You'll love reading it and discussing it so do get this paperback book from your library or buy it and let's have some fun with this one.

Read all the five-star reviews of the book here: Confederates in the Attic - a book the New York Times says is "the freshest book about divisiveness in America that I have read in some time."

If you live in the South tell us what's wrong about the book, if you reside in the Northern states let's debate this author's and the views of those he interviewed.

Please post a message if you are interested!

Should be a lively discussion!

Ella,

I read this book a few years ago. I will have to say no one will sleep through it! Most people I know that read it thought it funny and entertaining. As a southerner, I was offended deep to my toes. I know there are people, a few at least, like those described in the book. But I don't think they represent the south, and I was sort of embarrassed for them throughout the book! Still, they're quite a lively lot. I don't think I'll be joining you, but I'm pretty sure you'll have a lively discussion!

Pamela

This sounds like a fun book to read. I think I need something to laugh about during this long winter. I check out amazon.com and join the party.

PAMELA, I appreciate your frankness and, indeed, there are some incidents in the book that were disturbing to me, particularly, the chapter titled "Dying for Dixie," and I am not a Southerner; however for the most part the book is entertaining.

WELCOME, SCRAWLER! We will need more than you and I to make up a quorum but let's be patient and see what develops.

Just to generate a bit of interest would you agree that:

to paraphrase the author: the romantic image of the South is a region rich with history and character, a rural backwater, but what I was to find is that it is a good place to see what America is becoming - suburban and exurban, politically conservative, anti-union, evangelical, a booming part of the global economy. An Arkansan has recently occupied the White House, a vice president was from Tennessee and a Georgian served as Speaker of the House."

Furthermore, the eleven states of the Old Confederacy comprise the fifth-largest economy in this world!

I've been doing research on the American Civil War for my alternate history of the Lincoln assassination novel that I'm writing, so I'm very interested in the South and their views on the Civil War.

I think throughout history we have always, for the most part, had romantic visions of the places we live in and especially the war years. The Old South during the Civil War had the romantic viewpoint of war that had been painted by poets and writers of 17th and 18th century.

Ella, I'm going out tomorrow to look for this book. It sounds interesting. I would like to have a look at it.

I'm still mad about not helping you to get Blood on the Moon going last year.

My heart has always been in the south, most especially in the winter time.

Jonathan

Ella have we gotten enough reader interest for a discussion of this book?

I hope so, Scrawler. If I remember correctly, you also wanted to have a discussion of Blood on the Moon.

I was going through a separation of sorts with another book, so I grabbed at this one on the rebound. And into Chapter 2 I'm really hooked. Wherever is Horwitz taking the reader in the company of this strange lot of characters?

HEY, JONATHAN! Good to see you here, the book can get you hooked very easily! They are still living the history of the Civil War down in the southern states where any of us that are freezing in Yankee territory would like to be.

When I think of all the movies and the books that are based on that conflagration I shiver to think of all the bloodshed - of course, isn't that true of all wars!

Right off the top of my head, I don't remember "BLOOD ON THE MOON" Jonathan - what was it about? Am sorry I haven't posted in your current discussion, but am so busy interviewing realtors and house business etc. at the moment! Anyone know how to choose between three very nice people who want me to sign a contract to sell my home?

SCRAWLER, we need one more to have a legitimate quorum! Let's keep our fingers and toes crossed someone will come along!

Thanks to both of you for your interest!

I got my hands on the book yesterday, and laughed with delight at the cover, of all things. I grin every time I think of that big, fierce looking man, dark and frowning, with the big,silky, 'Little Lord Fauntleroy' bow below his manly beard! Haven't even opened up the book yet, and already I'm enjoying it!

Babi

Ella get a relator and a financial advisor you can trust. After my husband died about ten years ago I had to sell our condo and was scared to death since I had never done it before. Trusting people was a little hard for me at that time, but I got a hold of a very understanding relator who also advised me about the folks who wanted to buy. If people were really interested in the condo, we did credit checks before we talked "turkey." It saves a lot of headache to do this right up front. I sold the condo the first day for twice what I asked for.

BABI! You make the third participant - the one we have been waiting for and we will cut the ribbon on this discussion Feb. lst.

HURRAY!

JONATHAN - I know you live in Canada - is there anything in Canadian history to compare at all (let's stick to the North American continent, we'll forget your close ties to England!) with our War Between the States? Any conflicts between the provinces up there?

Who lives in one of the southern states that seceded from the Union? I live in Ohio which had a very small volunteer force that joined the Union although there was a skirmish from Morgan's Raiders in southeastern Ohio.

SCRAWLER, I'm going through the same thing right now; my husband just died in September and I need to sell our home - I have already put a down payment on a condo. I've interviewed two realtors and one more is coming Wed., they all sound sincere and nice but how to tell which one is the more aggressive sales person? I'm all alone also and have never done this before - frightening! Thanks so much for your advice, I hope I do as well!

If I seem a bit shaky during this discussion, it is because I am - hahaha Please bear with me!

Have any of you ever witnessed a reenactment? Later, I'll tell you of the one time we did and it was so funny!

Horowitz attributes his interest in the Civil War partly to the story of his grandfather, a teenage draft dodger - a "shirker" in Yiddish (interesting that!) - and partly to buying a home in the middle of ole Vigininny near a graveyard where Confederates and Union soldiers were buried side by side.

THANK YOU ALL FOR YOUR INTEREST!

BaBi, I hope you're not making fun of Robert Lee Hodge's serious pose on the dust jacket. After reading your comment I took another look at it. Some misguided librarian has used part of his face and part of his fancy cravat as a place for her barcode sticker. I've tried peeling it off. With little success. Just made it a mess. I've already found his perfect double in the real world of Civil War times. There's a look just like that in a Brady photograph of W T Sherman. Well, Sherman's serious mien doesn't have quite the Hodge scowl.

Ella, have no fear. This book will look after itself. Canadian politix will probably require several long posts later on.

I will be looking forward to that post, Jonathan, we here in the States are self-absorbed at times in our history and should take more note of our neighbors to the North and South of us.

That fellow on the cover of the book I took to be a reenactor - he's too clean to be a soldier - he looks very mean. Certainly not a "Gone With the Wind" type.

I will be posting a Schedule of Discussion in the heading very soon and would like to request that we all attempt to read the book in this manner as it is more enjoyable if we are all discussing the same chapters.

And, Jonathan, thanks for that offer of help - it was that I hope!

JONATHAN, I need to catch up here. Who is Robert Lee Hodge? I assumed the photograh was deliberately posed in imitation of an old picture. What can you tell me about it?

Babi

Ella, I think a Schedule is a great idea. I'll certainly try to abide by it. I wish I had thought of it myself in another place. I'm looking forward to taking an active part in the discussion. I hope it will be helpful.

BaBi...'Who is Robert Lee Hodge?' I dunno. I found his name on the flap at the back of the book. He's one of the first characters we get to know. He does look very mean, as Ella says. He has to be a reenactor. He looks like a Gen Sherman to me. But surely he hasn't switched sides?

Robert Lee Hodge was a reenactor that the author met with the Southern Guard. "It's strange," she said, "but they all seemed like ordinary guys." Even Robert Lee Hodge had seemed, well, normal. During the week, he waited on tables and sometimes free-lanced articles for Civil War Magazines. I'd [author] once worked as a waiter, and at twenty-eight, which was Hodge's age, I'd [author] been a freelancer,too, although writing about more recent wars." (Page 9)Wasn't he the guy that posed for photographers as a dead Confederate?

Impossible. Just looking at him, I can't see him taking orders from anyone, least of all, at the diner.

Playing dead? With that face! This is a cover that really leaves one wondering about the book.

Y'all might find this site interesting. It depicts the various Confederate flags. The one we are most familiar with is the battle flag, not the national flag of the Confederacy.

Babi

http://help.aol.com/help/supportcentral/supportcentral.do?id=m1

Babi, I would love to see those flags, but I'm not having any luck at the aol.com/help site. What am I overlooking? I tried 'Confederate flags' in SEARCH, but it seemed to be an unknown there.

Jonathan

Jonathan, I thought that address was the one for the flags, as that was where I was when I copied it. Obviously it is not. I'll see if I can find them and try again.

Babi

Try this one, Jonathan.

http://americancivilwar.com/south/conflag/southflg.html

Babi

Ella congratulations on the quorum necessary for this discussion to begin. I wish all of you an active and rewarding discussion experience.

As many of you know, I am involved in moving to a San Antonio apartment. The essentials are now moved and this week I will try to activate a DSL connection. For this reason I will not be able to participate here but will follow your discussion, and perhaps if appropriate I will from time to time add a comment.

Jonathan, Ella raised interesting question concerning the comparative position of Canadian Provinces and their right to succeed from the Union. The issue certainly came up about 10 years ago leaving me with the impression that the Provinces retain that right. Is this a correct interpretation?

Incidentally I am sure the founding fathers in creating the US union and its constitution in 1787, fully expected that the States retained this right. It took a bloody war to decide the issue. Would the Canadian union go to such an effort to preserve their union?

This time I got the flags, Babi. Thanks. And they came with DIXIE. But something is wrong with my speakers, so that was disappointing.

Harold, stay tuned. Ella has picked another good one.

I can understand the problems great and small of the transition you're making.

The questions you ask about the constitutionality of secession will probably come up in the discussion. Could it happen in Canada? I wouldn't want to go out on a limb on that one. It would become a political thing as it did for you, I suppose. It would depend on leadership and vested interests if it should come to a crunch. What do you think? Could your Civil War have been avoided if Lincoln had been defeated in 1860? Did he seem that impossible to the south? Secession moves followed immediately after the election, if I remember correctly. I'd better do a quick refresher on some US history.

This promises to be a great discussion. Both serious and light.

HELLO HAROLD! Hope you have the time to stop in here from time to time and thanks, BABI, for the flags - and....

JONATHAN! What great questions and we will take those issues on one at a time in this discussion I'm sure, even if this book does not go into great detail regarding politics, President Lincoln, or the causes and consequences of the war; but I see no reason why we cannot all express an opinion.

Is there any symbolism in the title of the book other than as a young boy Horowitz painted murals of the conflit on the walls of his attic bedroom?

What do you store in your attic?

I was particularly intrigued by the quote from the NYTIMES in the front of the book as they speak of the "divisiveness" still existing in the USA, hmmmmmmm.

WELL, HELLO OUT THERE!

Hey Scrawler, Babi, Jonathan - anyone else looking in! Sounds like I'm calling reindeers -

Tis the night before.................

No, no, wrong time out of year, BUT RIGHT TIME OF YEAR FOR HISTORY LOVERS!

Am so anxious to hear your comments about the first four chapters in the book.

Do you think reenactors possibly promote romanticism of wars, heros, soldiering in general?

Oh, we have much to talk about, hope to see you all here tomorrow!

eg

Yeh, it's kind of romantic, until someone shouts, "Rob, do the bloat."

Ella, you wouldn't ask that question if you could see me now. I'm taking my stand here with Tarlton and Fowler, who have just pulled their revolvers from their coat pockets and holding them stiffly across their chests, declare themselves:

"Still armed and ready for action." In unison.

And with that I'm reporting for discussion duty, whatever that may entail. If it means bringing history back to life, isn't that worth any effort. Romantic or otherwise.

I am going to be busy for much of tomorrow, so this is a reply to your roll call. So happy to join you in this.

