Confederate monuments tumble; and others?

As we watch the continuing saga of demonstrations against Confederate memorials and statues vs. Southerners who claim removing these icons demeans their history and heritage, America needs more clarity and understanding on this issue

 

As I wrote last week, the statues of Confederate soldiers that can be found in most county seats of the old Confederacy, which was defeated 165 years ago, pose no threat to Americans in the 21^st century.

 

Last week, a San Francisco mob protesting Confederate statues tore down a statue of Gen. U.S. Grant. The Union general was largely responsible for defeating the Confederate army and freeing the slaves. As president from 1869 to 1877, Grant presided over what was probably the administration friendliest to African-Americans until the Truman administration. Grant had ordered U.S. troops to defend the civil rights of freedmen, a practice that would end after the “Compromise of 1876,” which ended Reconstruction.

 

Yet, the mobs who want to tear down statues tackled Grant, too, reportedly on the grounds that he, at one time, owned an inherited slave. The same San Francisco mob knocked down a statue of Spanish missionary Father Junipero Serra, a Catholic saint. A statue of Christopher Columbus was beheaded last week by protesters condemning his treatment of indigenous Americans. Where will this attitude lead? Are the tombstones and homes of soldiers and slaveholders off limits? How strong a disinfectant will be needed to purge America of its infection of racism, slavery and white supremacy?

 

The protesters want to punish men and women who lived in the 19^th century or earlier and failed to adopt the moral principles and social norms of the  21^st century, but those fighting to preserve the heritage of the Confederate years may not be truthful in their protection of statues, flags and other icons.

 

James McPherson, a Princeton history professor who wrote what is to me the best one-volume history of the Civil War (“Battle Cry of Freedom”), has a new essay in The New York Review of Books in which he breaks the news to defenders of the Old South that their version of history of the Civil War and of the antebellum and post-war years is seriously flawed. McPherson calls it “Southern Comfort” — a comforting explanation of how and why their southern armies failed to defeat the Union and what caused the war. The myth of the “Lost Cause” claims superior armies, greater sacrifices and better leaders succumbed only to the superior numbers and wealth of the enemy. Southerners had to comfort themselves that their cause was greater, wasn’t about slavery and wasn’t a fair fight.

 

But it was slavery. McPherson and other historians make clear, slavery was the primary cause of the Civil War and its 620,000 deaths. Worse, the iconography of the South after the war, its tale of noble cavaliers and fearless infantrymen. States’ rights and economic differences perpetuated the lie that the South had God and morality on its side. This led to the discrimination and racial segregation that continued halfway through the 20^th century.

 

But Confederate soldiers and leaders do not bear the guilt alone for slavery and racism. New England merchants profited from the slave trade. Universities, including Yale, Harvard and Georgetown, exploited slave labor to build their institutions. British ships carried Africans in chains to slave auctions in the South and the Caribbean. To participants, these voyages were, as a Mafia don might explain, “just business,” and a profitable business at that.

 

Protesters who want to wipe out every vestige of slavery and discrimination will have to require a lot of historic figures and institutions to do penance for their crimes. Many historians have argued that it is wrong to judge people of the past by today’s (vastly changed) standards. That warning should add nuance to the roles of people in the history of slavery and race in America.

Don't want to Bragg, but ...

The latest battleground in the effort to obliterate all reminders of slavery and slave owners apparently will be the names of U.S. Army bases, many of which are named after Confederate generals.

That is a distinction at which I have often marveled. Why name Army bases after people who fought against the U.S. Army? The answer apparently is that when new Army bases were established in the 20th century, Confederate heroes were still popular among local officials in the South, and the Army gave local officials naming rights for the new bases that engulfed millions of acres of land.

One Army base's name has a bit of irony. Fort Bragg near Fayetteville, N.C., is named after Braxton Bragg, who is widely regarded as probably the worst general in the Confederacy. He might be one of the worst generals in history! Activists who want to purge Bragg's name from the huge Army base might want to think twice. Yes, Bragg was loyal to the Confederacy, and he was a slave owner (as nearly all wealthy individuals in the Old South were), but his bumbling and ignorance of strategy and tactics probably shortened the Civil War by several months and saved many thousands of lives, North and South. His incompetence was especially noted at Chattanooga and Franklin, Tennessee.

