September 17 marked the 150th anniversary of the bloodiest battle in the Civil War. It was also the first battle where Americans also got to see their war dead. They were horrified.
Perhaps we should all reflect on what happens when words run out–when debate is no longer civil–and when nothing we say matters.–when Americans kill Americans.
I can’t help thinking about these times when elections get to the point where friends can’t talk. Is this what happened to our forebearers?
Is there a chance things could ever come to blows like this again?
Antietam was even worse! 🙂
Did I misspell it? @Pokie
Ooops now I see it. Sorry. I did that at 3 am. Sorry.
@Moon-howler
Thanks Moon for posting this. I had not seen it but was there. Antietam was our bloodiest day not just the bloodiest of the Civil War. Prior to that 1st and 2nd Manassas held that title.
As noted in the clip, reenactments can be awkward with the mix of modern safety requirements and the use of very real reprooduction weapons, but they do take the history out of the books and away from the history of just the generals and divisions and corps and Armies and give it back to the soldiers and what they were willing to do for this country. It is our history we honor and in many cases that means honoring our own families to better understand what they went through. Spectators stood and applauded.
You, of course, are speaking of the event more properly known as the Battle of Sharpsburg, right?
The South WILL Rise Again! NASCAR WILL dominate!
Translator:
Battles With Dual Names Date of Battle
Confederate Name
Federal Name
date southern name federal name
July 21, 1861 First Manassas Bull Run
Aug. 10, 1861 Oak Hills Wilson’s Creek
Oct. 21, 1861 Leesburg Ball’s Bluff
Jan. 19, 1862 Mill Springs Logan’s Cross Roads
Mar. 7-8, 1862 Elkhorn Tavern Pea Ridge
Apr. 6-7, 1862 Shiloh Pittsburg Landing
June 27, 1862 Gaines’s Mill Chickahominy
Aug. 29-30,1862 Second Manassas Second Bull Run
Sept. 1, 1862 Ox Hill Chantilly
Sept. 14, 1862 Boonsboro South Mountain
Sept. 17, 1862 Sharpsburg Antietam
Oct. 8, 1862 Perryville Chaplin Hills
Jan 2, 1863 Murfreesboro Stones River
Apr. 8, 1864 Mansfield Sabine Cross Roads
Sept. 19, 1864 Winchester Opequon Creek
On a more serious note, this is a serious matter.
What do we do to prevent such strife? And if it IS necessary, what line needs to be crossed for it to happen? For all the hyperbole on all sides about “taking their country back” or various “shooting solutions,” we are a LOOOOOONNG way away from needing violence. May we ALWAYS be a long way away.
For all of our vaunted bloodthirstiness and violence, Americans truly are reluctant to use force in political matters, on a large scale.
I noticed that as we charged into Iraq.
[sarcasm button off]
I dont think we are reluctant enough.
I think ” taking our country back” is used way too often. I do see some folks drawing a line in the sand. It is worrisome.
How many of those people in 1861 every thought that their lives were going to blow up like that? I don’t think they ever thought that, in their wildest dreams.
I also think the average person was used by the rich people, once again. Northern industrialists, southern plantation owners…the average person, the middle class, got dragged in hook line and sinker.
@Moon-howler
OK I need to re-think this because I agree with you on the the intensity of the speech then and now. Not so sure about the rich inflaming the masses at least prior to the Civil War, That is more a southern mythology that comes with the line – you know most Confederates did not own slaves – true, but its more a part of the disconnect with the evil of slavery. Northerners were not so inclined to fight for the end of slavery as they were to prevent the states from leaving the union. As you know, that came later – after Antietam.
It also has a modern ring to it, where the rich democratic elites use the masses by promising fundementally changes to our nation – to a welfare state, while the AARP profits in the billions from Obamacare or the bundlers get billions in subsidies – all the while pointing at those rich mean Republicans.
I am also concerned because I agree with you re: the “taking our country back” rhetoric. It does go too far, but then if everything we do not agree on is offensive in an effort to stiffle the conversation, that is what we are being left with.
@Blue, let’s substitute the word manipulate for enflame. Will that work? Obviously slave holders had to give non slave holders a reason to join up. States rights and all that. Lots of rhetoric and bravado.