Jonathan

My husband and I went with our children to a re-enactment in northern California. It must have been sometime during the early 1970s. We were late getting there, so we had to park in the Confederate camp. There were a couple of things I remember about it.

First, there was a young American Indian trying to put up a tent. He was reading the instruction booklet and every time he'd get it up; it would collapse. There were a couple of "real" mountain men watching him - laughing hysterically. Adventually, they took piety on him and got the tent up. I overheard him telling the mountain men that he lived in a two bedroom house and wouldn't be putting up the tent except his kids wanted to see how "real" Indians lived.

You could hear the cannons shooting and men yelling as if you were right in the middle of the battle. At one point a group of Union officers rode through our encampment shouting. One of the officers stopped in front of my daughter who was about nine or ten at the time. He took off his hat and bowed to her and said: "Well, now if you aren't the prettiest Rebel a man ever saw." She in turn stamped her foot and told him: "I'm not a Rebel!" And with that he laughed and rode off!I think it was about that time I told my daughter that she really did have southern blood in her. My father's family is part Cajun.

Finally, as it grew dark on the first day I was trying to gather my family for dinner. We were dressed in modern day clothes and across the way I looked and saw another woman dressed in 1860s clothes trying to do the same thing. I suddenly realized that not much was different from the tasks that women had to do in the 1860s and 1970s.

Happy you checked in JONATHAN! But the idea of reenactments being romantic bothers me in that they do not portray the bloody hell of war – the young being killed and maimed for life and having nightmares for the rest of the life. Young children and adolescents watching the scene can be enthralled by the drama of it without realizing the horror of war!

Yes, to me that is disturbing even though I realize what a fun thing it must be for these men and quite a hobby to attempt to be “hardcore” and attempt to produce a “period rush.” I wonder if that would be the same emotion that long distance runners supposedly get at a certain point?

SCRAWLER – funny story and in CALIFORNIA! Union officers and rebels? Certainly they were putting in on, I don’t think the Civil War was extended to that territory or was it? Maybe I need to read up on the Civil War a bit more, huh? Let’s see, the gold rush was in 1949, for some reason I’ve always remembered that date, but wasn’t aware that California was affected by the Civil War.

And do I ever agree with you that women’s role in the family has not changed that much over time!

Those of you who are fortunate to have grandchildren, is it true that 95% of American students cannot identify an important event in Philadelphia in 1776? Oh, come on, say it isn’t so?

And 73% of adults do not know what D-Day means? (p.6)

Do any of you remember the expression “spooning” when you were young? It isn’t what was described in the sleeping arrangements of the reenactors – not at all. When we spooned it was by the light of the moon and wasn’t on a hard ground.

WHERE IS BABI?

ELLA, that is precisely what bothered me about the re-eneactments...the romanticizing of what was a terrible, bloody time.And those who pride themselves on 'hard-core' reality surely should realize that a little discomfort, bad food and mud is far from enduring the same thing while exhausted, sick, and grieving.

I wondered what a soldier of the Confederacy would say to these men if they could see them 're-enacting' the war. I imagined a cold stare, followed by "Go home! And thank God you can!"

Babi

The re-enacting seems to begin with the author's great-grandfather. Or certainly the re-imagining, with all his poring over Civil War sketches during his long lifetime. A true history buff. Strange that the draft dodger fleeing Czarist Russia in 1882 should turn into such an avid student of war. What opportunities there. The Russian Tolstoy was working on his War And Peace about that time I believe.

And the old man passed his enthusiasm along to succeeding generations. His one volume of sketches bacame a ten-volume photographic history of the Civil War with the author's father. And hardly out of grade three (would you believe it, in about that grade our teacher had us singing Marching Through Georgia as we paraded around the classroom. The words are coming back slowly. Wasn't it something about Sherman's dashing Yankee boys, will never reach the sea? We weren't on either side. We just loved the song. Along with others.)

He was hardly out of grade three when he muralled his attic room with his own Civil War Cyclorama! He seems to have been totally immersed in this significant part of his country's history.

The book cover flap of his book describes the author as a 'prize-winning war correspondent'. Is it any wonder? I don't doubt the authenticity of his dispatches, but having a mind so richly stored with vivid battlefield imagery must have made it an easy thing to report what he was seeing.

And who better qualified to write a refreshingly new and different book on the Civil War, when he came home from the foreign wars? What a surprise it must have been when he found that the battles of his childhood were still being fought. What a view he takes of it all becomes the subject of his book. And I'm not certain yet what he is trying to prove. Is he mocking it? Is he trivializing it?. Is he reconsidering his own early experiences? He does seem to be having fun reporting the Unfinished War. Or is he? What inferences are we supposed to draw from all this playing at war?

What a pleasant surprise it was for him when the reenactors with their gunfire sent the Civil War crashing into his bedroom early one morning.

Why do I make it a pleasant surprise? Because he compares it immediatley, in a way, with the reveille provided every other morning by 250 bleating sheep. Tell me about it! I'll take gunfire any morning. That's a good example of the wonderful detail in the book.

Somewhere in the house I must still have that songbook from long ago. You musn't be surprised that Civil War songs were being sung in Canadian schools. Your history is also world history. Later in the thirties we started singing Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the waves. We're all nations up here. And war is such a universal thing.

I'm still chuckling too over Scrawler's entertaining post. Poor Dad, having a hard time showing the kids a part of their heritage. I was in Confederate country when I had the same problem with a new tent. It was a wooded campground, so he may have been laughing too before he came into sight, with a 'you all need some help?' These rebels are pretty decent guys.

Would you believe it? The outcome of the Civil War was the birth of the nation to your north. Concerns about a victorious, potentially agressive North led directly to the formation of Canada in 1867. Probably a reason for considerable Canadian sympathy for the South. We had no desire to be reconstructed up here by those darn carpetbaggers.

What an exceptional father Horwitz had. He encouraged his son’s interest to the point of beginning each morning “ bounding up the attic steps, blowing a mock bugle call through his fingers and shouting, "General, the troops await your command!” Jonathan is so right in pointing out how naturally his choice of career follows on his childhood interests and family enthusiasms.

I found Horwitz' comparison interesting re. “America’s amnesia about the past”, whereas many Europeans are still angry about defeats from hundreds of years ago . IMO, this sort of thinking must have been carefully cultivated in each new generation, or it would surely have faded out within about three-four generations.

Remember the line from “South Pacific”, ...”..you have to be carefully taught” to hate?

You've got to be taught before it's too late 
Before you are six or seven or eight 
To hate all the people your relatives hate 
You've got to be carefully taught 
You've got to be carefully taught

Frightening, isn't it.

Babi

NOTE: The large space at the end of my last post, and the bold print, are an anomaly. I didn't put them there. There were some problems like this before, I remember, in other forums.

Babi

Hopefully we'll get some answers, as we go along, to that troubling question in the lines from 'South Pacific'. Teaching little kids to hate seems such a hopeless way of building a better world for them

Those are troubling words, Babi.

I don't know what conclusions the book will take us to eventually, but the first chapter makes it appear far more complex than just nursing old hates. These weekend warriors are certainly trying to keep the memory of their forbears alive, but no hint yet, it seems to me, of seeking revenge for ancient wrongs.

They seem to be enjoying their reenactments. Or, more to their liking, their attempts to live their history. While the rest of us only love our history. I must admit I enjoy reading about them. In fact I've just googled 'reenactment', and I was led straight to the events being planned in Gettysburg for this year's anniversary. Perhaps I'll go.

I noticed also that reenactment is very big in England. What a myriad of historical events they have to work with. And as if their own history didn't supply him with enough material, Shakespeare roamed the rest of the world for history that could be brought back to life, again and again and again. Like, for example Caesar's death. And the rest of us thrill to it every time we see and hear the play.

Where does reenactment start and where does it end? How about Stephen Crane's classic version of it in his Red Badge of Courage? I can't resist quoting a few paragraphs:

'The youth was in a little trance of astonishment. So they were at last going to fight. On the morrow, perhaps, there would be a battle, and he would be in it.

'He had, of course, dreamed of battles all his life - of vague and bloody conflicts that had thrilled him with their sweep and fire. In visions he had seen himself in many struggles.

'He had burned several times to enlist. Tales of great movements shook the land. They might not be distinctly Homeric, but there seemed to be much glory in them. He had read of marches, sieges, conflicts, and he had longed to see it all. His busy mind had drawn for him large pictures extravagant in color, lurid with breathless deeds.

'But his mother discouraged him.'

Doesn't that last line make mothers seem like spoilers? The Civil War was America's Trojan War in its epic proportions. Its story is an Iliad. Meant to be relived.

Jonathan

California did not officially become part of the Civil War. It was, however, part of the debates prior to the Civil War between 1846 to 1850 over the question of slavery. "California is peculiarly adapted for slave labor," resolved a southern convention.

The triumph of Manifest Destiny may have reminded some Americans of Ralph Waldo Emerson's prophecy that "the United States will conquer Mexico, but it will be as the man swallows the arsenic, which brings him down in time. Mexico will poison us." The poison was slavery. Territorial acquisitions since the Revolution had added five slave states to the republic, while only Iowa in 1846 had increased the free states. Many of the northerners feared a similar future for the new southwestern empire of California, and New Mexico acquired after the Mexican War.

James Russell Lowell's rustic Yankee philosopher Hosea Biglow fretted that:

They just want this Californy So's to lug new slave-states in To abuse ye, an to scorn ye, An to plunder ye like sin

Slavery was one of many issues that was debated prior to the Civil War. But to me the war was one of economics between northern speculators and businessmen and southern plantation owners.

I thought Chris Daley the paralegal from Long Island had it right when he said "This [re-enactment] is escapism. For forty-eight hours you eat and sleep and march when someone else tells you to. There's no responsibility." Perhaps this is why these guys do it. They want "escapism" and they don't want responsibility for a few days. But these re-enactments although keeping our "history" alive do bring a certain glorification to the Civil War.

Although, as my nine year old son said when he rubbed elbows with the "mountain men" at the re-enactment we went to said: "Gee, mom, don't those guys ever bathe?" I guess that was a little to much realism for him.

BABI! HAPPY TO SEE YOU IN OUR DISCUSSION OF THE BOOK. I think more than a “cold stare” would be appropriate if a confederate soldier could see these reenactments taking place. But the book has more to it than that fortunately and stay with us as we discuss attitudes of people that the author meets during his travels.

Can you imagine, JONATHAN, this immigrant great-grandfather with scarcely a penny in his pocket, living on peanuts, buying a Civil War sketch book? It just doesn’t ring true to me although it makes a good beginning to the book and something inspired our young author’s interest in the Civil War, but I must agree with you that a third-grader’s interest in doing all those art and history projects was a bit unusual (would that middle school students were so astute!) but perhaps it was his version of playing cops and robbers?

Do you think the young boy was somewhat of a loner perhaps (he confesses his obsessions) and preferred his attic room to playing with other children?

JONATHAN, I had no idea that the Civil War was responsible for the formation of Canada? I’d love to discuss a book on the subject someday.

BABI, those lines you quoted from South Pacific are as sad as the lines that JONATHAN quoted from Red Badge of Courage, both so futile, so dismal, so discouraging. Why is hate so rampant and why, oh, why does the thought of battle thrill youth?

”The youth was in a little trance of astonishment. So they were at last going to fight. On the morrow, perhaps, there would be a battle, and he would be in it. 'He had, of course, dreamed of battles all his life - of vague and bloody conflicts that had thrilled him with their sweep and fire. In visions he had seen himself in many struggles.”