If Southern defenders of the Confederacy took a moment to learn more about Bragg, they might be less interested in defending the Bragg name. Yankees wanting to erase Confederate names from American soil might want to reconsider and make Bragg an honorary Union general. After all, he probably did far more from the Union cause that he did for the Confederate cause.

One fewer Confederate statue: does anyone notice?

This post was originally published in the Wilson Times Nov. 30, 2019.

The statue of a Confederate soldier in front of the Chatham County Courthouse and within a traffic circle surrounding the old courthouse has been removed. During my four years of college, I drove around that courthouse and passed that statue each time I went home or returned to campus. In all those times passing the statue, I never gave it much thought; it was just background scenery.

The statue was removed Nov. 19 after the Chatham County Board of Commissioners chose to remove it. This removal follows actions in other towns and states to remove Confederate monuments from public land. Some statues, including the “Silent Sam” statue on the University of North Carolina campus and a statue at the Durham County Courthouse, were brought down by protesters who took the law into their own hands.

Confederate statues, mainly installed in the first quarter of the 20^th century to honor local residents who had fought on the Confederate side in the Civil War, are ubiquitous across the South and, therefore, little noticed. The statue at Chapel Hill was a memorial to the UNC students who postponed their studies to fight in the war. Many of the memorials across the South were paid for or advocated by United Daughters of the Confederacy chapters.

Many African-Americans have objected to the statues and other reminders of the Civil War, including the display of Confederate battle flags. Other protesters against memorials to Confederates, including left-wing “anti-fascists” and veterans of other demonstrations for liberal causes, joined the original protesters. Controversies like this have brought out angry counter-protesters who see the toppling of monuments as a way to erase history.

Emotions are strong. The Chatham County commissioners’ meeting about that county’s statue was called “rowdy” as residents on both sides of the issue loudly made their views known. Some arrests were made in Chatham County and during the Silent Sam protests in Chapel Hill.

Estimates are that there are more than 1,000 Confederate statues or memorials across the South, and about the same number of memorials to Union soldiers in the North, reminders of the deadliest war in American history.

You can mark me as ambivalent about Confederate statues. I have never felt inspired by one, although two of my great-great-grandfathers died in the Civil War while wearing Rebel gray (one in battle, one from disease). I don’t think of my ancestors when I see a Confederate statue, nor do I find the statues to be an endorsement of slavery.

The overwhelming proportion of Confederate soldiers (including my dirt-poor great-great-grandfathers) had no interest in slavery or the slave economy. They fought for what they saw as their patriotic duty, defending their homes and their sovereign state from what they saw as an invading army. These boys in gray were in many ways victims of the war that was thrust upon them by wealthy, slave-owning aristocrats. As N.C. Gov. Zebulon Vance said, “It’s a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight.”

What disturbs me most about the toppling of Civil War monuments (from South or North) is the fact that they are memorials to a generation who died doing their duty as they saw it. The memorials were an effort to assuage the grief of losing a father, brother, son or neighbor in that awful war. Every family in the South lost someone. I find it particularly sad that today’s UNC students cannot see the sacrifice that students and their families made, rightly or wrongly, 160 years ago.

Today’s partisans of the Confederate memorials issue might want to take a look at some photos from the 50^th anniversary of the 1863 battle of Gettysburg. The photos from the 1913 reunion show aged Union and Confederate soldiers sharing food, smiles, seats and mementos with a camaraderie that would shock today’s protesters. They celebrated their sacrifices and achievements together and gave honor and respect to those on the other side. Fifty years before, they had been intent on killing each other.

Today’s Americans, unlike the frail former combatants of 1913, seem determined to refight the past.

 
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Biography offers a second look at U.S. Grant

This post was published in The Wilson Times March 23, 2019.

As a native North Carolinian with two great-great-grandfathers who served in the Confederate army and were killed in the Civil War, I never was a great fan of Ulysses S. Grant. But after reading Ron Chernow’s 1,000-page biography of Grant, simply titled “Grant,” I’m more sympathetic.

I thought I knew what I needed to know about Grant, the Union general who took over after President Lincoln had fired or demoted all of his predecessors, including McClelland, Hooker, Meade, Burnside, Butler, etc. Unlike his predecessors, Grant did not reverse course and head back to the Potomac after being defeated or badly outflanked by Robert E. Lee’s troops. From reading a number of Civil War books, my image of Grant was of a man who used superior manpower and resources to decimate the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia and ultimately force Lee’s surrender. Grant stubbornly kept his Army of the Potomac on Lee’s heels until Lee finally had no place to go.

