861. Major, Oct. 31, 1861. Detached in 1862 to be IG on Kirby Smith's staff. Col., 37th GA (formed from the 3d Bn.), May 6, 1863. WIA Chickamauga and Chattanooga, the latter would disable him from further field duty. Arrested Oct. 1864 and sent home to await trial. Ordered to take charge of convalescents in Augusta, Jan. 31, 1865. Commanded posts of Washington, GA, and Columbia, SC, Feb-April 1865. Active in promoting postwar emigration to Venezuela. Died Aug. 7, 1871, Augusta. Buried Magnolia Cemetery. Rudler was never a popular officer (he was appointed, not elected, major, displacing an officer the troops had elected) but was respected for his "undeniable bravery."

There are similar entires for EVERY Colonel, so this is a very important resource. I highly recommend it.

Historical Fiction and the Civil War

Two recent events here at UK (trying now to put effigies aside) have got me thinking about the role of historical fiction and the Civil War. A couple of weeks ago, University of Georgia emeritus Dr. Charles Hudson gave a talk on the role of historical fiction in illuminating the often obscure world of Indians in the pre-white-contact South. An anthropologist by training, Hudson uses fictionalized dialogues between Spanish priests and Scottish backwoodsmen and the Indians whom each encountered (the Coosa in the first instance and the Cherokee in the latter). Hudson argued that historical fiction can fill in gaps in the historical, anthropological, and archaeological record, allowing a skilled author to illuminate a "history of a far older South" than the one normally associated with the Civil War era.

I relate this to understanding the Civil War because, well, I relate everyhting to the study of the war. But the real catalyst was that my US History to 1865 classes are reading The Killer Angels, perhaps the most popular piece of Civil War fiction and certainly so in the latter twentieth century. Not having read Shaara for a few years, I was struck at his characterization of North and South when I went back over it recently. Of the Army of Northern Virginia he writes, "It is Anglo-Saxon and Protestant. Though there are many men who cannot read or write, they all speak English. They share common customs and a common faith..." The Army of the Potomac, on the other hand, "is a strange new kind of army, a polyglot mass of vastly dissimilar men, fighting for union. There are strange accents and strange religions and many who do not speak English at all. Nothing like this army has been seen upon the planet."

But is that correct? Is that a fair assesment of the armies? Would Joseph Glatthaar agree with Sharra's assertions? I don't think history supports these generalizations. The bigger question is: what happens when historical fiction no longer patches a skeletal documentary record, but contradicts scholarly understanding of the past? Hudson spoke to this during the Q&A. As the fiction is built upon the bedrock of scholarship, he said, when the understanding of the past changes, the "truth" of the fiction must therefore change.

But at the same time, as a work of art, of literature, historical fiction endures as a representation of the era that produced it. Hudson read a selection from one of his books, relating the story of the burial of the two stone idols at Etowah. He explicitly, he said, moved away from the documentable theories on their destruction and spun a mythological tale through the narration of The Raven, a Coosa priest. The Coosa, Hudson said, would not have remembered an academic analysis of the socio-political upheaval that caused them to abandon their gods, but would have instead remembered the emotion of it, the story of it, through their oral tradition. His brand of social anthropology which seeks to understand people as they understand themselves -- not as they are understood by others -- produces more of an impressionistic watercolor than a high-def photograph.

So too, I think, with Civil War memory. Postbellum generations of Americans (Northern and Southern) remembered the emotion, the feeling, the watercolor rather than the hard details which are being born out through historical research. So, then, is the study of Civil War memory history or anthropology? Art history? What does an 1880s memoir or a 1920s work of history tell us more about: the Civil War it discusses or the ways in which later peoples understand thier world and their past? Does the fact that The Killer Angels mischaracterizes the warring armies diminish its value? Or does the fact that it struck a chord in American society reflect its "truth" as percieved by many Americans? Which is more real today: historical reality or modern perception of reality? Which will prompt people to act? Do historians have a duty only to observe this cultural phenomenon or to realign the perception?

My classes will have the option to write on this theme in a short paper, and I'll be interested to see their responses. In the meanwhile, I'd love to hear any of your own.

"A True Story of the Ku Klux, White Caps and Happenings in the South"

I thought I'd share with you all some excerpts from a typescript from the collection of the Chattanooga History Center. Written by E. G. Carroll, a Rossville, Georgia attorney between 1920 and 1930, this record of extra-legal violence provides a fascinating insight into the postwar environment of Northwest Georgia and Southeast Tennessee and the ongoing act of memory making that made Klansmen and White Caps into heroes who upheld morality, racial order, and law.

Today's excerpts:

"This is a true story of the activites of the Ku Klux Klan and the White Caps in North Georgia, and teh incident that led to the destruction of the White Caps. I have gotten my information in regard to the Ku Klux Klan from men who belonged to the organization and women who lived through those terrible Carpetbag days. Most of the information that I have gathered in regard to the White Caps was given to me by the late Steve Shackleford of Gordon County Georgia, who lived in a community where most of the men belonged to the organization.