They never envision loss of limb or life? OH!!!

Thanks, SCRAWLER, for that explanation of California’s part in the Civil War and the Mexican dilemma which is still very much a current problem, don’t you think?

Interesting comment – “the war was one of economics between northern speculators and businessmen and southern plantation owners.” Yes, I think that is one of the reasons among many! We could debate all issues forever, but………….

To continue with the book and chapter 2 and Horwitz’s excursion into Salisbury, North Carolina – an unlikely town in my opinion, but what an interesting conversation he had with a young black fellow by the name of James Connor. The two questions that Connor posed are fascinating to me and let’s just take a moment to answer them personally:

How would you define prejudice?

What are you looking for and how do you fit into the big picture?

Ella, that's just the way I felt about it when I first read it. The way in which the author brings in his great-grandfather to start things off. There is probably much more to it than Horwitz cares to tell. Interesting things about the old man's life, which would nevertheless be more than Horwitz needs for his book.

Buying a book of Civil War sketches despite his poor circimstances is interesting. Perhaps he hankered after the soldiers life, despite evading the military conscription in Czarist Russia. He may have done that to please his parents. A son drafted into the army was a nightmare for most Jewish parents in Eastern Europe.

Acquiring the book of sketches could also mean that they were very popular in 1882, and probably readily available for very little. What better way to get to know his new country.

I think we can accept as fact that the young Horwitz was very well informed about being a soldier during the Civil War. For that reason he must have found it amusing to see how hard these reenactors were trying to be the real thing, worrying about their buttons and the seams in their jackets, etc, etc.

But they end up being absurd in their determination to be hardcore. It must have been difficult for Horwitz to keep a straight face, hearing wannabe Guardsman Fred Rickard say:

'There's something in me that wishes we could really go the whole way. I'd take the chance of being killed just to see what it was really like to be under fire in the War.'

Somehow I can't imagine a real soldier saying that. That sounds like a farbism to me.

There is just too much of the funny for this to be a sad book. On to Chapter 2, of Tony Horwitz's Civil War.

Jonathan

Just stopping by to say I don't have the book and probably won't have it, but would like to discuss the Civil War topics the book brings up. I just followed the link Ella Gibbons posted at the First Page Cafe.

Join in, GinnyAnn. There is such a huge area to explore in the legacy of the Civil War.

Suddenly in Chapter 2 it turns very serious, as the scene shifts, as Horwitz moves from the farmyard reenactment in Virginia, to the Civil War graveyard of Unknown Soldiers in North Carolina. His encounter with the black James Connor with his tough questions is of a different order from his being awakened by the reenactors with their early morning gunfire. One seems almost eager to die a mock battle death in trying to get the thrill of battle experience. The other, with the dead at his feet, says simply, 'Their dying was my freedom.'

The answers to Connor's tough questions are seen easily enough in his own life. He can only feel the weight of history. What is there for him to reenact? The Civil War gave him back what was rightfully his to begin with. His freedom. But with the freedom came the long, hard road to an unprejudiced acceptance and a meaningful role among his new fellow citizens.

And so, suddenly Horwitz has a second, very contrasting aspect of the Civil War legacy. Whatever the complex causes of the War, the issues seem gut-wrenchingly real in such different ways. War affects everyone differently.

Jonathan

According the dictionary "Prejudice" means a judgment or opinion formed before the facts are known; preconceived idea favorable or, more usually unfavorable. It also means a judgment or opinion held in disregard of facts that contradict it; unreasonable bias or the holding of irrational hatred of other races, creeds, etc.

When people talk about "prejudice" that are more often than not talking about unreasonable bias or holding an irrational hatred of other races and creeds. But I thought it was interesting that it also means a "preconceived idea or an opinion formed before the facts are known."

Horwitz has a preconceived idea of what the south is like when he starts his trip south based on his childhood experiences. But as he travels he finds that his ideas "twist and turn" with each new experience he encounters.

"The scheme I'd plotted while spooning in the night was to spend a year at war, searching out the places and people who kept memory of the conflict alive in the present day..."

"We have tried to forget the Civil War," Edmund Wilson observed. "But we have had the defeated enemy on the premises, and he will not allow us to forget it."

I had to ask myself when I saw the above two quoted paragraphs why anyone would want to remember the Civil War especially if you lost the war. Than I realized that it is exactly what I do myself, but for me it is the Vietnam War. Before the war my husband and I were just kids and when the war started we had to grow up fast and some things changed forever. But I don't think either one of us ever romantized about the Vietnam War nor did we glorify it like those remembering the Civil War that Horwitz talked to in the book.

Pledge to the rebel flag: “I salute the Confederate flag with affection, reverence and undying devotion to the Cause for which it stands”. I wonder how many different answers one would get if they asked each man, privately, what was, and is now, the 'Cause for which it stands’?

I'm seeing so many different reasons why people involve themselves in keeping the 'Confederacy' alive. I don't think we are going to find any neat answers. The reasons are a varied as the people themselves.

Babi

“War affects everyone differently.” – a simple statement,JONATHAN, but so very true. Thank you for all those interesting comments on the author’s views; we need to keep that in mind as we progress through the book.

Actually, in this chapter our author meets a factory worker, who found his great-great grandfather’s name listed as a private in the North Carolina regiment – a man who believes that discussing the war with the Sons of Confederate Veterans “brings people together, just like the war did.”

That also probably made Horwitz smile!

WELCOME, GINNY ANN! May we ask where you live? Are you southern by any chance – are any of you from the south and have an ancestral connection to the Civil War? And, of course, we would love to hear your comments on the Civil War, whether you have the book or not. Can you answer the two questions I posed about prejudice and your place in the big picture (which could mean anything at all!).

SCRAWLER, you picked the best definition of prejudice when you said “"preconceived idea or an opinion formed before the facts are known." Horwitz’s answer to the question was “Making assumptions about people you’ve never met.”

I can’t help wondering why people have these opinions or assumptions; could it be they were taught them in the home by their parents or relatives? Children are not born with prejudices, they are taught them, do you agree? And for the most part it is ignorance that lies behind prejudice.

But we are all guilty of it in one way or another. As an example, our generation put Japanese Americans behind bars during WWII.

The Vietnam war will never claim any romantic attachments nor will anyone ever reenact it, the wounds are too deep, too recent and it did change our views of ourselves and our nation forever.

BABI, thanks for giving us that information about the pledge. I had never heard that before and you are so right – what was the cause?

One southern lady gave this answer when asked why southerners still care about the Civil War:

”The answer is family. WE grow up knowing who’s once removed and six times down. Northerners say, “Forget the War, it’s over. But they don’t have the family Bibles we do, filled with these kinfolk who went off to war and died. We’ve lost so much.”

I’m sure those same family Bibles have names of young men who died in subsequent wars also.

As Horwitz spends a night in an Econo Lodge and looks out at the dreary sight of a Kmart, a Waffle House, a Taco Bell, Burger King, McDonalds, BP and Shell Stations, he states that he recognizes the appeal of dwelling on the South’s past rather than its present.

A drive in the country (takes much longer to reach these days than it used to) gives me the same feeling that the past was better than the present.

Have any of you spent much time with the genealogy of your family? It took off, so Horwitz tells us, in the 70's and the Alex Haley's novel "Roots" triggered the obsession. Interesting!

I've been meaning to ask the rest of you, what the title suggest to you: Confederates in the Attic. Whose attic? The national attic? The Southern attic? The personal attic of some? And the Confederates? Something like the ghosts some familys have in their closets? It seems more suggestive, the more one thinks of it.

The thing about prejudice is that it can also lend its force to all kinds of uses, in a variety of ways. Its first brought up by the young black man James Connor. I take it he thinks of prejudice as the motivation behind the racial discrimination he has to contend with, insinuating perhaps that the author will find in that the key to understanding the Cause nursed by some Southerners.

But Horwitz himself is prejudiced. By definition, as Scrawler points out. And I'm inclined to agree. In the definition sense that he has a preconceived idea of what the South is like when he starts his trip south, based on his childhood experiences. He sets our expecting, unconsciously perhaps, to find what he already knows, or suspects.

Horwitz sets out to find the people who are keeping the memory of the conflict alive. Not the thousands of articulate people who are publishing countless books on the subject annually. Or the doc makers like Ken Burns, and the novelists, and so many others. Horwitz is restricting himself to a small number of people.

I'm not suggesting he is prejudiced in a hardcore sense of the word; but he does seem definitely unsympathetic to the Cause which he plans to explore. By the time he is through with the reenactors in Ch 1, it's difficult to take them seriously.

On the other hand he is impressed by the use made of 'prejudice' by Connor. That's understandable, for the simple reason that his own people have suffered from so much prejudice through the centuries.

And now, in Ch 3, I'm unhappy with Horwitz because he has left me with a poor opinion of the people he mingled with in Salisbury NC. You can hardly call it thorough interviewing. He has left me thinking that they are little more than keen genealogists digging up curious details about their ancestral veterans who fought the good fight.

He spends condiderable time with these people, but plainly puts the emphasis on a few minutes of trivia quizzing, or describing Confederate kitsch in their homes. Is he telling us less than he could for a more balanced view? I wonder if any of those who find themselves in his book feel that they are fairly represented

This isn't necessarily a criticism of the book. The author has set himself a great objective and we have a long way to go.

Out side of the book, I think a pretty good case can be made for the use of prejudice in some circumstances. Ignorance needn't have anything to do with it. Perhaps just the opposite. I don't doubt that some very intelligent, well-informed people have their prejudices. It's impossible to be a patriot or a lover without prejudice. But these are afterthoughts, and it's getting late...

Jonathan

I must be feeling more charitable and sympathetic this morning. I find myself being entertained by these two characters in Michael Sherman's gunshop. Their prejudices are so uninformed that they almost come across as lovable. Sure, some opinionated people are hard to take, but these two are salt of the earth types.

Their reasons for being enamoured with their Cause are understandable. They have grounds for feeling proud of their past and their traditions. There's a mystique about their history.

'Southerners are a military people.'

'The present holds no mystery.'

Those heros of old, like Lee and Jackson, convince their admirers that 'man's a noble creature'. 'Compared to the sickness out there.'

Walt Fowler has good reason to feel good about his past. It's there in the archives. 'When his great-great-uncle, Henry Fowler, got killed in battle, his commanding officer sent a note saying he "behaved with great coolness and courage" '. Walt certainly has someone to emulate.

Furtermore, as Tarlton says: 'They were fighting for their honor as men. They were from stock that was oppressed, ( a bunch of poor dirt farmers, didn't own any slaves, p35) and they felt oppressed again by the government telling them how to live.'

There is some food for thought in what Horwitz finds out there.

Jonathan

My father's family came from strong Irish and Cajun (French) stock. They lived in many small towns in southern Louisiana. By other southern people standards Cajuns were considered lower than Negroes. You could sell a Negro, but there wasn't much you could do with a Cajun according to some.

Sometimes they were found in the Confederate ranks and sometimes on the Union side so they could get money to send to their families. Than sometimes they just disappeared into the bayous. It was clearly understood that you didn't give them a rifle unless you wanted to get shot in the back. It didn't matter to the Cajuns who was in charge whether it be the Spanish, French, or Americans they were always considered disenfranchised.