You know, it still is alive and well where I grew up. hard to believe. When my mother died 6 years ago, I had a service at her former retirement residence. I saw her best friend who was horribly crippled up with arthritis. I went over to her and said Ann, please don’t try to come to the grave service, just come to the retirement home service. She proactically hissed at me and said she refused to go there because there were too many Yankees. Geez. How many years later?
Actually, I never understood waving the bloody shirt until I saw that Death and the Civil War Show. I am also eligible for Daughters of the Confederacy so this isn’t like an alien topic. Some things I just don’t understand though.
@Blue, do you really think the average northerner cared about the union or do you think that was Lincoln?
I am weary of people like me who have had much of what they think molded by the old folks. The opposite isnt any better either…the academic end. He who wins the war writes the history.
I have just gotten to the point that I will probably never know the real truth. It is lost to time.
I know that my own opinion of that war makes me hated by both “sides.’
@Moon-howler
I was speaking of domestic politics in regards to violence.
In regards to the War of Northern Aggression… the common man joined up because the Northern states invaded them. The common man was a patriot. States Rights is and was a valid reason. Remember, Northern States threatened to secede in earlier decades.
Fort Sumter was blockading a foreign country’s port. It WAS stupid to shoot at them, though, as that gave the pretext for invasion.
I’ve learned that I’m eligible for Sons of the Confederacy and Sons of the Revolution. I’m more impressed by the latter, for what its worth.
@Cargo its a horrible pita to fill out the paper work. I thought about it briefly and then decided I didnt want to have to sit around with an bunch of insufferable old pea-hens.
@Cargo, between you and Blue, I feel like I am discussing a different Civil War than the one I am familiar with. My people were middle class farmers. Nothing fancy but everyone could read and write.
I don’t think southerners hate for the same reasons. Georgians hate for diffferent reasons than Virginians.
I think Virginians hated because there was so much action here. In my own families who were middle class farmers and merchants, they lost everything. I think the real hate settled in during reconstruction. You lose everthing, you are dirty poor,and you are conquored and treated like a conquored nation.
I can’t speak for most people but I think most of us natives remember but don’t obsess.
I dont think anything was worth that war…nothing. It was the equivalent of 7 million lives lost in todays terms. That is staggering.
700,000 actually. None of the big concepts: slavery, union, states rights. NOTHING was worth all that. Statements like that tend to piss everyone off and I seriously don’t care.
Ok, I too have the pedigry of the DAR, GAR, SUV, SCV and DAP. It is hard to understand the resentments that lasted so long. I suppose people were trained that way. The Civil War is taught differently north and south even today, although its getting better. I never understood the southern view – hatred really – for yankees until I understood not the physical destruction but rather the transfer of wealth that was represented in the property lost that is called salvery fom the local guy to the banks. Billions at a time when thousands was real money. We learn for example that England was considering joining in on the side of the south due to their loss of cotton. Nope, it was the debt owned by the banks, they got their cottom almost immediately from Egypt. Popular opposition to slaverry – ended in England in the 1750s – prevented it -not access to Egypt. The other problem was and still is that southerners wrote and still write most of the history. Sort of like suggesting that Ft Sumpter had already blockaded Charleston harbor before the attack — nope. That came later. Lincoln demanded payment for that and all Federal property in the south.
Blue, I am stuck on how a person can be both a son and a daughter.
I am unfamiliar with your versioni of history.
Err? my pedigree not memberships. My daughter will claim DAR and DAP, as will grandaughters.
In 1860 total wealth in the US is estimated at $10 billion in 1860 dollars, about half and half north/south. Half of southern wealth , however, lies in the value of slave property. A good proportion of that southern wealth was eliminated by the stroke of Abraham Lincoln’s pen when he signed the Emancipation Proclamation. It gets worse as there are union victories and through the war’s end. Now, the aggregate value of slaves adjusted to today’s prices measured using the relative share of GDP results in an estimated comparable loss at the time of Emancipation, at close to ten trillion 2009 dollars — gone! wiped out That hurts. It hurts local business, homeowners, banks, industry, equity growth capital, savings, retirements and, as noted it gets worse by war’s end. I cannot find those estimates but the point is made. The south should have taken the Lincoln plan to buy them out over time. Moreover, it explains the hardships and animosities felt after the war as it took more than one generation to recover.