That stubbornness also showed itself at Cold Harbor, where Grant ordered consecutive, suicidal charges against an entrenched Confederate line. Union troops were so resigned to dying as they prepared for one more hopeless charge that they pinned their names, written on scraps of paper, onto their clothing so their bodies could be identified after the killing was over. Critics North and South called Grant “a butcher.”

In a thousand pages, I should certainly learn a lot about Grant, and I did. I have a greater appreciation of the man who rode his Civil War fame to become the 18^th president of the United States. I’m still not convinced that Grant was a great military tactician, but his strong determination to finish his work, whatever it was, served him well in war.

Grant had a troubled childhood with a domineering, unloving father, and his marriage to Julia Dent gave him a difficult father-in-law, who was a demanding, slave-holding plantation owner who never liked his son-in-law and his anti-slavery family. Grant went to West Point for the free education and was not the best student. He resigned from his Army career and tried to succeed in private business but repeatedly failed.

Chernow frequently asserts that Grant’s lack of business success was the result of an inability to judge people who would take advantage of him. Grant lacked a healthy skepticism about dishonest people. As a result, Grant found himself broke more than once. The worst loss came after his two terms in the White House, when a slick financial adviser fleeced him of his life’s savings, leaving his family destitute.

One critic said Chernow has a tendency to see only the good in the subjects of his biographies, and that is certainly true of “Grant.” It is difficult to swallow the author’s excuses for Grant’s ignorance of basic personal finance and his trusting of shysters who saw him as an easy mark. Nevertheless, Grant was very successful as a military strategist, lauded by some as the greatest general of the century. His presidential terms were fairly successful but difficulties arose from Grant’s tendency to surround himself with untrustworthy people, making his presidency perhaps the most scandal-ridden in U.S. history.

One aspect of this history is the federal government’s failure during Reconstruction to stop violence against newly emancipated African-Americans. Chernow documents numerous incidents of violence and murder of former slaves and their families by Ku Klux Klan members and other white supremacists. Grant was more willing than others to call out federal troops to defend civil rights in the former Confederacy, but his actions were not enough to stop the murdering racists determined to keep the black population, as well as white Republicans, from voting, despite the 13^th, 14^th and 15^th Amendments. The failure to protect the rights of citizens should be an embarrassment to all Americans, and it has shaped U.S history for 150 years. The public and elected officials both North and South ignored cries for justice.

I don’t recall the U.S. history courses I took making clear just how widespread violence, intimidations and flagrant murders were in the post-war South. When I was in school, Reconstruction was taught as a lamentable era of scandal, graft and wasteful spending by state governments run by former slaves, some of whom were illiterate. The larger issue, it is obvious, is the refusal of many whites to accept the results of the Civil War that killed 600,000 Americans, gave former slaves the right to vote, and left half the nation destitute, its economy destroyed and its greatest form of wealth — African slaves — eliminated without compensation.

This biography of Grant is worth reading just for what it tells us about the Radical Republicans vs. white supremacist Democrats during Reconstruction. But there is much more in those thousand pages.

Hal Tarleton is a former editor of The Wilson Daily Times. Contact him at haltarleton@myglnc.com.

Civil War history is full of tragedy and nuance

Thanks to historian Philip Gerard for providing some historical context to the debates over Confederate monuments. Gerard's op-ed piece in Sunday's News & Observer was about a new Civil War museum planned for Fayetteville. The museum is to be housed on a historic site where a key U.S. and (later) CSA arsenal had stood.

This museum will be about more than the battles and about more than slavery or states' rights or any of the other issues involved in the war. As Gerard points out, North Carolina's Civil War history "is complicated and full of nuance." Many, probably most, North Carolinians see the Civil War as a struggle between slave-owning aristocrats on their plantations vs. enslaved African-Americans and the northern liberators who sought to free them.

In fact, most Confederate soldiers did not own slaves, and many were little better off economically than some slaves or free blacks. As N.C. Gov. Zebulon Vance admitted, the Civil War was “a rich man’s war but a poor man’s fight.” The aristocrats could buy their way out of military service. Even among that elitist population, not all were die-hard supporters of slavery. Many North Carolinians, especially those in the mountainous western part of the state, opposed secession and fought either a guerrilla war against the Confederacy or enlisted in the Union Army.