General P. G. T. Beauregard was the only one who tried to understand them. They had a common religion and they spoke French. He used them as teamsters the way other commanders used the Negroes. As far as I can figure out my father's family were at the battle of Shiloh and the Battle of the Wilderness, but since none of them could read or write English there is no written record. During the war the towns where my father's family were not only invaded by maurading Confederates, but Union men as well. The Jayhawers destroyed their town as did members of Quantrill's gang.

My great-great-grandfather was the youngest of nine children and at the time of the War Between the States and remained home caring for his elderly parents. When they died of yellow-fever, he lost the house and left Louisiana with neighbors on a ship bound for San Francisco. It took years before he found out that all of his eight brothers survived the war, but when they returned to the homestead there was nothing left. But unlike my relative none of the other brothers left Louisiana.

I was interested in the viewpoint of a Vietnam veteran (Tarlton). He made some interesting points.

“Up close, war’s a kind of stomach turner. I like it better in books.”

The present -- I live it, it holds no mystery. The past does.” “Plus the present to me is not all that attractive right now.”

I wonder; perhaps this may well be the attraction of the past for many people. Like escapist literature, it gets us away from the day-to-day difficulties of the present.

I was shocked to read the strongly racist comments. They sound like something from my grandparents era. I don't hear that sort of thing said around me today, and I guess I stupidly assumed it was a thing of the past. “Government’s letting the niggers run wild.” And, "Amen. What they need to do is put all those crackheads on work crews and let chop the right-of=way for a few years. You can bet your sweet bippy that’ll adjust their attitude”. (God help us!)

Did you notice that at this point the author "plugged my mouth with a fresh wad of tobacco”. I think he was saying he stopped himself from the impulse to speak out. He was there as an observer and listener. If he was going to get people to talk to him for this book, he would have to keep quiet and let people say whatever was on their mind.

As Jonathan said, it's early yet. I feel that Horwitz was finding his discoveries as puzzling and confusing as we are, and finding many assumptions turned upside down. The "SOUTH" is far from being one in viewpoint, purpose, desires, or anything else.

Babi

JONATHAN, you asked a question that intrigued me also – what other inferences can we make from the title of the book? Personally, I put things in the attic that are old, items that someday I may want to pull out and use again or give to someone who can use them? Could that refer to the Confederacy and the way Southerners pull out their history when it serves their purpose and hides it when it doesn’t?

I agree that Horwitz is selecting a small group of people to interview, are you suggesting he is trying to write a history? I don’t think so, too many have been written for books, movies, etc. It’s a personal journey for him and as a reporter he is attempting to write what others have told him – I don’t find any prejudice or bias on his part, but perhaps I’m not looking deep enough?

Tarleton, the fellow you mentioned, is quite a character and I enjoyed him also – he served in Vietnam and had taken so much shrapnel in his leg that he’d had seven operations and now wore a prosthetic knee and he was right on when he said ”Up close, war’s kind of a stomach-turner, I like it better in books.” And he is dying of cancer and is ready for God to take him – “no more chemo, life’s a bitch and then you die.”

Thanks, JONATHAN, for your delightful comments, I so enjoy reading them!

SCRAWLER – what a fascinating history – CAJUN history. I never thought of the Cajuns in the Civil War – they had a tough time of it. Lower than the slaves? Why couldn’t they speak English? Were they fresh off the boat? And this was your father’s family? How did the Irish and the French of Louisiana connect?

Obviously, you have done some genealogy, isn’t it fascinating what you can uncover? Thanks so much for that story of your family's part in the Civil WAr.

One of my BILs did genealogy in the Internet before he died two years ago and was writing to people all over the world and they responded; it is something that may connect us all in the future as we delve into our ancestors.

Personally I haven’t done much of it as I have a written record of my mother’s family done by an attorney in the family two generations back after he retired and well before all the resources we have today. Boring to read – all those branches, all those people before that are somewhat a part of me – it’s mindboggling.

Have you corresponded with any of those relatives in Louisiana, SCRAWLER?

The War Between the States – I noticed that expression in your post! What did you think of the Catechism that the Children of the Confederacy read and learn from? (p.37)

Horwitz states that in reading through it he began to”hear echoes of defeated peoples I’d encountered overseas: Kurds, Armenians, Palestinians, Catholics in Northern Ireland. Like them, Southerners had kept fighting their war by other means.”

Why did Horwitz name South Carolina “the better half of the world?” (chapter 3)

I’d never read the story of Fort Sumter before and General Beauregard’s part in it. Always refreshing to learn something new.

What are you getting from the book? I hope you didn't hurry through it as there are tidbits well worth discussing.

BABI We were posting together! And quoting the same comments from the book! We must be kith and kin, we both are startled at the same sentences.

Shocking and disgusting! Is Horwitz quoting accurately? I think so, I think he is attempting to show us all kinds of attitudes and there probably are some who so hate that they don't mind showing their stupidity in public.

Scrawler has me scrambling to recall some Canadian history. Actually some British colonial history in North America. The Cajun stock she derives from might be, I think, the French Acadians (Cajuns?) living in what later became the Canadian province of Nova Scotia on the Eastern coast, north of the New England colonies. They were considered a military threat by the British at the time of the war with France, in the 1750s and 60s. It was then that the British dispossessed these French Acadians and resettled them in the Louisiana area. They should be congratulated for maintaining their linguistic and cultural identity and their independent spirit.

It reminds one of the situation the Japanese on the West Coast found themselves in during WWII.

Babi, I was struck too by the pathos in some of the things Tarlton has to say. He has seen it for himself. He's a tough guy. He has been dealt a tough hand in this life. What a happy solution for him to find a durable life in the past. Something healthy in that?

The racist remarks, the Polish jokes, I guess they will always be with us. What can one say? 'Father forgive them. They know not what they say and do.'

Ella, haven't we got a great little group working on this one? Checking out the attic. Horwitz found himself a nifty new approach to history. He's giving us a lot of raw data, isn't he?

But I'm surprised to hear you say that about Horwitz:

'I don't find any prejudice or bias on his part.'

I do find his disparaging views very prejudicial to The Cause. I'm thinking of the unappreciative views that he takes of the mainstays of American cuisine that he can see from the parking lot of Salisbury's Econo Lodge: the Waffle House, the Dunkin Donuts, the Taco Bell, Bojangles, the Burger King (p27)

What other than prejudice leads Horwitz to believe that General Albert Sidney Johnston would not have included them in his 'fair, broad, abounding land' for which the men at Shiloh were urged to fight?

Jonathan

You are right Jonathan my relations did come from Canada, they were disposed when they refused to give allegiance to the British. Although some say that they were related to Napoleon's soldiers who came to Louisiana from France.

Ella: When my great-great-grandfather arrived in San Francisco he worked as a stevedore on the San Francisco docks. There he met a young Irish woman who washed clothes for the dock workers. She was my great-great-grandmother. When I was very little and my father was overseas my mother used to take me see her and I would sit on her lap and listen to all the old Irish stories she told in her Irish broque. I used to look up at a portrait of my great-great-grandfather with his smiling face and handle-bar mustache. One thing I remember about her is that she always smelled of lye soap.

"All the death," Dorfman said: "It starts to get to you. Shiloh. I was there. During the battle the woods caught fire and burned hundreds of wounded men." He paused. "I've been to a lot of cemeteries."

What do you think Dorfman meant when he said: "I was there"? Did he mean to the cemeteries or is there something more behind what he said.

I found what Emily Haynes said very interesting: "Abraham Lincoln, King of the Jews, Pinchbeck britches and cowbelly shoes.

"Pinchbeck meant funny pants, blown up like a balloon," she said. "Don't know about cowbelly shoes. Sounds poor. Abe was a hick, I guess." I asked why he was known as King of he Jews. "Cause he led slaves to freedom, same as Moses," she said. "That's why the gang got him, same's they got Martin Luther King. The gang didn't want him to have their chair."

The "gang" had also kept poor people down. Blacks once owned much of the farmland around Charleston but they'd been "fooled out of it," Haynes said. "My daddy always said, "White people will out-figure you and take your money.'"

What horrifying examples of children being taught to hate, taught false images of the South under slavery, twisted history. I shuddered when the mother ’showed off’ her son with an obviously frequently practiced routine of “I HATE YANKEES!” I can only hope there are a high number of ‘Beth’s in the younger generation who are not buying all the hoopla and lies. This young lady thinks for herself. “You know what I hate? When people say that history repeats itself. That’s the scariest thing I can think of.”

Babi

I am beginning to suspect this book will be very unpopular with the people and groups the author writes about.

OH, WOW! I CAN’T BEGIN TO ADDRESS ALL YOUR COMMENTS, I LOVE READING THEM BECAUSE YOU HAVE TAKEN THE TIME TO ABSORB AND ADDRESS ALL THE ISSUES HORWITZ BRINGS TO THIS BOOK. THANK YOU ALL SO VERY MUCH FOR YOUR INTEREST

Tis a wonderful discussion and I hope you are enjoying it as much as I am!

One of you mentioned Charleston I believe and we have two chapters on that city and JONATHAN this might be an example of storing history in the “attic” – what do you think?

Charleston – Tourist Industry Charleston – preferred to forget the War altogether. The city’s main museum displayed a few Confederate relics but made no mention of secession or Sumter. Across the street, at Charleston’s huge visitors’ center, the introductory slide show opted for a passive construction of events: ‘Shots were fired on Fort Sumter and Charleston was plunged into the dark days of the Civil War.’ Then the show moved quickly to other calamities….fires, earthquakes, etc.

Why?

Some remarks in this book are just so funny - you have to laugh out loud – “One guy even asked me why so many Civil War battles were fought on national parks” said a park ranger.

Hahahahaa

Pardon me if I am quoting too much but the statistics of the city in the 18th century are eye-opening - it was the largest city south of Philadelphia, boasted the colonies’ best theaters, finest homes, first public library, while slaves toiled in the rice and indigo fields. On the eve of the Civil War white Charlestonians had the highest per capita income in America.

That isn’t mentioned in colonial history is it?

JONATHAN, neither Horwitz nor I appreciate the ugliness of strip malls and fast food places in America – do you have them in your city and do you appreciate them? I’d like to bury them all and we would all be healthier and the country would be far more beautiful.

SCRAWLER, how interesting that you had the opportunity to meet your great-great-grandmother, you remember her? That’s wonderful! She would be so pleased that you do and that you are telling others. Thanks for telling us about your ancestors!

I don’t know either what Dorfman meant when he made those statements (p.48) but I have to believe he meant the cemeteries

BABI, my thought exactly, do you think Horwitz got permission from those he interviewed to publish their views or did he change the names? Could he do that? Wouldn’t the people recognize themselves from the book? I don’t know how that works exactly.

”I have a Yankee relative in New York and when I go to visit her I’m uncomfortable, people are so suspicious and cold….I guess I still feel the South is the better half of the world somehow.”<p.56)

I spent 3 days in Charleston some years ago, it is a beautiful city and we stayed at a lovely B&B and were served our breakfast in our room in front of the fire. Delightful, there is much to see and enjoy there but I never met the “old society of the city” – they don’t hang out in public I was told and we never met anyone that was born there. One waiter in a restaurant told us quite seriously that he had to come to the South because as a young boy he had nightmares and saw a soldier in grey being shot and when he grew older and realized it was a confederate soldier he believed it had been him in another life. Since he moved south, he has not been bothered by those dreams again. The fellow was sincere!

