In the Minority?

[Buckeye Bill]

To My Fellow CWT Members,

I have been an American Civil War (War Between the States) history buff since my first visit to the Gettysburg National Military Park in the fall of 2000. Since my first visit to Gettysburg, I have been very blessed to have toured the majority of battlefields, museums and cemeteries scattered throughout this nation. North Carolina is the only state that I have not toured the Civil War sites. I will get my chance when I visit the Bennett Place, Averasboro Battlefield, Bentonville Battlefield and Fort Fisher on May 8th, 2015.

Question : When individuals study this bloody conflict and tour the related sites, do you gravitate towards the Union side or the Confederate side?

* I can honestly say that I gravitate towards both sides as I study this war and tour the sites.

Growing up in the Greater Cincinnati Area, I was taught in grade school that the blue coat soldiers and sailors were the good guys and the gray (butternut) coat soldiers and sailors were the bad guys. I carried this viewpoint into my adulthood and all the way up to my first visit to the Gettysburg National Military Park. After visiting this Hallowed Ground in the state of Pennsylvania, my viewpoint started to change. I stopped looking at this war as a "Good Guy vs. Bad Guy" conflict. I started to look at this conflict as Americans slaughtering fellow Americans........

As I study this war, I do not find myself rooting for one side or another side as I would root for my favorite football, baseball or basketball teams. I try to place my feet into the shoes of Union and Confederate soldiers and sailors. I do this because both sides were Americans......

In my opinion, there were heroes and villains on both sides.

I do feel like I am in the minority........

Semper Fi,

Bill

 

[brass napoleon]

As I study this war, I do not find myself rooting for one side or another side as I would root for my favorite football, baseball or basketball teams. I try to place my feet into the shoes of Union and Confederate soldiers and sailors. I do this because both sides were Americans......

In my opinion, there were heroes and villains on both sides.

I do feel like I am in the minority........

Semper Fi,

Bill

Well, I agree with you there, Bill. As far as the soldiers go, I don't think that either side was the good guys or either side was the bad guys either. However, as far as the objectives of the leaders goes, I definitely feel that one side was in the right and the other side was in the wrong (and much more so now after studying the war than I ever did before I became fixated by it).

 

[KansasFreestater]

Well, Bill, I'm a relative newbie to the ACW, having only started studying it a little over a year ago, but I do find that, like peeling an onion, I just keep finding more and more layers to it all. I learn some "detail" that was not even previously on my radar screen, and end up discovering that it's a whole huge field in its own right. My latest obsession, for example, is minstrelsy, which is totally blowing my mind, because it turns out that so much of what I previously thought was "American folk music" is actually stuff that was created for one of the most racist institutions ever designed -- and one that, appallingly, was huge in this country for nearly a century! I had no idea....

As for the heroes and villains.... As recently as six months ago, when a friend who found out I had become a Civil War buff suggested that I might be interested in the life of Stonewall Jackson, I told him no, I was not yet at the point where I could even stand to look at one of the enemy leaders in any depth; it would just raise my blood pressure too much. Now, of course, I find Stonewall fascinating.

I remember, years ago, asking my sister, who was a huge Civil War buff for many years -- and long before I had any interest in it myself -- how she could stand to devote attention to something so horrible, the worst experience in our national history, one that I couldn't even bear to think about, let alone study in depth. She replied that perhaps it was because the war is, like a Zen koan, something that can never be fathomed; it's so complex, and so profoundly mystifying, that you're compelled to keep gnawing on it, turning it over and over in your mind, trying to plumb it every way you can. But no matter how much you learn about it, no matter how much you try, you'll never grasp it -- and so its magnetic pull on you remains.

Now I get what she was talking about.

 

[JCM6395]

Growing up the youngest in my family I sided with the South.......kind of felt kinship with the Lost Cause in my situation.

But as I grew up into adulthood and studied the issues I realized the North was right. Then I discovered my closest ancestors during that time were all Union vets. I did have relatives on the Southern side also. I look at things nowadays as the North being the good side and the South being misguided but worthy of being respected.

 

[O. A. Williams]

I favor the Union, but I am much more interested in the Confederate Army, culture, battle stories, etc.

 

[southern blue]

I am a southerner with Union leanings I'm proud of the south but at the same time sometimes I look at it the same way you look at an embarrassing relative. You still love him because he's family but he still drives you crazy at times so I can't really 'root' for one side over the other either. Am I glad the south lost? Yes. Does that mean I hate the south and all it stands for? No. Culturally I don't identify with the North but when it comes to the war I agreed with their objective. Preserve the Union and end slavery.