The stated purpose of the Lincoln administration was to preserve the Union. Only near the end of the war did Lincoln add abolition of slavery to his war goals.

By the end of this ill-begotten war, the South's economy was utterly destroyed. Farms were burned, livestock was claimed as bounty of war, industrial sites were destroyed, wealth in the form of Confederate dollars became worthless. It would take the seceding states most of the next 100 years to catch up with other states in economic health.

The war settled issues that had been simmering since the founding of the republic — slavery and the sovereignty of member states. While slavery was widely viewed as evil and inhumane, it was widely practiced throughout the 18th and 19th centuries.

The question of secession had never been settled in federal courts. The Constitution does not forbid states from resigning from the Union, and those states were less than 100 years from the precedent of the United Colonies' decision to secede from British rule.

The debate over Confederate monuments ignores these nuances and paints everything related to the Confederacy as reprehensible. While some Confederate monuments extol individuals whose views on slavery and the "brotherhood of man" may be repulsive to 21st century minds, other monuments offer gratitude for people who made America's most devastating war less awful. Among these is the monument on the N.C. Capitol grounds honoring Southern wives and mothers who endured incredible hardship, tragedy and sacrifice during four years of war, which included a strategy of destroying the Confederacy's ability to wage war, meaning the destruction of anything of value in Southern hands.

Many other monuments address the sacrifices of nameless Confederate soldiers who sacrificed their lives for a cause they had little stake in and hardly understood. Slavery hung in the balance, it is true, but slavery was not the motivation of most of these poor unfortunates.

Destruction of these monuments will not provide context for a tragic war, nor will it improve the plight of descendants of slavery and segregation.

Abraham Lincoln and Civil War memories

A North Carolina legislator has compared Abraham Lincoln to Hitler, calling our 16th president a tyrant and holding him personally responsible for 800,000 deaths. People like him are running this state's education system?

First, some admissions: Many southerners reviled Lincoln, partly because he threatened the economic system of the South, which was based on slave labor, but also because of his decision to forcefully prevent the Confederate states from leaving the Union. The Civil War wreaked horrendous damage upon the South, where nearly all of the battles were fought, and where federal policy called for destroying the ability to wage war, which included destroying crops and farmland that could support armies and civilians.

An elderly teacher from my childhood told about a Confederate veteran she had known when she was a child. Given change at a store, the old man refused to accept pennies because they bore the likeness of Abraham Lincoln, a man he hated. That is how ingrained and intense feelings toward Lincoln were.

News coverage of the Lincoln-Hitler analogy raised the question of whether secession of states was constitutional. Some "experts" said the states' ratifying of the Constitution made secession unconstitutional. That, it seems to me, is a stretch. There was nothing in the Constitution that forbade secession or made a state's ratification irrevocable. Secessionists claimed, with some validity, that their decision to leave the Union was no different from the Continental Congress' decision to leave the British Empire.

Even if we assume secession was a legitimate course, it need not lead to Civil War. This disagreement could have been fought in the courts instead of on the fields of Manassas, Gettysburg, Shiloh and other places. Secessionists in South Carolina are primarily responsible for turning the disagreement into armed conflict. They fired the first shot, bombarding Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor in an effort to unseat the Union garrison. Lincoln responded by attempting to reinforce and resupply that garrison and by raising an army to enforce Union authority throughout the seceded states.

Small miscalculations often lead to tragedy. The secessionists were certain they could expel federal troops from the South. Lincoln was certain that a show of force would bring the secessionists to their senses. Both were wrong. What followed was the greatest tragedy in American history, but it came with one benefit: It ended slavery decades before that economic system would have died from its own shortcomings and the public's revulsion.

Lincoln did cancel habeas corpus and jailed people without trial, but he was facing imminent assassination and sabotage by Confederate agents and sympathizers. For any errors Lincoln might have made, he gets a pass based on his soaring rhetoric that defines American principles of "government of the people, for the people and by the people," and "malice toward none and charity for all."

His assassination denied the nation an opportunity for more peaceful and amicable reconciliation, with charity for all.

Lincoln as Hitler? Ridiculous! A shameful analogy!

