The American Civil War
Byrnzie
Posts: 21,037
I just watched the 9 part PBS series again by Ken Burns. I'm gonna read Shelby Foote's 3 volume history of the war. Anyone else here have an interest in the Civil War? Anyone visited any of the battlefields? I'm definitely gonna visit Gettysburg in a year or so's time, along with Antietam and possibly Shiloh. This war threw up so many fascinating stories.
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2010: Newark, MSG I
2011: EV Philly
2012: Philly MIA
2013: Wrigley, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Philly 1 & 2, Baltimore
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?
"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama
when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'
I traveled through Harpers Ferry and the Shenandoah valley in 1991, but I didn't know much about it back then.
The story of Wilmer McLean is pretty amazing. He was a grocer who happened to own a house in Virginia at Bull Run, where the first engagement took place between the Rebels and the Unionists. One of the first shots fired in the war landed in his front parlor, and after the battle he moved with his family 120 miles away to Appomattox, also in Virginia. Four years later, Ulysses S. Grant was on his horse looking for a suitable place to administer the surrender of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, and Wilma Mclean's wife happened to be walking by. She offered Grant the use of her house for the purpose.
Later, McLean is supposed to have said "The war began in my front yard and ended in my front parlor".
Just checked his book 'Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era' on Amazon. Looks good.
The Man He Killed
"HAD he and I but met
By some old ancient inn,
We should have sat us down to wet
Right many a nipperkin!
"But ranged as infantry,
And staring face to face,
I shot at him as he at me,
And killed him in his place.
"I shot him dead because—
Because he was my foe,
Just so: my foe of course he was;
That's clear enough; although
"He thought he'd 'list, perhaps,
Off-hand like—just as I—
Was out of work—had sold his traps-
No other reason why.
"Yes; quaint and curious war is!
You shoot a fellow down
You'd treat, if met where any bar is,
Or help to half-a-crown."
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
I doubt Southerners think too highly of him.
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
That civil war was about states standing up for their rights against an overarching federal government. Sounds familiar.
I think the war could have been brought to a close in 1861 if George MCclellan hadn't been so hopelessly lackluster and incompetent.
The right to enslave black people.
Maybe the federal government is needed to keep such yahoo's in place. The same kind of yahoo's who are now causing trouble for ethnic minorities in Arizona.
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
by the way, grant's farm is about 15 miles from my house. it is pretty cool to see the home of the former leader of the union forces and later the president of the united states. he was a pretty simple man. the home has been restored, but the land and most of the property has been preserved so a lot of it is like it was when grant lived there.
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
You live in a nice part of the country. I love places with history. Any place with old traditional buildings. I love seeing the old Ming and Qing Dynasty buildings here in China too. I don't really have much interest in the modern world as it pretty much all looks the same. I like old stuff. Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia e.t.c, have plenty of nice old buildings.
i forgot to tell you, if you go to shiloh be sure to visit everything. there are hikes you can do where you can see the old heavy guns and cannons that are green like the statue of liberty. they are copper and you can actually use a pocket knife or something to scrape of the green coating and reveal the copper surface like it looked in 1862. you can also visit the major areas of the battle, the church, the sunken road, the hornet's nest, bloody pond, the field hospital, hte cemetaries, the mass graves with nothing but cannonball borders on the perimeter of the graves to mark the location. also, each state that had troops fight there has their own monument to those particular troops. soe are nicer and more elaborate than others, but they are all really cool. it is a cool place that is screaming with life and you can really appreciate the struggle that occurred there.
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
but didn't lincoln say he didn't care about slavery and had the majority of the states voted to keep slavery he would've fought the war to protect that right?
what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?
"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama
when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
yes, he was anti-slavery but pro-colonization.
he also wrote
"My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause."
he was against slavery but what did he want to do with them?
"I have said that the separation of the races is the only perfect preventative of amalgamation. I have no right to say all the members of the Republican party are in favor of this, nor to say that as a party they are in favor of it. There is nothing in their platform directly on the subject. But I can say a very large proportion of its members are for it, and that the chief plank in their platform -- opposition to the spread of slavery -- is most favorable to that separation.
Such separation, if ever effected at all, must be effected by colonization; and no political party, as such, is now doing anything directly for colonization. Party operations at present only favor or retard colonization incidentally. The enterprise is a difficult one, but 'when there is a will there is a way;' and what colonization needs most is a hearty will. Will springs from the two elements of moral sense and self-interest. Let us be brought to believe it is morally right, and, at the same time, favorable to, or, at least, not against, our interest, to transfer the African to his native clime, and we shall find a way to do it, however great the task may be. The children of Israel, to such numbers as to include four hundred thousand fighting men, went out of Egyptian bondage in a body."
what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?
"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama
when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
The black abolitionist Wendell Phillips made a funny comment when he referred to Lincoln as "a 1st-rate 2nd-rate man."