I admire people on both sides of the war and while I think the Confederacy was wrong in all its aims I understand why people fought for it. I understand that people thought of their state as their country and believed they were being invaded and their homes needed protecting. That's not really a problem for me.

The thing that gets my ire up is all the LOST Cause noble purple prose post war white wash...which is another thread.

 

[M.Warren]

I've always leaned toward the Southern army but as far as the causes of the war I tend to think the Souths losing was the best for our country in the end.

 

[Chattahooch33]

I always gravitate toward my ancestors (almost entirely south) and can feel myself "urging and cheering" them on when I get to a battlefield that they were at.
When I went to Sailor's Creek I was almost thinking "maybe this time we (Dubose's Brigade) will hold them back."
When I read about the wheatfield I think "maybe this time we (Wofford's Brigade) will bust through and get to LRT".
When I go to the Atlanta battlefield I think "maybe we (Jackson's Brigade under Walker) will turn the federal left".

But alas, it isn't "we", and it's already done.

 

[AUG]

Always both sides. I never "rooted" for one side, but I use to be more directed to towards the South (only the military history), being the Texan that I am, but over the years I began to look at the conflict, as well as any subject in history, with a less and less biased view overall and simply learn from what happened. I find the people and units of both sides fascinating to study.

 

[rhettbutler1865]

I don't need to tell my whole story yet again; (when I was 8, 52 years ago, upon entering Gettysburg, exclaiming to my mother, 'I've been here before') and my long and lasting obsession with the ACW. I do believe I was a Confederate major in the cavalry; but that was then...Bill, I don't think you're in the minority. We all know there was gallantry, bravery, sacrifice on both sides; still "rooting" for one side or the other after 150 years, to me, makes no sense...WE are not our ancestors, who did at the time what they thought was right (or had to do). The romance of the South is very appealing, but looking at the war objectively now, I think any rational person would not lean one side or the other...in the end, "good" triumphed (end of slavery, especially). Doesn't mean I won't watch "Gone With the Wind" a thousand times!

 

[redbob]

It wasn't until I left the South to go into the Marine Corps that I saw that this country was made up of a great many different types of people and the one thing that we all had in common was that we were all Americans and that we were all in this (whatever it might be) thing together. And I think that as terrible as the Civil War was, it helped make us what we are today.

 

[MajGenl.Meade]

I find it difficult to stand on Winstead Hill and not think "Don't do it Cleburne..." And then earlier, at Spring Hill "surely this time they'll not let the Union walk by unmolested, eh Cheatham?"

The War of the Rebellion (check your state Adjutant General reports for the correct title ahem ahem ) suffers from historical "viewpoint" that goes back hundreds of years. Rather as one "likes" the Cavaliers (no, not Cleveland) and finds the Roundheads rather dull and dreary, so too there is an ethos of romance and adventure clinging to the Confederacy. JEB Stuart was dashing - Custer was a sort of poor imitation. Lee is a tower - Grant a gnome allowed to borrow Thor's hammer.

The southern leaders seem somehow more interesting, even when they are colossal failures like No-Luck Bragg. They even die more interestingly - except perhaps for Sedgwick who rivalled them in spectacularly bizarre mortal moments.

The Union - it's a kind of machine isn't it? (Or that's the way legend presents it). And then there's the underdog thing... the plucky little guy up against the bullies; Gary Cooper standing alone as high noon chimes.

What a fascinating series of what-ifs emerge. Suppose Cleburne didn't die and the South held the North off with relative ease through 1865 - would blacks have been freed in the South and would they have fought for the South? That was all decided long before on the battlefields.

 

[Harris]

If I had to be labeled, I'd want to be a Unionist because I have 4! GGG grandfathers who fought for the Union side. I often wonder why they enlisted; were they abolitionists, fighting to save the Union, or just out for an adventure? Sometimes when I get enthralled in a book about Confederate anything, I think to myself "why am I starting to admire this guy, he was actively trying to kill my Grandfathers"
If he would've succeeded in doing so to even 1 of the 4, I wouldn't be here today!
But like everyone else, after awhile I see the "Grey guys" as just Americans, like me. And deep down inside, I know if I was alive in the 1860's and lived in the South I would've been a Johnny Reb.