I find that most people think that the Ku Klux Klan and the White Caps were the same organization but they were not. The Ku Klux Klan was a secret organization that operated in the South during the Carpetbag days immediately after the Civil War. The White Caps were the outgrowth from the original Ku Klux Klan and operated in North Georgia until sometime in the nineties. They wore the same disguise and probably started out under the same laws and regulations as the Ku Klux Klan, but they were not the same organization."

..... "Of course we have no written records of what happened in those days, this is the Klan kept no records of what they did. I have gathered what little information I have of Klansmen and conditions in those days, from talking with men and women who were there. Those old Klansmn were very stingy with their information. My father T. B. Carroll of Marion County, Tennessee, was a Confederate soldier and a Klansman, but he would tell me very little about the organization. He did tell me about some of the things Uncle Bill Smith did over in Marion County. I don't suppose there is anyon in Marion County Tennessee, who remembers one arm Bill Smith. Uncle Bill and his company used to come over and do the hanging for the Chattanooga Boys. They hung some carpetbaggers down on the river one night to the beams of an old building. There was no chance to charge that hanging to the Chattanooga Boys, for they made it convenient to be seen on the streets at the time of the hanging. It seem[ed] to be a rule of the Klan to never make a raid in their own community."

Copyright, Chattanooga History Center, 2008

Eww, Military History?

There was a recent discussion on one of the Civil War reenacting boards I read that asked about reenacting's and reenactor's reputations in academia. Now, there were the standard responses that living history should be taken more seriously because the physical experience of soldiering is something that cannot be experienced in a library (which, having done a bit of reenacting, I might be inclined to agree with), and that the sensory experience connects with the visitor in ways that books cannot (which, as a NPS interpreter I have to admit is the case). And for these reasons, living history (which I feel is distinct from the typical "sham battle" reenacting) is a quality tool that can be used by both academic and public historians to enhance public education.

But, straddling as I am with legs on both sides of the fence, I draw the line between the interpretative technique of "living history" and battle "reenacting" for one reason: battle reenactments haven't moved forward with military history. By and large those that participate in battle reenactments have not moved "beyond the battlefield" to understand how the military experience meshed with society, culture, and politics. Reenacting, to my mind, takes a beating from academic historians for the same reason that academic military historians are sometimes viewed with mistrust by some of their colleagues: there aren't great lessons to be learned in the minutia of military actions. Since the coming of social history, women's and African American studies, and a host of beneficial historical fields since the 1960s, academia has justly seen pure military history as an exercise in historical self-gratification, one that serves only the historian. But this is not new; it was being identified even by some veterans of the Civil War themselves. One of my tours this summer at Chickamauga dealt with noted advocate of racial equality and Lt. in the 105th Ohio Infantry, Albion Tourgee. In the unit history of the 105th, he commented on just this same thing...

The causes from which events result are often of greater consequence than the events themselves. Nations and peoples, like individuals, act always from motives; and collective motives, like personal ones, may be either good or bad. ... It is because of this that the comparative importance of historical events depends very little on their physical extent, but almost wholly upon the motives of the actors or the sentiment they represent.

The who-shot-who doesn't matter when there are the deeper issues that brought the belligerents onto the field in the first place to be explored. Today's academic military historian must make the case -- to both the university publishing houses and to their various departments -- that they reach beyond the battlefield and connect military events to broader trends in society, culture, politics, economics, etc. (it is for this reason that I identify myself as a social historian of the military). In Tourgee's terms, they have to examine those motives for which men went to war. Of course, Tourgee had thought that this would have come about much sooner. He didn't foresee how much the Lost Cause movement's focus on the battlefield would delay the onset of this broader military history that has only come in the last 25 years. He believed it would come much sooner. Nevertheless, he was correct in his observations and predictions on the eventual direction of military history...

History, in the past, has concerned itself with aggregations and events. It has told us how

"The King of France, with twice ten thousand men,
Marched up the hill, -- and then marched down again."

The history of the future will be more concerned to know why the "twice ten thousand" followed the crowned braggart "up the hill," than in the reasons that inclined them to march "down again," -- it will deal with the causes rather than with events.

Reenacting has not followed the academy into the "history of the future" or the "new military history." Reenactors are understood at large as gearheads, drillheads, and consumers of tactical trivia. Is that a fair judgment on everyone in the community? No. Does it apply to the vast majority? I think so. When reenactors start dealing intelligently "with the causes" (i.e. consuming the latest trends in academic scholarship, not cowboying your own explanations for why men fought the war) "rather than with events;" when they start asking "who" and "why" instead of "what" and "how" then they will start to get a place at the academic table. Until then, they are a relic of an earlier academy.