Changing names can't change history

I know little about William Lawrence Saunders, for whom Saunders Hall at UNC-Chapel Hill is named, but I am concerned about the movement to remove his name from a campus building that has borne that name for some 70 years. It is alleged that Saunders was a leader of the Ku Klux Klan, but no primary documents confirm that allegation. I can accept that allegation as truthful and still doubt the wisdom of removing his name.

Being a member of the Ku Klux Klan in 2015 is a clearly despicable act, one that is roundly condemned in today's society. But being a member of the KKK was not, in Saunders' time, a reviled act. The KKK is remembered as a violent terror organization, and members unquestionably used terrorist tactics to pursue their interests, but it also represented a political point of view, which aimed to return political power to the white gentry that controlled the state before the Civil War. The struggle for political power pitched the former aristocracy against newly franchised blacks and poor whites. The bitter taste of an occupying army during Reconstruction also fueled resentment against the change in political winds. So to 19th century minds, the relationship between these competing groups might be described by a 21st century term: "It's complicated."

The 19th century context of Saunders' life should caution today's North Carolinians against being too quick to judge. Saunders is credited with performing essential work in collecting and cataloging colonial records of the state. But that's not the main reason for not removing his name from a building.

The main reason is that historical characters should not be judged by contemporary standards. By today's standards, every 19th century American was racist is some ways. Abraham Lincoln, the Great Emancipator, approved of the idea of sending freed slaves back to Africa. Most wealthy men in the South (and many in the North) owned slaves. The notion of racial superiority was widespread, if not universal among Americans and Europeans of the time.

And let's not even get into the rampant sexism of the 19th century.

Charles B. Aycock, once lauded as North Carolina's Education Governor, has been shamed by having his name removed from schools and college buildings because Aycock helped bring about the disenfranchisement of black voters and the return of Democratic (i.e., white) rule. Despite the embarrassment about Aycock's 19th century beliefs, his positive impact on North Carolina's public schools is unquestionable. To make him a historical non-person is shameful.

Where might this sanitizing of history and the triumph of our 21st century sensibilities lead? We should certainly change the names of the Washington Monument and the Jefferson Memorial. Both were slave owners. Also change the name of Washington, D.C., Washington, N.C., and the state of Washington.

Instead, let's stop and take a breath. Historical characters cannot live up to today's standards because those standards did not exist in their day. Let them live in their historical context because they cannot live up to our own. 

Booth destroyed South's best hope

On April 14 150 years ago, John Wilkes Booth assassinated Abraham Lincoln, who was watching a play in Ford's Theater. It was the first presidential assassination in U.S. history, but it wouldn't be the last.

Booth, a Southern sympathizer, apparently believed that killing Lincoln would aid the Confederacy, whose largest armies had surrendered in the previous two weeks. Lincoln had toured the nearly demolished Confederate capital just 90 miles away in Richmond. The South was in ruins; its armies were defeated; hundreds of thousands of its soldiers were killed; its agricultural economy was ruined, its barns, fields and plantation houses were smoldering.

In killing Lincoln, Booth did exactly the opposite of his intentions. Instead of helping the Confederacy, he hurt it. Weeks earlier, at his second inauguration, Lincoln spoke of how he hoped to bring the seceding states and the loyal states back together after four years of horrific warfare. He promised a post-war policy "With malice toward none, with charity for all," He would work "to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."

Lincoln's death changed the post-war policy. The vengeance that Lincoln had opposed was imposed as retribution for his death. Although the paroling of Confederate soldiers and their generals and political leaders was generous and perhaps unprecedented in the history of warfare, little was done to resurrect the South's devastated economy. Its agricultural base was destroyed. The fertile Shenandoah Valley was left in ashes. Its railroads were ruined. Its Confederate money was worthless. And an occupying army of Union soldiers stoked resentment among grieving widows and orphans and frustrated veterans. For nearly 100 years after Reconstruction, Southerners kept former slaves and their descendents subjugated and politically powerless.

Had Lincoln shaped Reconstruction, he might have formed policies that would be more palatable to the former Confederates. He might have helped former slaves and former slave owners to see their mutual interest in redeveloping the South. Had he lived, northern politicians would be less interested in seeing the South suffer for its sins.

But John Wilkes Booth, with one gunshot, hurt the South he loved far more than he hurt the North he opposed.

