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.

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.