I'll begin my comments with that in mind, and get to the sad, disturbing things later.

One remark that appealed to my sense of the funny, although, heaven forbid, it wasn't meant to be funny. Just the opposite. It's hearing Mike Hawkins (p29) addressing himself to his God: "Do for me what you can." That has to be just about the neatest end-run around the biblical Christian imperative in praying to God with: "Thy Will be done." Think about it, Is that a plea that God could refuse? I'm sure Mike is seeing more of his kids.

From the sublime to the ridiculous. James Westendorff, the Charleston plumber, among other things, knows where to look for the good stuff of long ago. In the old no-longer-used privies. Old medicine bottles, crockery, liquor jugs. All very funny. How came they here? But, what's this?

"Union shell, two-hundred-pounder, dug it out of a privy."

I started laughing over that, as I was meant to, of course. But soon a very sobering thought crossed my mind. There must have been more to it than just a disposal job. Was it perhaps a part of a well-planned assassination plot? Someone left that privy without ever knowing what a close call he had had.

And from the ridiculous back again to the solemn. The last half dozen pages of Chapter 3 make for very grim reading. There they are still nursing the old hatreds. For the sake of remembrance. I don't think it's out of place to point out something here, because the author himself makes mention of it. He makes a connection between the fate of Southerners suffering severe losses, and the tragedy of Auschwitz for the Jews. We all know, and he expects us to appreciate, the tremendous efforts made to make certain that the Jews, and the world will never forget. Horwitz seems to convey with that an understanding for the memory of something lost that has great meaning for some in the South.

Twelve year old Beth is a strange case. Her search for roots leads her to Anne Frank! And that soon gives her another, a gloomier perspective on history as forever repeating itself. And thrilled at the thought of a new identity.

What did Dorfman mean when he said, "I was there'? No doubt he had many strange feelings as he made his way from battlefield to battlefield. Horwitz's impression was only that Dorfman seemed death-possessed. Even just reading an account of bloody Shiloh will do that to one.

Don't get me going on Charleston. I've been there a number of times, and I expect to be there again in April.

I remember the time I went looking for the burial sites of three 'Signers' in the churchyard of a venerable old church in Charleston. It was getting dark when I turned to leave. I found the gates locked, and no way of getting through or over that high iron fence. I stood there disconsolate, when a pair of young lovers passed by. Perhaps honey-mooners. They seemed to think it was amusing. Until I told them that this was the second time it had happened to me. Once before, in Paris, I had spent the whole night in similiar circumstances. It had been all I could do to get my wife to believe my story the next morning about spending the night in that place. But a second time? I doubted that I could get away with it. Bless them. Their instincts were right. Somewhere they found and returned with the vicar who set me free. Wonderful people in Charleston. But they do lock up early. So beware.

Jonathan

Some of the best books are the ones with digressions, so why not also with book discussions? I would like to digress from the main theme - the living issues of an unfinished Civil War - with a couple of scenes from the charming South behind the contentious historical events.

Since we're in Charleston, I would like to mention a delightful little book I came across lately. MRS WHALEY AND HER CHARLESTON GARDEN. Browsing this one really cheers up a cold winter day in our northern latitude. And of course it serves as a real teaser for my upcoming visit to Charleston in a month or two. There is so much fine, private landscaping to admire in the walkabouts. So many fine iron fences enclosing small and large gardens. Everything so graceful. Even the smallest things. Even the dire warnings about the hazards of tresspassing. My favorite is the elegant little metal plate attached to one wrought-iron gate leading to a winsome little garden. It has only two little words etched into the metal: Chien Lunatique.

Another digression I find in POWER IN THE BLOOD, by John Bentley Mays. Mays is remembering his many-generation background in Louisiana. He remembers his elderly Aunt Vandalia, who has just died.

I should be posting this in CAFE, where there has been some talk lately of sunshine and its effect on one's physical health. But there is so much more to it than that for the southern belles of a generation or two ago. Let me quote from the book, to add to our picture of the South.

'Her dying had begun in earnest, it seemed to me, wiht a clouding of the pale, translucent skin prized by Southern ladies of her era, skin the South's subtropic blaze had never been allowed to shine full and hot upon. I remember her distress over young women coming of age in the 1950s, tanning their hides under the pitiless Southern sun. Vandalia believed they were recklessly discarding their most wonderful phsical gift and, with it, the privilege of Southern womanhood itself - all in exchange for the barbarism of informality half-nakedness, and ugly bronzed complexion. Skin aglow like a marble column at dusk by the Mediterranean, lucidly white yet tinted with the most delicate rose and fawn...Did these females not understand that such was the priceless endowment of every respectable white Southern woman, however plain, however beautiful?

'...Aunt Vadalia was the last woman I have ever known whose reverence for clear complexion was ideological, with scarcely a trace of cosmetic or hygienic agenda. According to the doctrine handed down through generations of Southern women, skin and character are inseperable, and, indeed, almost identical. To be worthy of her class, station, and sex, hence a candidate for marriage and social elevation, presupposed white skin. Long after her mother and the other local matriarchal-guardians were dead, and the once-isolated farming town had been engulfed by suburbia spilling from the nearby metropolis of Shreveport - and a very long time after any cared - Vandalia cared deeply about skin. There was danger to honor in the South's hard summer sunshine - temptations to luxury, laziness, sensuality - and Aunt Vadalia's concern with her skin was concern for her honor. To become coarsened by the sun could lead to certain inner doubts about character - doubts that might then weaken one's resolve to resist wantonness and shame. Hence, Aunt Vandalia kept her skin and soul safe from solar turpitude, even when overseeing the garden help among her sun-thirsty roses. I recall the sight of her in early middle age, rambling along the bright paths between rosebushes and flower beds, her plunger-operated poison sprayer at the ready, swathed in veils of gauze, bottled up in tall collar and long sleeves, shadowed under a straw hat broad as our Christmas turkey platter and knotted securely under her chin...'

You're spared further digressions by the call to lunch...

Jonathan

Jonathan: I love your excerpt from "Power in the Blood".

Charleston: "We're a different sort of people in Charleston, then and now, and I'm sure that's why we started it all," she said of the War. "We were a well-educated city that cared about issues and had never been through the poverty stage of colonization."

"We're not a migrating people," she said. "We live in our old houses and eat on our old dishes and use the old silverware every day. We're close to the past and comfortable with it. We're surrounded our lives with the pictures of all these relatives hanging on the walls, and we grow up hearing stories about them. It gives these things a personality beyond just the material they're made of."

Oh how I agree with this statement. That's the way I grew up surrounded with old Victorian "things." I've inherited these "things" and I was so sad when I had to leave many of them behind when I moved from a 4-bedroom condo to a one-bedroom apartment, but I still have a bookcase and a small table left. And if they could "talk" what a tale they would tell.

I thought it was interesting when she said: "...and had never been through the poverty state of colonization." I wonder what she meant by that?

Allow me to contribute a couple of quotes that gave me a laugh.

"North Carolina: “A vale of humility between two mountains of conceit.” ( The two mountains being Virginia & So. Car.)

The quote of John Egerton’s remark: “This meal’s got all six of the major food groups in the South. Sugar, salt, butter, eggs, cream and bacon grease.”

As a Texan (part South, part West) I gotta tell you there are few things more wonderful that hot biscuits with a good gravy. <sigh> (Of course, I haven’t tasted any in a long time. <more sighs>

Babi

JONATHAN, I say baloney to southern white ladies' concern over the sun and their complexion - such a romantic view of ladies in hoop skirts and broad floppy hats out picking the flowers with their baskets! Poppycock! Too romantic for my tastes!

But I have noticed the references to the Jewish population and their suffering under oppression in the text and the fact that Charleston was the cradle of Reform Judaism in America and by the early 19th century, the city had the largest Jewish population in the country. Who knew!

That fact reminds me of a presentation at an Elderhostel we attended years ago in AZ about Jewish cowboys and the fortunes they amassed in the west! We always think of Jewish immigrants coming through the eastern seaboard, but not true!

SCRAWLER, I am not sure what was meant by the "poverty of colonization" either except for the fact that the south seemed to be prosperous from the beginning, their import trade flourished, their slave economy helped tremendously during the 18th century until the industrial age, which would have done them in if other factors had not. George Washington could not afford to free his slaves even though he desired to and neither could Jefferson.

Do you see what Horwitz is attempting to give us in the ambiguous views of his interviewees? Manning Williams, a college professor, says that the war is emotionally still on and will go on for a thousand years or until we get back into the Union on equal terms.

But at the same time if you go into the museums and tourist bureau of Charleston you see very little reference to the war!

I don't think Horwitz comes to any conclusion himself - could anyone with such disparate opinions from so many different sources. But let's read on and see if we can find evidence of the author's own opinions okay?

Let us know if you find any!!!!

Williams' views on the War of Northern Agression (pg.68-69) - a war between two independent nations, a cultural war - was provocative. I wonder if he is teaching such views to his students? What should he be teaching about the war? It would be interesting to take a history course on this period in a northern university and one in a southern college to compare wouldn't it? The textbooks might say the same, but professors can influence their students in many ways through lectures.

But I digress!

So sorry, BABI, that you can't get hot biscuits with gravy anymore. I wasn't brought up on those food as I've lived all my life in the Midwest, but I think of all the fattening qualities in that food group that you quoted. Whew! That would put the pounds on very quick unless you young and run them off!

After Charleston's neglect of the city's history, we come to Columbia, S. Carolina for a very different view. - "I think we're not yet sure we want to be part of the Union, we still think this little state of ours has the right to decide a lot of the questions that big government is taking over."

Shades of JOHN ADAMS AND THOMAS JEFFERSON! Federal rights or States Rights. I love America, myself, and its constant turmoil, its controversies, its opinionated populace, its prejudices toward big government, its nasty politicians - all its faults! And I love its history!

We must move on to Shades of Gray and Chapter 4 before we get into our second section of the book. How many have you wandered the back roads in the south and stayed away from the big cities. It's another world in the backwoods altogether, you see poverty at its worst.

Later, eg

Since we have been discussing the Southern Lady, I think something should be included about the Southern gentleman, as described by the colonial doctor in Charleston:

“The gentleman planters are absolutely above every occupation but eating, drinking, lolling, smoking and sleeping, which five modes of action constitute the essence of their life and existence.”

What a boring, stultifying life! They probably were eager for a nice, short war just to break the monotony!

And speaking of States Rights, Ella, I find it interesting that we have swung back more and more to that view. We have seen a return of more power to the States in the last few years.

Personally, I suspect Horwitz has strong views re. some of the things he is hearing, but I think what he is showing us here is the wide spectrum of Southern viewpoints. He was surprised at many of the things he heard...and so are we!

Babi

I'm sorry about the digressions. Sometimes I do have trouble staying concentrated. But I tell myself that's an occupational hazard when one is rummaging around in the attic, and trying to give proper significance to everything.

My sympathies are balanced in favor of the South, so I have a problem with the author's Northern slant. Everything he reports may be true enough. The people he meets seem real. And there's no doubting their sincerity. They are allowed to speak their minds. In all this the author is fair enough.

It's made clear enough that the War is still not over for some folks in the South. Who is to blame for that state of affairs? The war did end.But, with the North feeling victorious. It had saved the Union. And with Emancipation it had, it felt, won a great moral victory. At the expense of the South. The South was left, as someone put it, with the 'spiritual burden that comes with being on the wrong side of a moral issue.' If ever someone was left with an albatross hanging about his neck, it must be the South in the USA.