The Civil War sesquicentennial and the horrors of war

It's the 150th anniversary, the sesquicentennial, of the Civil War, so I have attended two 150th anniversary events in the past year. In September, I went to Winchester, Va., for the commemoration of the Third Battle of Winchester, where my great-great-grandfather took a bullet to the abdomen while advancing with his 43rd North Carolina regiment and disappeared from the historical record. He presumably is buried in one of the unmarked graves at Winchester.

At Bentonville Sunday, I watched the re-enactment of the three-day Battle of Bentonville, where a badly depleted and outnumbered Confederate army tried to halt, or at least slow, the advance of Gen. William T. Sherman's march from Georgia up the coast to close out the Civil War.

I thoroughly enjoyed Sunday's event. We wandered among the sutler tents selling uniforms, weapons, civilian clothes and the provisions of the 19th century. We sat on the ground and waited for the re-enactment to begin, then watched as dedicated re-enactors fired historically accurate muskets, pistols, repeating rifles and cannon in an effort to show an audience of thousands what the March 19, 1865 battle was like.

For all of the fascination I and others held for this event, we have to admit that this was a sanitized, bloodless, danger-less, fairy tale version of war. The muskets fired black powder, which made huge clouds of smoke, but no musket balls or more accurate minie balls whizzed through the air. The re-enactors followed 19th century military procedures. They marched in formation. They wore authentic, handmade clothes and wore shoes and boots of the period.

Missing, however, was the horror of the war. A few re-enactors fell in battle, but they fell from the directions in a script, not because a minie ball had shattered a femur or because a cannonball tore off their heads. This was a battle without carnage. In a typical battle, scores of horses might die from artillery fire or bullets. Their carcasses would lie for days or weeks on the putrid battlefield as the hundreds or thousands of dead soldiers were buried first.

No one exploded into a red cloud when struck by a cannonball's shock wave. No one lost an arm to gunfire or to a cavalry sword. No arms or feet or legs littered the battleground when it was over, as would have been the case in a major engagement such as happened at Bentonville 150 years ago when 80,000 soldiers engaged in well-planned and pitiless murder.

This Civil War sesquicentennial is growing to a close, and that may be a good thing. I have been fascinated by the Civil War for more than 50 years, when America celebrated the centennial of that awful conflict, and I have visited many battlefields and museums dedicated to the war. But I see now not the glory of battle but the horrors of it. That is one thing we must not lose sight of at this sesquicentennial or at any other time.

Referendum is better way to resolve secession issue

On Thursday, the people of Scotland get to vote on secession. They will decide whether to remain a part of Great Britain, and the British, who conquered Scotland centuries ago, will go along with their decision.

How much more civilized than the secession crisis the United States underwent 150 years ago! Suppose South Carolina and the other Confederate states had opted for a peaceful referendum on secession instead of bombarding a fort occupied by what the S.C. secessionists considered a "foreign power"? And what if newly elected President Abraham Lincoln had not taken the bait and declared, instead, that the United States would respect the decision of the Southerners to decide their own destiny and "dissolve the political bonds that have connected them with another" (in the words of the Declaration of Independence). Could a disastrous civil war have been prevented? Would other Southern states follow South Carolina's lead and joined the Confederacy? It seems likely that North Carolina, which initially rejected secession, might have remained with the Union and not lost tens of thousands of its young men and much of its wealth to four years of war.

What if this dispute had been settled by a referendum instead of half a million deaths and the utter destruction from which the South, where most of the battles were fought, did not recover for 100 years? Not everything about this scenario is appealing. Slavery would have persisted in the Confederate States, but that "peculiar institution" could not have long survived the global revulsion toward such an inhumane system. Perhaps a peaceful settlement would have allowed for compensation of slaveholders for loss of their valuable property and compensation of slaves for their generations of bondage and uncompensated labor. The expense would have been tremendous, but probably no more costly than a war that nearly bankrupted the United States and made Confederate states destitute and feeble for decades.

If political ties must be severed, surely the better, more civilized way is through a binding referendum. My Scottish and Scot-Irish ancestors might disagree, but I hope Scotland remains a part of Great Britain. 

Gettysburg still echoes after 150 years

One hundred fifty years ago tonight, the largest battle ever fought on American soil was marching toward its bloody, tragic and, ultimately, fortunate end. The crossroads of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, was the unwilling host of this three-day battle and remains the most-visited Civil War site in the nation.