The photo is of yours truly (right) and fellow author Chris Young (left) doing living history at Chick-Chatt earlier this summer. He as a regimental adjutant and I a line officer. Ain't we dandy!

Back to Bragg

One of the first things that I recommend to learn about Braxton Bragg is the transcript of a talk that the late Dr. McWhiney made to the Civil War Round Table in Chicago, http://users.aol.com/CintiCWRT/bragg.html. The article is short, but covers some of the basic misunderstandings about General Bragg.

Soviets and Confederates: Across the Bloody Chasm?

I'll preface this post by noting that despite it and my previous one (somehow) linking Bedford Forrest to Orthodox Iconography, I AM STILL AN AMERICANIST, and have not yet been converted to studying Russian history. Speaking of iconography, a happy St. George's day to you all!

So, the UK History Department had its yearly awards ceremony this afternoon, and, lured by the promises of a free reception afterwards I decided to drop in. No, it was really because one of my old professors from Transylvania, Ken Slepyan, was giving the afternoon's keynote (because historians can't do anything without a keynote...it's in the rules somewhere). He spoke from his 2006 book about the myths and realities of WWII Soviet partisans, and as the talk went on, I couldn't help thinking about connections between the partisan experience and that of the Confederate soldier. When he was working on his dissertation at Michigan in the early nineties, Slepyan was the first historian - Russian or Western - to access the Soviet military archives' partisan records. He found that the copious unit and personnel files in Moscow did not quite mesh with the popular memory of the partisan fighters...sound familiar?

It seems, that, like the Confederate fighting man, there was a marked split in partisan demographics between 1939-42 and 1942-45. Originally, the partisans consisted of the local elite, the intelligencia, those most connected to the Party, indeed many Party members. The local peasants, whose primary concern was survival and who felt little ideological connection to the Party, stayed out for the most part. In this same way, recent scholarship (including some of our own at Chickamauga) has found that the first Confederate enlistees were likewise young, ideologically committed to secession and the extension of slavery, and were financially connected to the institution. The poor farmer from the backwoods avoided enlistment until conscripted and, according to scholars like Mark Weitz, would often be the first to desert. The difference between the two? In '42 the war started going well for the Soviets and the peasants rallied to the cause (actually fulfilling some of the "people mobilized for war" propaganda that had been put out by the USSR earlier in the war) behind some crafty propagandizing and the loosely-defined concept of "Motherland." In '63, however, the war started getting worse for the Confederacy and the "cracker" gave up the Cause when he saw that the government's assurances that he could protect home through army service failed to pan out along with his wife's corn crop back home that hot, dry summer.

The connections don't end with the wars, though. In fact, they get better after them. When Slepyan and other historians finally explored the archives, saw the reality behind the situation, and published their findings, they challenged a popular memory of the partisans as the people's saviors, Robin Hood types with a cavalier dash (John Hunt Morgan, much?). This revision also challenged the party-line historiography that, from what Prof. Slepyan says, seems to be some sort of hybrid between D.S. Freeman Lost Causeism and 1950s triumphalist Consensus. In the popular mind, though, there is great confusion and some feeling of betrayal by the new histories. Just as the Civil War was for the South, WWII was a foundational event in Soviet (and by extension Russian, Belarussian...) national identity. The losses in both societies were so heavy, so intense, (and let's remember that the USSR's losses were heavier than in any American war) that the people needed a heroic history lesson to justify the horrific sacrifice.

Until the fall of the Soviet Union, the people had the institution of the state to justify the war. The people's sacrifice validated the Soviet system and the state itself was a monument to those slain. But after the collapse, the people lost that institutional monument, and only had the constructed memory of the partisan heroes of the Great Patriotic War to keep the dead, living. The Confederacy, of course, did not outlast its war experience, but it did construct the Cult, Mythology, or Religion of the Lost Cause with the same goal of validating the collective suffering by sanctification and whitewashing historical reality. Now, as the Soviet WWII mythology is being challenged by scholarship, many there are as angered as Confederate memorializing white Southerners have been for the half century since their own traditions were revised. Both groups fear that absent their traditional understanding of the heroic fighter the shared societal sacrifice will be cheapened and potentially forgotten. They fear that the academy will, in effect, re-kill their ancestors along with the myth.

It was a fascinating presentation that I have only touched the surface of here, and even that poorly. I intend to reflect on this some more, and hope for some engaging comments to keep the conversation going. And, finally, a word to Dr. Slepyan: if you should want to see how another people react(ed) to having their historical myths busted, drop by a SCV meeting some time.