I think the most interesting thing to me is that it was the first real modern war, yet it was fought with revolutionary period tactics. the reason it was such a brutal bloody war was because the generals could not adapt to use modern weapons properly.
the civil war saw the advent of the miniball, probably the most brutal type of ammo ever used until the automatic rifles that most soldiers carried in WWII. those miniballs would basically destory whatever they hit. there were some of the most brutal fractures ever seen, guys with their jaws blown clear off their heads and they survived, and there was no way of salvaging arms or legs hit by the miniball. that is why there were so many hundreds of thousands of amputations. the bones would splinter and even modern orthopedic surgical techniques can't fix splintered bones. if you get hit my a miniball you were probably going to die, not so much from the wound, but the infection that was sure to follow with the unsanitary surgical techniques of the field hospitals at the time.
also the gatling gun and land mines were invented during the civil war. one time towards the end of the war sherman was marching through georgia and they found landmines on the roads planted by retreating confederates. sherman made confederate pows go ahead of the union army and clear the mines off of the roads. word of sherman's cruelty spread and the roads in the south were never mined again. this was surely against the rules, but sherman had no other alternative and there was no geneva convention then.
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/project ... iracy.html
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Fort_Sumter
I know there are hundreds and hundreds of stories of valor, but my favorite figure in the war has to be Alonzo Cushing. He commanded a battery on Cemetery Ridge, which was the focus of Longstreet's assault (Pickett's charge) on the third day of the battle. Here's a 21 year old kid, who was facing an overwhelming force. As the battle raged, he was hit by a shell fragment that went clean through his shoulder. Yet he stayed at his post. Shortly after he was hit by another shell fragment. This fragment tore through his groin area, and split open his lower abdomen. Not trying to be too graphic, but the would actually exposed his intestines which he held in place with his hand. He was ordered to fall back, but due to the fact that the confederates were quickly approaching the ridge, and many of his men where killed, he refused to give up his command. He remained on the field, and since he couldn't yell out his orders he passed them along to his 1st. Sgt. When the Confederates hit the High Water Mark, Cushing was killed by a bullet that entered his mouth.
War is tragic no matter what, and there are so many elements of this war that made it even more tragic than most. The friends and family that were on each side fighting against each other. Armistead and Hancock for example at Gettysburg. The way the battles were fought. I mean, it just is beyond our comprehension, and no movie or documentary could ever begin to do it justice.
I definitely could go on and on with this subject. Here in my office I have a nicely framed New York Times newspaper from late June 1863 that talks about the troop movements and things going on around Gettysburg just before the battle took place. I also have a framed display dedicated to Lincoln which includes a signature, a piece of the flag that draped his funeral procession, and a lock of his hair (I know the hair sounds creepy but that was a big deal back in that day, people did that all the time).
it sounds like you have some awesome memorabilia there. i'm sure there are museums that would pay a large price for that lincoln item. i would like to see it. if you have a pic can you post it?
i was just thnking, the country was so divided back then, imagine if there was the current talking head media that we have today back then. it would have just fueled the fire. what would beck, hannity, rush, olberman, malloy, maddow, etc have said? if they had our media today there might have been no reconstruction. it is certainly interesting to think about.
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
I'll definitely try and post some pics. The media was pretty ruthless with Lincoln at times. The war obviously grew very unpopular as it went along, mainly due to the fact that photographers like Matthew Brady and Timothy O'Sullivan brought the war home to the people through their graphic images. Up until that point, war was thought of as a spectator sport. "Hey there's a battle going on just outside town, throw some ham in the picnic basket and let's go watch". When people started realizing that it wasn't glamorous, it wasn't exciting, and that it was infact a terrifying very bloody event, then it became not so cool.
The longer the war went on, the tougher it became for Lincoln to maintain the war effort. He was under tremendous pressure to negotiate peace with the South. Eventually he started to try and take control of the situation by doing things that would seem unfathomable to us. Under his power, the Federal government made huge power grabs, suspended Habeas corpus, spent loads of money before congress every authorized it, and detained thousands of people without sufficient cause. This was the ugly side that many people don't associate with Lincoln, but in his mind it was all about the greater good, which of course was to preserve the Union. As was mentioned earlier, while he was a staunch opponent to slavery; slavery in and of itself was not the driving force behind the war. He would have never sacrificed the Union in order to free the slaves. It's also important to note that slavery was never the driving force behind the South's decision to leave the Union. It was a huge issue, but the bigger issue was that the southern states believed the constitution provided them the authority to govern themselves. They saw the north as becoming what England was to the Colonists.
I've always felt that if Lincoln had not been assassinated, that this country would be a much much different place. I believe that had he served his second term, and oversaw the Reconstruction phase, that this country would have become much healthier as a result. Lincoln was, more than anything, a compassionate man. While others in his administration couldn't wait to "punish" the South, Lincoln couldn't wait to let them back into the family and reconcile. His attitude can be summed up by what he said to one of his Generals when he first visited Richmond after it fell. The general asked Lincoln how he should handle the defeated Confederates, and Lincoln's reply was to "Let 'em up easy". This was how he planned to deal with South overall after the war, and I believe had he been able to do so, the bitterness and hatred that raged through the South afterwards would have at the very least been lessened. It's like if you have a boxing match between unequal opponents, the smaller guy gets some good hits in, and the fight last longer than everyone expects, but inevitably the big guy knocks out the little guy. Now imagine the big guy kicks the little guy in the teeth while he's down. That pretty much sums up what happened after the war. Whereas Lincoln was the kind of person to kneel down next to the defeated opponent, give him some water, and then help him to his feet. I don't know, sometimes I just wonder how different things would have been.
Imagine, these men had spent months/years struggling to survive in concentration camp conditions in Confederate prisons and had finally made it out, only to drown on their way home.