I have visited Gettysburg twice, but I'm ready to go again if the opportunity arises. My first visit was on a rainy Saturday about 40 years ago. My parents and sister had come up to our Alexandria, Virginia, home for a visit, and we drove to Gettysburg from there on a misty, intermittently rainy Saturday. My wife and I went to Gettysburg about 10 years ago, spending the entire day driving and walking over the battlefield and having to leave before we had quenched our thirst for this critical battle of the war that tore America apart. If you can't visit, I suggest a look at the Civil War Trust's Gettysburg website or the many volumes of histories and myriad documentaries of the battle that killed or wounded around 40,000 Americans. The Diane Rhem Show featured a panel discussion of the battle today.

The battle was the so-called "high-water mark" of the Confederacy, but the out-manned Confederate army lost each of the day's fights. Nevertheless, the battle could easily have gone the other way. If Ewell had acted promptly and pushed the Union troops off the high ground on July 1, if Union soldiers had not held the line on Little Round Top on July 2, or if Longstreet had moved more quickly and decisively on July 3, the outcome could have been different. Or if Robert E. Lee had been more specific and less trusting of his lieutenants throughout the battle, the South might have pushed Meade and his troops off the gently rolling Pennsylvania hills and might have frightened the Northern electorate into an armistice, status quo antebellum. Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich has written with William R. Forstchen a convincing and readable alternative history ("Gettysburg") based on the idea that Lee might have taken Longstreet's advice and dug in the weary Confederates on defensible ground between Gettysburg and Washington, forcing Meade's hand. The United States came close to being divided; the victory at Gettysburg (my great-great grandfather fought there for the losing side) turned the tide of the war, along with the conquest that same week of Vicksburg, Miss., and put an end to the scourge of slavery.

As the Diane Rhem Show segment pointed out, slavery really was at the heart of the Civil War. But it was not the only cause of the war, and it was not the primary motivation for many soldiers North and South. My ancestor, a Mexican War veteran, was a poor farm laborer who owned no slaves and no real estate. He had no coin in the game being played by wealthy planters wanting to preserve their wealth and their way of life. But he, and many others like him, fought bravely and gave their lives (he gave his at Third Winchester in 1864) for a cause that was beyond slavery. State sovereignty might have been too big a term for their uneducated minds, but they could understand that their homes were being threatened and their friends were being killed.

As Civil War history is being constantly rewritten, Tony Horwitz points out that new scholarship suggests that war might have been avoided altogether. With greater wisdom, less bravado and more diplomacy and caution on both sides, the war might have been avoided. The Union's expenditures on the war would have been enough to buy and free all of the South's slaves and provide those freed slaves with land and capital to start new lives — all without the loss of more than half a million lives and the destruction of homes, public buildings and farms.

150 years ago today ...

On this day 150 years ago, the Civil War officially began. Over the next four years, the war would kill more than 600,000 Americans, destroy the wealth and economy of the Southern states, free the African-American slaves, sow bitterness on both sides and empower the federal government as the pre-eminent political power in this union of sovereign states. As we commemorate the 150th anniversary of this war, which is a source of intense fascination by history buffs and others, debates about the origins of the war will rage on, as they have for 150 years.

The secession movement was about slavery, but it was also about economic policy. It was also about interpretation of the Constitution and the perceptions of the not-so-long departed Founding Fathers. The Constitution does not forbid secession, and it hints that "these United States" comprise a voluntary alliance. But the secessionists were determined to "cut off their nose to spite their face." Secession might not have been an act of treason, but it was was an act of foolhardiness — with tragic consequences. At the end of the war, the South was laid waste by a military policy and a personal bitterness that was unprecedented. The Shenandoah Valley of Virginia was torched from one end to the other. Gen. William T. Sherman's destructive path through the South was so cruel and complete that generations of Southern mothers threatened misbehaving children with the omen of Sherman. Although slavery was the spark that ignited the war, most Confederate soldiers owned no slaves and had no stake in the economic system that left many of them with little more economic power than slaves. My great-great-grandfather,
who died at Third Winchester on Sept. 18, 1864, had worn U.S. blue in the War with Mexico. He owned no slaves and no real estate. He was tenant farmer with five children. His widow would sign an application for a Confederate widow's pension with her "X."