Diehard Rebels

I have finally finished reading Dr. Jason Phillips's Diehard Rebels: The Confederate Culture of Invincibility, and would like to note a few observations about it concerning the Army of Tennessee. First of all Phillips addresses several things in his book that lead to a "Culture of Invincibility" that pervaded in the Confederacy's armies, they were Religion, Perceptions of the Enemy, and Rumors of Grandeur. The thing that struck me the most came from his last chapter that dealt with how these men reacted to the end, the surrenders. Phillips would write about the Army of Tennessee, "These men who had been losing battles since 1862 were still fighting while the remains of their government and its most revered army swept by like debris in a flood." Yet, the AoT would remain together for a few more days, the men still willing to fight. So it could be said that the men in the Army of Tennessee were some of the most diehard of the Diehards, having to face an obstacle the Diehards of the Army of Northern Virginia did not, that being the sight of the funeral procession of the Confederacy. Even given the factors that Phillips presents it had to be the most massive shock to the resolve of the Diehards, to see the president and then the remains of Lee's army streaming through their lines. Bully For Bragg! He's Hell on retreat indeed.

Glatthaar Too Good to be Ignored

Now, I'm a dedicated Western Theater man. That is, my Civil War research interests lie west of the Appalachians and I mainly focus myself there. I know that many on this side of the Ridge tend to ignore Virginia as strategically indecisive at best and little more than romantic Lost Cause memory in the making at worst. All of this is to say, that I rarely read titles on the war in the East. A recent Kevin Levin post, here, at Civil War Memory, however, made me want to correct that oversight. Kevin posted some excerpts from Joseph Glatthaar's new book, General Lee's Army: From Victory to Collapse; excerpts that were good enough to make this new book an instant Amazon purchase for me. Even though I am just past the Seven Days right now (about p. 150 of 480 pp. of narrative, and a total of 600 with notes!), I'd just like to add my voice to the chorus of praise for this book. There's too much to cover everything, but there are two themes I'm especially pleased with so far.

To put it simply, Glatthaar wins in my book because he almost constantly keeps the war contextualized. He has finally brought statistical analysis to bear on the rank and file soldier. True, the Confederate soldier was many things, but he was most commonly the unmarried son of a solidly middle-class family.

Among the enlistees in 1861, slightly more than one in ten owned slaves personally....Yet more than one in every four volunteers that first year lived with their parents who were slaveholders. Combining those soldiers who owned slaves with those soldiers who lived with slaveowning family members, the proportion rose to 36 percent....Thus, volunteers in 1861 were 42 percent more likely to own slaves themselves or to live with family members who owned slaves than the general population. (p. 20)

Glatthaar took a random sample of men from various units in the ANV, and compiled a detailed picture using data from the census. Age, occupation, real and personal wealth, and slaveowning all come into the picture. What's more, this demographic sketch does not appear briefly and fade away, lost in the narrative. Nearly every diary entry or letter excerpt (and believe me, there is no shortage of them) is bracketed by information about its author. For example, "Twenty-six year-old bachelor James A. Maddox echoed Hileman's frustration. A prewar overseer on his father's huge farm in western Georgia, Maddox let his impatience get the best of him. 'We did not come here to lie in camps and do nothing...' (p. 78)" The reader is constantly, yet subtly, reminded that the economic and social standing of these soldiers and their families is reflected in their opinions, decisions, and fighting performance. (Long a favorite refrain of the Chickamauga interp staff, I assure you)

The contextualization of the ANV goes beyond the soldiers' prewar lives. It extends to the war's broader causes as well. In nearly every section of the book so far, slavery has been a constant and undeniable theme. It sets the tone for the entire story. Glatthaar takes care to demonstrate that the desires to protect family, home, and country - the issues most commonly harped upon by neo-Confederate groups who wish to deny slavery's centrality - were all inseperably linked to preserving the institution or fearing its demise. On combat motivation in mid-62 (and, incidentally, the passage that made me put the book down and type up this post),

The slow breakdown of their coveted institution aroused Southerners' greatest fear: a loss of control that could lead to servile insurrection.... Before the Seven Days' Battle, Longstreet sought to inspire his men for combat through the use of racial fear.... "Already has the hatred of one of their great leaders [Fremont] attempted to make the negro your equal by declaring his freedom," Longstreet pronounced. "They care not for the blood of babes nor carnage of innocent women which servile insurrection thus stirred up may bring upon their heads." (pp. 152-3)

Glatthaar successfully interweaves slavery, racial fear, insecure white masculinity, and other motivating factors into his narrative of the life and battles of the ANV. Finally, we are able to see these same themes that scholarship proves were present in every facet of antebellum Southern life and thought, the same themes which have been desperately missing from Civil War military history, the same themes that too often have gone unnoticed and forgotten by the popular Civil War community.

This is an exciting, landmark study. No, it is not AoT, but Glatthaar proves that the literature which has provided us with such a rich (and admittedly complex) picture of the antebellum South can be brought to the battlefield. I'm excited for the next 300 pages, and I'm even more excited for where this just pushed Civil War military history.