Almost sounds familiar if not ironic with our current borrowing does it not?
I don’t know about most of those pedigrees. I never thought of mine as pedigrees. My people were farmers from Albemarle County. They owned a farm called Clover Hill. The other branch owned a mercantile center on the Rivana River called Rio Mills. I am elibible for DAC through my GG-Grandfather and DAR through my grandmother from Delaware. I am not interested in either.
I am afraid I don’t buy into all the text book versions of why people were pissed off. I will just go with the stories from the old people about who burned down what. That seemed to do it with my family. The other side of the family kept the farm going. I think they sharecropped it probably.
Whatever wealth they had was gone with the Wind. Confederate dollars didnt help, the death of the patriarch in 1860 didnt help and reconstruction nearly killed them. Albemarle County didnt see fierce fighting so they were spared actual battle. however, there was a skirmish and it was at Rio. I have an account of it written by an old aunt who was a young woman or teenager at the time.
Basically my people lost any edge they had. I was a different generation but my mother’s generation used to get thrashed for saying Abraham Lincoln. It was a cuss word. probably what kept the wolf away from the Paul Goodloe MacIntire was that generations first cousin. I am sure he helped out.
Being from New Orleans….we don’t have the South will Rise AGAIN! feeling so much. The museum was dusty.
And having been captured early on…we just made money off the Yankees.
@Cargosquid
Yes, ya’ll did. and thanks to Gen Butler, who was the first to arm contra-bands — your women remained most curteous during the unpleasentness of the “occupation” or as the yankees referred to it as the hieghtened military presence during the recent rebellion.
It’s my belief that Lee went on the attack in Maryland to give his beloved Virginia a break from all the battle destruction and the fact he thought he would be well received by the residents.It didn’t work out that way because his supporters really didn’t have much to give and they were afraid of Northern retribution after Lee left.It wasn’t all altruistic, he wanted to put pressure on Washing DC, he had just kicked the hell out of the Union forces in Manassas and he didn’t think they had much left.
@Bear
I ‘ll buy that. Military strategy and economic policy often combine. Lee needed England to enter the war and they were balking. Think what might have happened if Lee had captured Harrisburg, Baltimore and/or Washington. The English banks would have rushed to protect / salvage their investments. As it was, they were arming the south.
What Lee needed was the British Navy to unblock the ports and get them some badly needed supplies like food and shoes.
There you go!!!!! Thanks bear.
Anybody else read the alternative history fiction like these:
The Confederacy wins the American Civil War and continues to exist as an independent nation into the mid-20th century. (The names above are used by fans, as the overall series has no official title.) Turtledove is the author.
How Few Remain (1997)
The Great War Trilogy
American Front (1998)
Walk in Hell (1999)
Breakthroughs (2000)
The American Empire Trilogy
Blood and Iron (2001)
The Center Cannot Hold (2002)
The Victorious Opposition (2003)
The Settling Accounts Tetralogy
Return Engagement (2004)
Drive to the East (2005)
The Grapple (2006)
In at the Death (2007)
There is also “Guns of the South,” where time travelers bring back AK-47s to Lee.
There is another one… Stars and Stripes Trilogy by Harry Harrison. This 3-novel series is predicated on Union and Confederacy wars with Great Britain initially based on an
alternative outcome of the “Trent Affair”. The time period of the trilogy
extends past 1865.
I think that’s the way it was supposed to go…I’m trying to find it.
I can only imagine who those novels appeal to. The very people who need to deal with the reality of the situation.
@Moon-howler
Huh?
Those novels appeal to anyone that like to examine alternate outcomes. The first one by Turtledove covers the relationships between the states since the 1830s…the Civil War starts earlier. And the South wins…then he continues with a history of the US as it might develop from that.
It was just a comment. It seems a lot of people like “what if?”
I just didn’t understand your comment, that’s all.
And a WHOLE LOT of people like them. He’s made a few million on books.