The Civil War was a tragic failure of a young and fast-growing nation's political system. A political compromise of almost any description would have been preferable to the four years of unmitigated tragedy that ensued. Whom to blame? Surely, the hot-heads of South Carolina who lit the fuse in Charleston Harbor on this day in 1861 deserve a large share of the blame. The staunch abolitionists who sought immediate and uncompensated emancipation of all slaves failed to understand the investment Southern agriculture had in slave labor. Surely the moderates of both sides should have been more assertive in seeking a middle path.

I, too, am infinitely fascinated by the Civil War, sometimes described as the first modern war with its introduction of ironclad naval vessels, a submarine, repeating rifles and trench defenses. I have stood in awe on many of the battlefields and marveled at the bravery of men with no real stake in the political issues of the war who obediently met their deaths. The Civil War is worth remembering, worth commemorating and worth learning from. Moderation and compromise can avoid the tragedies of extremism.

What are we getting ourselves into?

News of a conflagration in Libya has filled headlines for weeks, but the news today came as a shock. American and allied aircraft and missiles had struck not only the radar installations and surface-to-air missile sites in Libya but also ground troops and even a residence of Colonel Muammar Qaddafi.

What are we getting ourselves into? The photos and video from Tripoli look a lot like the scenes from Baghdad just eight years ago. President Obama and European leaders swear we will not get involved in a civil war in Libya, but using military force to aid one side against another looks an awful lot like getting involved in a civil war.

The United Nations voted to impose a no-fly zone over Libya as a means of preventing Qaddafi from slaughtering Libyans who wanted to overthrow him. American troops and armament are being used to support the anti-Qaddafi forces and to prevent Qaddafi from attaining his military objectives. No one in Europe or America is an admirer of Qaddafi. He has supported and exported terrorism for decades while strutting about as an Arab Napoleon. He has oppressed Libya and prohibited any political opposition. He is detestable. But is it America's or Europe's role to overthrow him? How much American blood and treasure are we willing to spend to ensure that Qaddafi doesn't prevail? Having set the precedent in Libya, will America be willing to lend military support to rebels in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iran, Saudi Arabia or whatever Arab nation is the next to crush a popular revolt? And we have little reassurance that Qaddafi's successor will be any more democratic or humanitarian than he has been.

The world was appalled by Qaddafi's ruthless attacks on his fellow countrymen, but evil exists around the world, not just in Libya. Neither America nor the United Nations can save every poor dissident from every ruthless dictator, but we can get bogged down in a civil war in which we have little at stake. It looks like we're already there.

Intended to be a museum, it's an eyesore

Remember this place? I ran across it earlier this week when I was out shooting pictures for Preservation of Wilson. It's the last remaining section of the Wilson Collegiate Institute, which became a Confederate military hospital during the Civil War. The original building stood on Green Street, if my memory is correct (I can't find any documentation online). Built sometime before the Civil War as Wilson Female Seminary, it housed wounded soldiers, many of whom died and were buried in a mass grave in Maplewood Cemetery. In 1872, it became Wilson Collegiate Institute and educated, among others, future Gov. Charles B. Aycock and newspaper publisher Josephus Daniels, according to the city's Web site. Around 1898, the large structure was divided into six houses, and the section depicted in the photo above is the last remaining segment.

This section stood on Oak Avenue. I've been told that graffiti left by Confederate patients is still visible on the rafters. For more than a decade, a small group of Wilsonians fought to prevent demolition of the dilapidated and abandoned structure and then to move it to a more suitable location, where it could be used as a history museum. Several years ago (a Wilson Times online archives search turned up no references to this event), the unit was moved to its current location on Goldsboro Street near the CSX railroad tracks. Emilie English, a tireless proponent of preserving the old building, led a group from United Daughters of the Confederacy that succeeded against the odds to save and move the building. Unfortunately, the group exhausted its funds with the expensive move, and no efforts have been made to restore the structure. English is now in a nursing home.

The historic building is an eyesore in an area where individuals have begun restoring some of the old mansions in the Woodard Circle area. City Council Thursday night postponed a request from the Community Health Center to turn over the city's old fire station (recently used as Hope Station) to the clinic because some local residents wanted to see the old station become a museum. The building pictured here was also intended to be a museum. The Wilson Collegiate Institute is one of the more historic buildings in Wilson, but without an expensive restoration, it will be nothing more than an eyesore.

Without a persistent and determined champion like Emilie English, the building's future is far dimmer than its past.