Horwitz has his own unresolved problems, and his moments of doubt. As when he does, when he finds that several thousand of his co-religionists, fellow Jews, had fought for the Confederacy. Surely, Horwitz seems to think, they should have known that they were helping the enemy, helping to maintain that 'Pharaonic institution', which kept the blacks in bondage. (63)

It's tough struggling with the image others have of one. In that sense I say, the poor South. Insofar as it is reflected in the lives of the people we're meeting in the book. Still the house divided problem. Lincoln's war policies weren't entirely successful.

And now comes the Strom Thurmond revelation. A strange love story that happened a long time ago. Talk about forbidden fruit. No one coming out of a civil war should ever be made to feel like a loser. But how can it be otherwise when one side seizes the high moral ground, leaving the other side only an obsession with staying out of the blazing sun.

Thoughts on Shades of Gray, later.

Jonathan

I am afraid that I can't agree with you about "states' rights returning." I see a strong central government, especially in the executive branch, telling "all" the states what they can or cannot do.

I can't help wonder what it would have been like if Abraham Lincoln had not been assassinated when he was. He believed that the South should be considered "brothers and sisters" returning to the fold. His re-construction plans reflected that policy and although at first Andrew Johnson tried to continue with Lincoln's policies, he finally deserted the republicans and sided with democrats in their policies. Congress, especially the radical republicans, wanted the war to continue until every last Negroes was free, but they had no plans beyond that. On the other hand the northern speculators and financiers wanted the war to continue because they were profiting from the sale of "cotton." Cotton was like oil is today. During the reconstruction period alot of the "monies" that were slated for the South during the Lincoln administration ended up in the hands of the railroad barons. I doubt that Lincoln would have stood for the scandals that occurred in the Congress in the late 1860s.

Shades of Gray:

"Yankee Statue Found in Kingstree: Kingstree, S.C. - Another Civil War soldier - AWOL for nearly a century - has been found deep behind enemy lines. While a Rebel statue stands watch over the cold New England coast, a granite Yankee keeps close watch over this small Southern town."

I loved this story! I could not help feel that if everyone really thought about it, their feelings about the war would be different. Although the New England town might wonder about the "resemblance to Colonel Sanders" in their statue and the South Carolina town also be suspicious about their statue looking like "Billy Yank" neither townspeople destroyed either statue out of hatred. That has to say something right?

Well, we could get into a real political debate here with BABI believing that states’ rights are into ascendancy and SCRAWLER believing that the Executive Branch (and we all know who that is!) is growing stronger by the day.

I love your opinions; however that is not the focus of the book and we should stay with that, even though it is fun to digress as JONATHAN has and as I have and as the rest of you have. We, the participants, set the rules here and the only real purpose in this month of discussion is to attempt to state our opinions of the author, Horwitz, and his book. And Chapter 4 – SHADES OF GRAY!

That’s an interesting title to this chapter; these people cannot even agree on the correct Confederate flag. Have you ever heard of so many organizations in your life as there are in the South? The CCC’s breakfast proved very interesting – how did Horwitz find these people and get invited into their midst – here they are complaining about the plight of the whites in the South and perhaps we should mention that February is Black History Month across the nation. I wonder if the South celebrates it as we do in the North?

Could you find a more bigoted man anywhere than Walt (pg.81-83). I would not have spent 10 minutes listening to this fellow, would you? I see no value in Horwitz including such a diatribe.

Walt’s supervisor, Padgett, understands economics and the way in which the country is changing.

JONATHAN, I hope I didn’t sound rude to you about your lovely southern white ladies, particularly as I have a little story to tell about a friend of mine – a younger lady from Ohio who joined a firm mainly employing southern engineers and one day in a meeting the statement was made that “they don’t gee-haw” by one of the fellows and my friend had to ask what that meant. They all smiled at her ignorance and explained.

Do any of you know? Hahahahaaa

As Padgett, the supervisor said, “I grew up in the New South. We’ve all got to get along, black and white. If we do, we can really go somewhere. If we don’t, we’ll keep getting dumped on.”

It’s a different South (per capita income in the South now ranks close to the rest of America) and I think that, although the war should not be forgotten, neither should it be celebrated in any way. Read all those facts on pgs. 86-87

As SCRAWLER stated there was no hatred toward the statutes discovered (I liked that story also) even though JONATHAN believes that the South was left, as someone put it, with the 'spiritual burden that comes with being on the wrong side of a moral issue.' If ever someone was left with an albatross hanging about his neck, it must be the South in the USA.”

Certainly after some 140 some years it’s time to put that burden aside, other than the statutes and the cemeteries and the sorrow over it all.

We come soon to the ugliest chapter in the book in my opinion and that is Chapter 5, it was difficult to read and I had to quickly put it out of my mind.

Later, eg

I shouldn't have any opinions about states' rights since I don't have a vote to cast on the issue. I did, however, notice the news headline on my homepage: 'Bush proposes steep cuts in $2.57T budget.' That sounds like an awfully strong central government to me.

Would Abraham Lincoln in office have made a difference in winning the peace for the South? That's something to think about. Probably not, in my opinion. Too many problems.

Just like the color gray. What a clever use the author makes of Gray, the South's official Civil War color. What he does with it in Chapter 4 is pretty amazing. A whole spectrum of shades. What is the true picture of how the South feels about itself? Horwitz serves up an amazing range of feelings among the Confederates. Indifferance in Kingstree. Battle-flag waving in Columbia. Walt, the mixed-up fanatic in his trailer. And the thoughtful historian A. V. Huff in the classroom with his sentimental 'Furl the banner' poem.

There's a pattern in the chapter that Horwitz uses in other chapters as well. A sort of bad news, good news treatment of what he presents. Somethings are be made out to be disturbing, but he then comes back with something reassuring. The views expressed by Walt are frightening. Thankfully, nobody takes him seriously. He's crazy, in fact. Horwitz makes sure of that.

What is the true South Carolina? Kingstree? Which looks as though it had peaked in about 1930 and gone quietly to seed ever since. Find America here as it used to be, says one. Look around Columbia with its industrial park, housing tracts and new factories, and see what America has become, says the author.

'...hardly a day had passed without some snippet about the Civil War appearing in the newspaper.' (71

That's curious. A snippet. That would reflect an editor's appraisal of its importance to his readers. He must feel his readers are happy to be reminded, but not too seriously concerned. I wondered, while in Charleston, who buys the Rebel souvenirs at the market? Probably the tourists from the North. I just have to think of the tin cups and bowie knives and haversacks and rebel caps that the kids brought back home years ago. Just looked at those two tin cups from Fort Sumter the other day. One is full of pennies. The other full of marbles.

Now what's this gee-haw all about? Down on the farm we talked to the horses that way. A gee, meant turn left. A haw, turn right. Or was it the other way round?

Ella, I smiled about your reaction to my bringing Southern ladies into the discussion. I didn't think you were rude. I just couldn't think of something to say, and then a pleasant memory came back of getting acquainted with a whole bevy of charming Southern ladies of our age, while staying in Charleston at the Ramada. Every afternoon we all frolicked in the pool, while their husbands were at the Southern Baptist Convention meeting. Gosh, that deep-South is hard to understand. I asked my wife, what are they saying, but she just sat at poolside glaring. She had no swimsuit along. Darn, digressing again.

Jonathan

While I have not read this book I am keenly aware of the issues raised by it and thought I might make an occasional comment.

In message # 63 Jonathan asks:

Would Abraham Lincoln in office have made a difference in winning the peace for the South? That's something to think about. Probably not, in my opinion. Too many problems. I agree! The real power in 1865 at the War’s end was centered in the industrial interests of the North. The design and effect of reconstruction was more the assurance of the economic dominance of the north than the social and economic equality of black citizens. Finally the power enjoyed by the old Southern states since the inception of the Union had been broken. I really doubt that Lincoln as President could have done much to buck this trend.

In my early days the in the 1930’s and 40’s the economic conditions of the south, particularly the Deep South, was critical. I remember a 1940’s motor trip from South Texas through Mississippi and Alabama and on to Washington DC. In Vicksburg, MS there was one streetlight in the entire main downtown business street. It took a second reconstruction in the 1960’s to finally effect social equality of black citizens. Perhaps not surprisingly this second reconstruction also very much liberated white citizens by restoring the political and economic power lost for a century.

The result is a dramatically changed South with full participation in the economic prosperity that has favored the nation during the last quarter of the 20th century. Also during the period there has been a resurgence of Southern political power illustrated by the fact that 4 of the last 5 U.S. presidents have been southerners.

"Southern heritage is as much a part of American history as Plymouth Rock," he said with a jarring New England accent. "But for me, the flag's mainly a symbol of resistance against government control, not a symbol of the South."

The banner most Americans now called the rebel flag - a diagonal blue cross studded with white stars and laid across a field of red - served only as a combat standard during the War. The political flag of the South...took a different design and changed several times in the course of the War. But the better known battle flag had been hoisted over capitol domes a century after the War, in the midst of civil rights strife. Flag defenders now maintained that the flag was raised to honor soldiers' valor and sacrifice on the occasion of the War's centennial. But for many white Southerners, the flag had also symbolized defiance and segregation at a time when they felt under siege again by the federal government and by Northerners who wanted to change the South's "way of life."

According to (Mr.) Webster, a flag is a piece of cloth or bunting, often attached to a staff, with distinctive colors, patterns, or symbolic devices, used as a national or state symbol. We, here in the USA, celebrate June 14 as the anniversary of the day in 1777 when the US flag was adopted.

But what does all this flag waving really mean? It is not, I think, the flag itself that is in contention, but rather the symbols that it invokes. We have surrounded ourselves with "symbols" or pictures that evoke feelings. What do we feel when we see the "golden arches" for example? Juicy hamburgers? We probably realize we haven't eaten in awhile and are suddenly hungry and we stop and have a bite to eat. But what about other symbols?

What for example does the "swastika" mean to us who have been through World War II? Perhaps it evokes hatred and fear. Going one way the symbol is a design of an ancient Indian origin in the form of a cross with four equal arms, each bent in a right-angle extension, a mystic symbol found in both the Old World and New World. But this same design with arms bent back clockwise, was used in Nazi Germany. So a symbol that we have come to know in the 20th and 21st centuries meant hatred and fear was also a mystic Indian symbol in ancient times.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that we all see "symbols" around us, but it is HOW we see them that is important. As Ella has said the battle flag of the South will be of great importantance in a later chapter.

Somewhere else I read that the Southern whites would also benefit from an emancipation of their own.

Good to hear from you, Harold, with your valuable comments about the new political scene in the South. It is amazing what a little economic prosperity will do in changing peoples' attitudes. And the new political clout of the South, that could be strong, heady stuff for someone with a Cause. That fellow with the rebel flag wavers (79) in Columbia, SC, may see his dream come true. But you don't have the book. The man has joined about forty others voicing their demand that the rebel flag be kept flying over the State Capitol. He is described as,

'a man in a gray (!, no shade indicated) tuxedo carrying a portable phone and a briefcase with a sticker that read "I HAVE A DREAM, TOO" - beneath a picture of the US Capitol with a rebel flag flying from the dome.'

He is definitely a fellow to watch.