@Moon-howler
A little more on battle names: So many battlefields of the Civil War bear double names that we cannot believe the duplication has been accidental. It is the unusual which impresses. The troops of the North came mainly from cities, towns, and villages, and were, therefore, impressed by some natural object near the scene of the conflict and named the battle from it. The soldiers from the South were chiefly from the country and were, therefore, impressed by some artificial object near the field of action. In one section the naming has been after the handiwork of God; in the other section it has been after the handiwork of man. Thus, the first passage of arms is called the battle of Bull Run at the North,—the name of a little stream. At the South it takes the name of Manassas, from a railroad station. The second battle on the same ground is called the Second Bull Run by the North, and the Second Manassas by the South. Stone’s defeat is the battle of Ball’s Bluff With the Federals, and the battle of Leesburg with the Confederates. The battle called by General Grant, Pittsburg Landing, a natural object, was named Shiloh, after a church, by his antagonist. Rosecrans called his first great fight with Bragg, the battle of Stone River, while Bragg named it after Murfreesboro, a village. So McClellan’s battle of the Chickahominy, a little river, was with Lee the battle of Cold Harbor, a tavern. The Federals speak of the battle of Pea Ridge, of the Ozark range of mountains, and the Confederates call it after Elk Horn, a country inn. The Union soldiers called the bloody battle three days after South Mountain from the little stream, Antietam, and the Southern troops named it after the village of Sharpsburg. Many instances might be given of this double naming by the opposing forces. According to the same law of the unusual, the war-songs of a people have generally been written s. The bards who followed the banners of the feudal lords, sang of their exploits, and stimulated them and their retainers to deeds of high emprise, wore no armor and carried no swords. So, too, the impassioned orators, who roused our ancestors in 1776 with the thrilling cry, “Liberty or Death,” never once put themselves in the way of a death by lead or steel, by musket-ball or bayonet stab. The noisy speakers of 1861, who fired the Northern heart and who fired the Southern heart, never did any other kind of firing.
Source: Excerpt from an article written by General D.H. Hill, late of the Confederate army, that appeared in “Battles and Leaders of the Civil War.”
Caro sez: “For all of our vaunted bloodthirstiness and violence, Americans truly are reluctant to use force in political matters, on a large scale.”
American Armed Forces have been used in more than 100 conflicts since 1776. Not all have been “large scale” but Americans have been involved. I think we really do like war–we’ve been doing it from the beginning.
Moon sez: “It was the equivalent of 7 million lives lost in todays terms. That is staggering.
700,000 actually.” I am curious Moon because I didn’t there was an inflation rate for human beings. What is the formula?
Blue’s comments in #17 are interesting. Here is long study on measuring the worth of slavery in 2009 $$: http://www.measuringworth.com/slavery.php
George, it was a proportion problem from the numbers given.
The the time of the Civil War there were aproximately 35 million people in the USA. 700,000 were killed. (or died from disease).
Compared to today’s population, that is the equivalent of 7 million dead. I think they were using 350,000,000 population today which is a little high, but the Civil War population was also little high.
@George S. Harris
Did you see the later comment that I meant domestically? Outside our country…we are very militant.
I just visited Antietam last weekend. My primary observation is that one has to visit Civil War battlefields to really understand what happened. The subtleties of the terrain and ground cover often played huge roles in the outcome of the battle.
The Civil War also highlights how space-based communications and intelligence revolutionized warfare. A great example of this was Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg, which commenced after a lengthy cannon bombardment to eliminate Union troops on Cemetary Ridge was largely ineffective.
Pickett’s charge could have had a much different outcome if Lee had known the bombardment was ineffective. Today’s U.S. forces are not likely to make a similar mistake because air- and space-based reconnaissance are able to assess the effectiveness of bombardment before an assault is executed.
Kelly, I am going to be sexist and say I think that is something men think about more than women. I have lived around a battlefield my entire adult life, from age 18 on. First Fredericksburg and now Manassas. I understand what you are saying, I probably couldn’t figure it out for myself though.
I can’t get past standing out in the middle of a field, lined up and shooting at each other usually without repeating weapons. It boggles the mind.
What is space based communications?
@Moon-howler
Satellite communications or ‘SATCOM’ in milspeak. The military flies its own SATCOM (e.g. Wideband Global Satcom) and buys SATCOM time from commercial providers (e.g. Iridium).