Rhea Cole
Major
- Joined
- Nov 2, 2019
- Location
- Murfreesboro, Tennessee
On the Emerging Civil War forum March 12, 2020, Chris Kolakowski wrote a post titled Fact vs Interpretation at the Bloody Lane. The Maryland Campaign has undergone a significant reinterpretation due to recent scholarship. Newly discovered evidence has revealed facts which have enlightened scholars & resulted in the removal of many old interpretive markers. One of the replacements caught Kolakowski's eye.
Brigadier General Edward Porter Alexander
Confederate Brigadier General Edward Porter Alexander's statement that the Bloody Lane/Battle of Antietam was "end of the Confederacy" has been quoted & debated who knows how many times. The new marker at the Bloody Lane no longer contains that quote. The reason being that Alexander did not participate in the battle & was stating his interpretation based on the first person accounts he had heard. His was an informed interpretation, but it had been accepted as a first person judgement by a participant for a long time. It is no longer considered an appropriate quote to be used as if it were a first person statement.
I have no intention of going off into the weeds about Alexander's oft quoted statement. What does interest me is how many times in my long study of the Civil War I have had to unlearn absolute certainties. I grew up with an unadulterated Lost Cause narrative that I believed with a certainty normally reserved for revealed religion. I really believed that slaves were thankful for their bondage & loved their kind masters. The Civil War was all the Yankee's fault because they were jealous of Southerner's superior culture. Slavery had nothing to do with secession, etc, etc, etc, the twaddle I had been taught was endless. It was not until I was well into my adulthood before I finally shed the aftereffects of unlearning all that misinformation & began to fully understand what my family members had gone through during the Civil War. Thirty years has not been long enough to reach a full understanding of those fateful events. Civil War history is like unfolding an onion, there are endless layers & it makes your eyes water.
Interpretive marker, Hornet's Nest, Shiloh Battlefield
Over two decades as a living history volunteer at Stones River National Battlefield I have had the privilege of touring Western battlefields with scholars, historians & local experts. Many times the volunteers were given "our side of the rope" tours of areas that visitors never get to see. Perhaps the most astonishing one of these tours involved Shiloh.
Our tour of the battlefield coincided with the publication of the complete reinterpretation of the Battle of Shiloh. The major fighting occurred on the Confederate left flank against Sherman. The Hornet's Nest, while intense, was not the pivotal focus of the battle. Beauregard's announced plan was to break Grant's connection with the river & drive him into the interior. For reasons that are still obscure to me, N.B. Forrest & his fellow commanders on the Confederate right, which were supposed to turn Grant's left did not receive any orders to attack. By the time they acted on their own initiative, it was too little, too late. It was not the death of Albert Sidney Johnston that prevented the Confederate victory, it was rank incompetence, pure & simple. As executed, the Confederate assault was foredoomed to failure. By the end of our tour, a list of my dearly held beliefs as long as my arm had to be wadded up & tossed into the trash. I must say, what replaced it was ever so much more nuanced & fascinating.
Living history volunteers from Stones River N.B. serve their section of 1841 Model 6 pdrs, at Chickamauga N.M.P.
Battery has fired by piece from the right. Author is #1 on left gun of the right section.
Since then, any number of certainties have been added to my Civil War feet of clay collection. For example, for the better part of 20 years I had told visitors that six pound field cannon didn't actually fire grape shot, it was merely a literary convention. Imagine my chagrin when I saw a stand of grape for a 6 pdr at the Fort Defiance Museum in Clarksville TN! It must have been a naval round, but nevertheless less, there it was. If you Google six pounder gape shot, you will find me as a reference on several sites. I wasn't the only one surprised by that miniature stand of grape.
What dearly held Civil War certainty of yours has been shown to be untrue & how did learning the truth affect your understanding of what caused the war & how it was fought?
Brigadier General Edward Porter Alexander
Confederate Brigadier General Edward Porter Alexander's statement that the Bloody Lane/Battle of Antietam was "end of the Confederacy" has been quoted & debated who knows how many times. The new marker at the Bloody Lane no longer contains that quote. The reason being that Alexander did not participate in the battle & was stating his interpretation based on the first person accounts he had heard. His was an informed interpretation, but it had been accepted as a first person judgement by a participant for a long time. It is no longer considered an appropriate quote to be used as if it were a first person statement.
I have no intention of going off into the weeds about Alexander's oft quoted statement. What does interest me is how many times in my long study of the Civil War I have had to unlearn absolute certainties. I grew up with an unadulterated Lost Cause narrative that I believed with a certainty normally reserved for revealed religion. I really believed that slaves were thankful for their bondage & loved their kind masters. The Civil War was all the Yankee's fault because they were jealous of Southerner's superior culture. Slavery had nothing to do with secession, etc, etc, etc, the twaddle I had been taught was endless. It was not until I was well into my adulthood before I finally shed the aftereffects of unlearning all that misinformation & began to fully understand what my family members had gone through during the Civil War. Thirty years has not been long enough to reach a full understanding of those fateful events. Civil War history is like unfolding an onion, there are endless layers & it makes your eyes water.
Interpretive marker, Hornet's Nest, Shiloh Battlefield
Over two decades as a living history volunteer at Stones River National Battlefield I have had the privilege of touring Western battlefields with scholars, historians & local experts. Many times the volunteers were given "our side of the rope" tours of areas that visitors never get to see. Perhaps the most astonishing one of these tours involved Shiloh.
Our tour of the battlefield coincided with the publication of the complete reinterpretation of the Battle of Shiloh. The major fighting occurred on the Confederate left flank against Sherman. The Hornet's Nest, while intense, was not the pivotal focus of the battle. Beauregard's announced plan was to break Grant's connection with the river & drive him into the interior. For reasons that are still obscure to me, N.B. Forrest & his fellow commanders on the Confederate right, which were supposed to turn Grant's left did not receive any orders to attack. By the time they acted on their own initiative, it was too little, too late. It was not the death of Albert Sidney Johnston that prevented the Confederate victory, it was rank incompetence, pure & simple. As executed, the Confederate assault was foredoomed to failure. By the end of our tour, a list of my dearly held beliefs as long as my arm had to be wadded up & tossed into the trash. I must say, what replaced it was ever so much more nuanced & fascinating.
Living history volunteers from Stones River N.B. serve their section of 1841 Model 6 pdrs, at Chickamauga N.M.P.
Battery has fired by piece from the right. Author is #1 on left gun of the right section.
Since then, any number of certainties have been added to my Civil War feet of clay collection. For example, for the better part of 20 years I had told visitors that six pound field cannon didn't actually fire grape shot, it was merely a literary convention. Imagine my chagrin when I saw a stand of grape for a 6 pdr at the Fort Defiance Museum in Clarksville TN! It must have been a naval round, but nevertheless less, there it was. If you Google six pounder gape shot, you will find me as a reference on several sites. I wasn't the only one surprised by that miniature stand of grape.
What dearly held Civil War certainty of yours has been shown to be untrue & how did learning the truth affect your understanding of what caused the war & how it was fought?
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