It would be interesting to hear more of your views regarding 'a resurgence of Southern political power.' As for example, the committee chairmanships in Congres held all along by the seniors from the South. Then again, how important was the South in helping Roosevelt and the Democrats with the New Deal? Now the South seems to be the vanguard for the new right. Would that be showing the abiding power of the older Southern values and political ideals?

The stuff we're reading, the characters we are meeting, may after all be 'attic' curiosities, and little more. What say the rest of you?

Jonathan

I hadn't read your post, Scrawler, until after I had posted. You help me with a point I was trying to make. The flag could quickly become a symbol of resistance. The man with the rebel/battle flag sticker on his briefcase might get considerable support if he went national.

Wonderful posts! And, HAROLD, good to see you here and your comments about the new prosperity of the South and its political clout. Can you fly anywhere down south without going through Atlanta? Well, maybe directly to Florida but elsewhere? It's a huge thriving center - a hub!

And I, too, noticed that our author does give good and bad opionions in each chapter but we haven't gone to far into the book yet! WAIT!

Symbols - you are so right, SCRAWLER! A flag is just a piece of cloth, a symbol, but what it stands for is not. Of course, you remember the 60's and the flag burning and draft cards being burned and all that terrible hate and protest marches and people were incensed over burning the flag - a symbol yes, but what it stands for can be powerful.

JONATHAN, what will you be doing in South Carolina besides soaking up some sunshine? I would recommend, if it is still there, you go about 10 miles outside of the city where the shrimp boats come in and find a place nearby that cooks and serves these fresh shrimp on picnic tables covered with newspapers! You eat all you want and they are huge and delicious and you can be as messy as you want to be. Oh, my mouth is watering!

At the time we were there the shrimp boats were employing mostly Vietnamese just off the boat and none could speak English except the head honchos.

And WWII ships of all sizes are on display there, including a sub and carrier, and it is maintained by the Federal government I believe.

Fascinating city. (P.S. good news from my house, a neighbor came down today and wants to buy my house at my price and I won't have to deal with a realtor and he said I can stay here until my condo is built as long as I let him transplant his plants, his treasures! I had to share that, I'm so happy!)

Tomorrow Chapter Five - I have written on a postit note - "Ugly chapter, hard to read. Isn't the author laying this on pretty thick, is it over-emphasized."

We'll discuss this tomorrow!

I thought a waitress Horwitz interviewed made a very astute observation:

“As soon as you make an issue of something, everyone feels they got to pick sides, same as they done back in eighteen-whatever.”

Compare that to Walt’s statement: “Until they started criticizing that flag, I’d never given it a thought. But once you attack something, that’s exactly when I’m going to support it.”

I think the waitress was entirely correct when she said: “You know what they shoulda done? Send someone to the capitol in the dead of night to take the flag down without telling anyone. I’d bet a week’s worth of tips that not a single person in South Carolina would’a noticed it was gone.” A lot more can get done if one goes about it quietly, w/o making a fuss.

On States rights, I didn't mean in suggest that the States are presently in the ascendency, just that there have been changes in recent years shifting some power, money, and decision making back to the States.

Babi

Babi, I have to admire the way you arranged those three quotes. Putting Walt's thinking between two quotes from the waitress, Phyllis, wasn't it, does give more significance to all three.

I could support Walt if he would only stay with the flag, and not go on declaring himself ready to defend anything and everything that's being attacked. But that's Walt. Unprincipled.

The waitress sounds so level-headed. She's not about to get herself mixed up in every fracas that comes along. But that 'dead of night' pre-emptive strike that she suggests is going to lose her those tips and probably much more. I can see a riot over a missing flag, with innocent people getting hurt.

I'm coming out of Chapter Four feeling almost kindly towards the rebel flag. I think I could almost wish to see it flying over the US Capitol. If that would be a victory for all those patriotic Americans who have a genuine cause to resist or rebel against an overly strong government. In the Thomas Jefferson sense. Didn't he think it a good idea to have a rebellion every few years?

But now, well into the "Ugly Chapter", I'm thinking, away with all flags. They're just simply too divisive. Chapter Five is hard to read, Ella. But it should be a must read for everyone. I like the way Horwitz puts all the cards on the table in the game of such high political stakes.

Jonathan

Ella, for seafood, my wife and I alway head to the New England coast. Starting with that chowder.

It's difficult to think of how to begin discussing all the strange events described in Chapter Five. Heartbreaking isn't it? I'll be optimistic and suggest that despite Brenda's gloomy view that 'People just can't seem to get along,' (113), there is a lot of goodwill for each other among the vast majority of us. The racial problem per se isn't unique to the United States. We get the same ugly confrontations up here in Canada. We can't allow the young hotheads and the misguided to keep the rest of us from finding that common cause that will make it possible for all of us to respect and enjoy each others' differences.

It's Black history month. My neighborhood library has set out a large selection of materials just inside the door.

'Slavery and the Making of America' on PBS tonight. Be sure to watch it.

That poor rebel flag. Dragged through the mire of racial intolerance. Used and abused by the dregs. All those brave Confederate soldiers who went into battle with that resistance flag must be turning over in their graves.

Jonathan

Congratulations, Ella, on the sale of your house.

At the beginning of this chapter Mark Train said, "When I was younger I could remember anything whether it happened or not, but I am getting old, and soon I shall remember only the latter." The emphasis has to be on "whether it happened OR NOT."

Michael Westerman only waved the flag because it looked "cool." He and others like him had no clue as to the real meaning behind what the flag meant. Neither for that matter did the young man who killed him.

It is people like those in the Gutherie bar that fuel the flames. "The poems mingled biker and Confederate themes, evoking nihilistic scenes of the ruined South as viewed from the back of a Harley:

It was 1865, homes burnt to the ground Everything lost, I took my stand Riding through the fog, Rebel flag in hand Fighting for my freedom, Fighting for my land.

F.T.W."

But it wasn't the poem that caught people's attention rather it was the initials" F.T.W. that provoked comment: "Fuck the World." So as Twain suggested we don't remember that the flag was held in hand because he who held it was fighting for his freedom and his land, but rather that we should remember the initials F.T.W.

Jefferson Davis said shortly before his death:

"The past is dead; let it bury its dead, its hopes and its aspirations; before you lies the future. Let me beseech you to lay aside all rancor, all bitter sectional feeling, and to take your places in the ranks of those will bring about a consummation devoutly to be wished-a reunited country."

The scene in Chapter Five is in Kentucky which was not a Confederate state, it stayed in the Union, so why did this shooting happen here? Whose fault was it? Young Michael Westerman who "had a racial hang-up?" The town folk who stirred up racial hatred by recruiting members for the KKK and welcoming Aryan Nation and other white supremacist groups into town?

A few opinions expressed on pag. 104-105 are enlightening perhaps?

"Guthrie's mayor said - "When I was a boy, no one cared about that flag. Heck, I never even thought of myself as Southern. But today there's this intolerance, white and black. Peaple feel they have to wave their beliefs in each other's faces."

A black middle-aged storekeeper said: - "Kids today, they're weaker and wiser, a lot of things we didn't pay attention to, they do. If we were called n_____, we shook it off. Just went about our business. Not now. It's strange, my kids have white friends, which I never did. But they got white enemies,too."

A black mother said: "Back then, (in the 1970's) parents told you to sit your butt down, work hard and keep your mouth shut around white people." But her daughter, in high school, disagreed - "We aren't going to just take it like our parents did, I keep telling Momma times has changed."

I am hoping that they have, I see a few signs in my city, do you?

How the author could have listened to all of this and written such a long chapter about this incident I do not know. It was wrong in my opinion and spoiled the book for me.

It's too sad, these young people - one dead, the other in prison for life and the town folk divided. It's a chapter I want to forget and go on to other that are more hopeful.

Chapter Six begins with our author saying he needed a furlough and went home to Virginia. I should think so after writing such a chapter full of sadness and despair!

Why did he write the chapter? It seems out of place. It's depressing. But it's my guess that Horwitz worked longer and harder on this chapter than he did, perhaps, on any other. I think it's extremely well written. And enjoyable, if that's possible, once the reader sees what the author is up to. He plays with the reader's emotions, in a serious way, of course. The chapter has some rich ironies. Satire. Commentary on courtroom tactics. And grim realities that he owes to his experience as a war correspondent, no doubt.

Somehow I feel that Horwitz wanted to add something to what he started in the previous chapter, in South Carolina, where a few protestors wish to keep the rebel flag flying over the Capitol. Most Carolinians don't seem too concerned about a few rednecks in their midst. The waitress even suggests that the flag could be made to disappear without anyone missing it.

The tragedy in Guthrie demonstrates the violence and passion that can be and was aroused when the flag was used to provoke and taunt. I think there is some method in Horwitz's style. He has tried to point out the comic and the humorous in what he is finding in the attic. Chapter Five was probably meant to be sobering.

At one time I felt like taking a pass on this chapter. A second reading didn't make it any easier, but I began to sense its value. Lets go on to the next chapter.

Jonathan

Sometimes writers when they want their readers to get the "point" they tend to hit you over the head with a 2 x 4 so that you will get the message. I think Tony Horwitz not only used a 2 x 4 but he also had a very large nail sticking out it. He wanted us to feel the "PAIN" with a capital "P". I have to agree it was very well written.

I found that Guthrie was also the birthplace of Robert Penn Warren first poet laureate of the United States. "During Robert Penn Warren's childhood at the start of the century, Guthrie was a raw railroad town ringed by fields of dark-leaf tobacco known as "the Black Patch." Warren, who lived in Guthrie until he was fifteen, later described his home town as "very un-Southern," a new community that lacked "a sense of belonging in any particular place or having any particular history." I can't help wonder what Robert Penn Warren would think of Guthrie now.

What's the old saying: "You can never go home!" I know when I left my home in San Jose, California I had lived in the same condo for 28 years and my city had changed. When I left I was the only "white" anything in the area surrounded by "gangs." Every night I heard the POP! POP! of guns in what was once an all white neighborhood. But I knew these kids and if it wasn't for them I wouldn't have been able to sell my house. They helped me get my house ready and they ALL worked together to make it happen.

JONATHAN you are perfectly correct when you state that Horwirz “has tried to point out the comic and the humorous in what he is finding in the attic. Chapter Five was probably meant to be sobering.”

And, SCRAWLER, I felt the pain. I had hoped America was getting beyond the racial issues, and then to read this was just too sad for me, but I am one who avoids violence – I don’t read those terrible stories in the media nor do I watch violent true TV shows which portray the evil that men and women can do each other.

You found good people in your old neighborhood which had changed character and I like to believe that there is good in all and only the drugs, the peer pressure, the home environment, lack of love, etc., turns young people into gangs. Good for you that you had friends among these young people.

Yes, I agree Horwitz writes well, he did after all receive a Pulitzer prize; I would lilke to read his BAGHDAD WITHOUT A MAP, would you? A clickable to Horwritz on the web: Tony Horwitz

Our next chapter, is a comic relief from that terrible incident of murder and mayhem in Kentucky. Horwitz tells us that a generation ago a young person with an interest in the Civil War would have joined a “rountable” – a scholarly club that discussed the war and its consequences.

Which would you prefer? The reenactments or the roundtable discussions?

These “hardcore” fellows are serious about everything, would that be fun?

I smiled at the thought of Portajohns scattered around and the fellows attempting to avoid the manure piles and the cable lines and all the litter of our present day civilization. Horwitz was told that if he couldn’t find a role to play “run around and then take a hit. We can always use casualties.”