 

[Awanita]

Guess I might not make much sense here but here it goes. I tend to side to my home land, which is Arkansas, it belonged to my ancestors long before Europeans come over. I would have fought beside my Native American ancestors the Cherokee to keep it back then. Then my home land Was a territory of the United States I would have fought for her to be part of the United States during the war of 1812 and other wars that would have taken my home Arkansas. When she left the Union, I would have to stand to defend her, as I would have done all down through the changing times of history. Once the war was over and she was brought back into the Union I would have stood and defendened her for the United States as I would and do This very day. She has been apart of my family for a long long time and that is where I stand. I say all that to say this. It is sad that we as a nation, a people, a culture had to endure what period of time in history but it was necessary for it to happen to get us to the nation we finally became. I know it looks crappy now with all that is going on but we have come a long way from the 1860.

JMO and hope I explained so some could understand.

 

[KansasFreestater]

Culturally I don't identify with the North but when it comes to the war I agreed with their objective. Preserve the Union and end slavery.

Exactly, Southern Blue. I guess you could say I'm a "southern blue" too. If you were raised as I was in the land of magnolias and oleanders and mockingbirds singing all night long, and you spent your prime in the land of bayous and Spanish moss and eight-month-long summers, it's in your blood forever. (literally in the blood; after 25 years in Kansas, my thin Gulf Coast blood is still not used to "spring" that's more like winter!)

 

[Harris]

Guess I might not make much sense here but here it goes. I tend to side to my home land, which is Arkansas, it belonged to my ancestors long before Europeans come over. I would have fought beside my Native American ancestors the Cherokee to keep it back then. Then my home land Was a territory of the United States I would have fought for her to be part of the United States during the war of 1812 and other wars that would have taken my home Arkansas. When she left the Union, I would have to stand to defend her, as I would have done all down through the changing times of history. Once the war was over and she was brought back into the Union I would have stood and defendened her for the United States as I would and do This very day. She has been apart of my family for a long long time and that is where I stand. I say all that to say this. It is sad that we as a nation, a people, a culture had to endure what period of time in history but it was necessary for it to happen to get us to the nation we finally became. I know it looks crappy now with all that is going on but we have come a long way from the 1860.

JMO and hope I explained so some could understand.

I love you response Awanita! Bless your Razorback heart!

 

[Awanita]

I love you response Awanita! Bless you Razorback heart!

Wado unalii (Thank you Friend)

 

[Mark F. Jenkins]

For me, it depends on the facet of the war under consideration. If the topic is something like validity/legality of secession, moral questions of slavery, etc., I'm Unionist and abolitionist all the way, as I firmly believe that slavery was an unmitigated evil and that disunion would have been the end of the United States.

But when the topic under discussion is military tactics and strategy, or technology, or (of course) anything involving gunboats, I find plenty to discuss and even to admire on both sides-- as well as things to criticize on both sides. To cite a more specific example, engineering genius is engineering genius, and in that respect it doesn't matter whether we're talking about a John Mercer Brooke or a John Ericsson, a James B. Eads or a Matthew Fontaine Maury, it's still fascinating and admirable... the achievement of putting together the Hunley and its predecessors was no less significant or interesting than the development of the Monitor. And so forth.

 

[hanna260]

The Union - it's a kind of machine isn't it? (Or that's the way legend presents it). And then there's the underdog thing... the plucky little guy up against the bullies; Gary Cooper standing alone as high noon chimes.

I'd agree and disagree. I think it's easier to find heroes in the Southern pantheon because that's kind of the way they've been represented- Lost Cause movement and all that jazz, but it's funny when you actually start reading about the Union leaders- they were anything but a machine, Rosecrans, Thomas, Grant, Sherman, Sheridan- all plucky guys, all unique and weirdos in their own way- definitely not dull and dreary. Just until recently there was no focus on them- or whatever focus tried to make them out to be as colorless as possible.

I'm really not connected to this sort of stuff- so while I think the Union or North, I guess you can say, was in the right, I don't think that everything they did was right or every person fighting for the North was right. There's a lot to admire about the individual people on both sides- so many people were just simple folks trying to do what they thought was best- for their country, for their families, and yes- for them, too. I do think, sometimes, we (me too!) let partisanship cloud our objective lenses a bit, but I do think it's admirable and important to remember that history and "sides" in history rarely come in black and white. History is not a fairytale story, I guess. Kudos to you, Bill!

 

[kepi]

The only time I have moved toward one side over the other was a Vicksburg where my Great-Great-Grandfather fought with the 38th Mississippi under Herbert. He not only survived the 47-day siege, but also a 2,200-pound black-powder mine detonated 40-feet below the fortifications.