And between battles, they had square dances, fashion shows, games for the kids, - a fun time!

But I really laughed when I read that they often carried two uniforms as they would run out of Yankees in a battle and needed someone to fight, so a few would don the blue outfit so the war could continue! Hahahahaa

And Ray Gill, a Connecticut accountant, said it best when he stated – “We’re not here to debate slavery or states’ rights. We’re here to preserve the experience of the common soldier NORTH AND SOUTH!

What struck you as funny? Are you enjoying the stories of the reenactors? What do you think of Rob Lee Hodge? Are he and Horwitz friends? Will they stay in touch later?

If you were in good shape, would you be one? You know women, as well as men, would follow the troops in the war as nurses, laundresses, probably prostitutes, do you suppose?

BABI – are you still with us? We miss your comments.

I have had a couple of emails from people interested in this discussion and I do wish they would post – PLEASE COME IN AND JOIN US.

'And after the battle, then the slain and wounded will arise, and all will meet together under two flags, all sound and well, and there will be talking and laughter and cheers, and all will say:

'Did it not seem real? Was it not as in the old days?' Berry Benson, Confederate veteran. p125

By which reenactor, I wonder, was Horwitz put in mind of this poetic, old-soldier's quote, at the head of Chapter Six? Attributed to a Civil War veteran. I find it very moving in its evocative power. The unflagging martial spirit of the old warrior. And the rest of us will listen to his story until the end of time.

It obviously served Horwitz well for the leit-motif for his splendid description of the weekend reenactment of the Battle of the Wilderness. I can see Berry Benson joining in as,

'The Blue and the Gray tangled in a melee of swinging rifle butts and mock bayonet thrusts.'

Yes, he would probably agree, that poison ivy was something to watch for, and those 'landmines', damn them, added 'insult' to injury.

Would Benson have passed muster with that Civil War perfectionist, Robert Lee Hodge? What fun for the reader to meet Rob Hodge again. This guy makes more sense to me than most other characters in the attic. He's a guy you can trust. He has come not to fight with the farbs. He is scouting fresh talent to recruit and knock into shape for the real thing. Eight thousand reenactors to look over! Among them:

'See that general over there? He's probably pumping gas at Exxon during the week.'

'I'm a registered nurse in Tonawanda, New York.'

Ella, I was that older man out of breath after the fighting.

What a cross-section of people, with such a variety of motives for taking part in these reenactments. Along with 16,000 spectators, clicking their shutters in the smoke and sending a wave of fear among the approaching, attacking soldiers.

How surprising, therefore, that Horwitz comes away from the reenactment 'feeling confused and ashamed.'

'I resolved that next time I'd be true to my views and wear blue.' And thus he feels a farb of the heart. Despite the 'fun', Chapter Six ends just as sadly as Chapter Five. There is a tension here for Horwitz, that doesn't seem to be there for the others engaged in their mock battle.

He shouldn't have stopped for that coffee at the 7-Eleven, when he reached the highway on his way home.

Jonathan

I'm still here, Ella. Just have less computer time, since my daughter now works via computer out of our home. We're delighted she has steady work again, so I'm not complaining.

I really think Horwitz is trying to present a full and honest review of what the Confederacy means to people in the South today. He could not do this if he left out the painful, ugly aspects. He would be seriously misleading us if all we read was the humorous and nostalgic. Mr. Horwitz has my respect.

Babi

Give me "a roundtable discussion" any day over a re-enactment. I am more of an idealist and could spend hours discussing the where, when, how and especially the WHY of almost anything.

"Top Ten Civil War Studs [and Duds]: "Not that women needed men to get involved. On the Internet, I found multiple chat groups for reenactors; on one the topic of the day was "Top Ten Civil War Studs," a discussion among women about "gents who most belong on the cover of a romance novel." The designated "Dishes" included P.G.T. Beauregard ("Continental charm in Creole packaging") and Robert E. Lee ("a gerontophile's dream with sugar daddy possibilities"). The "Dud" list featured Braxton Bragg ("less style than a Nehru jacket") and William Tecumseh Sherman ("sinister expression").

P.G.T. Beauregard: Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard, native of Louisiana, ranked second in the class of military service he was appointed superintendent of West Point in January 1861. A West Point education also reflected the still prevalent Napoleonic ideal, which was exemplified by Beauregard. He wrote grandiose battle orders as if they had been written by Napoleon himself, but they were so complex no one could understand them. Beauregard was the conqueror of Fort Sumter, a hero of First Manassas, and an almost-victor at Shiloh. His ego grew proportionately and he and Jefferson Davis clashed. Beauregard said of Davis, "He is either demented or a traitor, a living specimen of gall and hatred." The two men had similar personalities. They had an over developed sense of honor, they were thin-skinned, and both of them had a tendency to see disagreement as an insult or as a challenge to their integrity. To rid himself of Beauregard, Davis sent him to the western theatre. The Confederate battle flag which flew over the casket of Beauregard in 1893 was that which he had been given by the vivacious Jenny Cary girls in 1861.

Robert E. Lee: Those people who encountered Lee in Richmond during the first year of the war remembered a noble person of manly grace and martial form. He was fifty-four years old but looked younger; moreover, he could look like an important person without affection. Almost everyone who saw him for the first time remarked on his dignity, but few knew that his reserved manner masked a man who had trained himself to be proper instinctively when he met others. Most believed him to be a great commander, largely on the testimony of Winfield Scott, but Lee had never led troops in battle - he had performed well under fire in Mexico. Nevertheless, he was seen as a skillful soldier, and he gave the people of Richmond no cause to believe otherwise. In 1867 Robert E. Lee declined the dubious distinction of becoming the first "Grand Wizard" of the recently formed Ku Klux Klan, a post which was then assumed by the notorious racist Nathan Bedford Forrest. According to legend, when not long after the war, a black man entered a Virginia church and knelt at the rail to receive communion, the first member of the all-white congregation to join him was Robert E. Lee.

William Tecumseh Sherman: Sherman graduated from West Point in 1840, he spent most of his early career in the South, and his experiences and acquaintances there had a profound influence on the rest of his life. While he found most of his duties to be boring, he thoroughly enjoyed the security a military career offered. He discovered an aptitude for drawing while at West Point, and no pastime proved more enjoyable for him in the service than painting. When critized for alleged errors in his memoirs, William T. Sherman replied, "I may be wrong, but that's the way I remembered it. These are my memoirs, not the memoirs of anybody else.

When re-enactments are preformed we tend to see the men [and women - over 3,000] only from the point of view of what the Civil War combatants looked liked. The above descriptions show a little of what these men were inside. How they felt like Robert Lee refusing a position in the KKK and kneeling next to a black man in church. Sherman enjoying painting and telling HIS memoirs warts and all. And Beaugard telling what he thought of Davis and his superiors. These describe the men and women of the Civil War much more than we could get from looking at "frozen" faces in time and forming an impression of the man portrayed or watching a re-enactment.

Thanks for bringing that quote to our attention, JONATHAN, it reminds somewhat of an old hymn - WE SHALL GATHER AT THE RIVER. All shall gather and meet under the two flags and there will be talking and laughter and cheers!

I just love that!

Don’t you appreciate Horwitz telling us now and then the history of the battles such as the Battle of the Wilderness? How can we possibly remember all the battles and this one was so tragic with the woods catching on fire and cremating hundreds of the wounded.

And teaching us a few alledgedly Civil War words that have passed the test of time: “hooker” from Joe Hooker, the Union commander famed for his tolerance of female camp followers; “sideburn” from Ambrose Burnside; “tampon” from tompion – a wooden plug used to protect rifle barrels from dirt; and “heavy metal” from slang for large artillery pieces.

There are probably just as many, or more, from WWI and WWII, that have come into the language but at the moment I can’t think of any. Where did “G.I.Joe” come from?

JONATHAN, if you are the old fellow who needed oxygen from the battle, I’ll choose a part in this reenactment also although not such a strenuous one. I liked Debbie’s attitude when she says (p.139) “we’ve lost the art of conversation, of just being neighbors.” When she climbed in her car to go home “the 20th century started flooding in again. It’s depressing.”

Horwitz also felt depressed and ashamed at the end of the reenactment on returning to a “society still raw with historic wounds and racial sensitivities.”

BABI – I’m so happy you are still among us, you know what happened to deserters in this war, don’t you! Hahahhaa

And also that you are enjoying Horwitz’s book; of course, you are right that our author cannot ignore the “painful and ugly” aspect. Perhaps I cannot, at the moment, talk or read about death, it’s too recent in my own life.

SCRAWLER – that was delightful to read of those descriptions of the men we all remember from our history books. THANK YOU FOR THAT!

I know when we were discussing General Grant, (GRANT AND TWAIN by Mark Perry) who made a lot of money from his memoirs writing them while he was dying, he was noted for his concise and clear directions during battles. Obviously, other generals were not!

It would be interesting to know how many of the officers on both sides of the Civil War were West Point graduates. We know Grant, Lee, Sherman and Beauregard were – who else?

I see I should edit my posts better – here is Tony Horwitz on the Web: Tony Horwitz

Wouldn’t you like to meet Shelby Foote? He’s coming in Chapter 7 –meet you in Memphis tomorrow!

I've been waiting for twenty years to meet Shelby Foote. It was that long ago that I met a Civil War buff in the wilderness (upstate NY) He had just finished reading Foote's CW history, and he just couldn't stop talking about it. We sat up half the night in front of the fire talking Civil War. I didn't have the time to read the history then, all three volumes. I think I will now. He's thought of so highly for having written the 'American Iliad'. Of cours there are so many good books on the War. Even so, I doubt if they have answers for all the 'whys'.

Scrawler's post wets my appetite for more information on the Civil War leadership, both Studs and Duds, as they are thought of in some chat groups. I've never thought of Sherman looking sinister. And now that I know he was into painting I feel that some of his portraits remind me of Vincent Van Gogh. Very subjective this, isn't it?

With that name, Beauregard, is it any wonder that he is well regarded and tops the list of 'Dishes'? Napoleon must have had many imitators. Beauregard's grandiose battle orders presupposed a trained army. Was that an oversight on his part. I believe at Shiloh they were mostly raw recruits led by inexperienced officers, taking three days instead of one to get anywhere. Or, perhaps someone was countermanding his orders. He sounds like a 'my way, or no way' type.

What an ordeal it must have been for some of the top military men to choose the side they would fight for. Beauregard was at West Point, but went with the South. Sherman had been superintendent at a Louisiana military academy for many years (or was it in Miss?), but he went with the North.

And then there was Robert E Lee. You have some interesting information about him, Scrawler.

How many officers were West Point graduates? It must be a high number. And the greater number were from the South, I believe.

These reenactments seem like a great way to bring people together to explore such a great event in history. If only the blacks could be brought into it. That is what makes Horwitz uneasy, I believe. And it is interesting how he makes them a part of his story in a variety of ways, at significant times and places. To make a point. As, for example, James Connor, in Spanky's Cafe, in Salisbury. Ch 2. And with the black shoppers at the 7-Eleven, at the end of Chapter Six.

Berry Benson has all meeting under two flags to celebrate. Perhaps there should be a third there for the missing Americans

Jonathan

G.I.JOE?? I always took that to be the generic "Joe", similar to 'Mac' and 'Bud', with G.I.(Government Issue) added. I love words, and thoroughly enjoyed the word origins Ella referred to.

Frances Parkinson Keyes wrote a novel that featured Gen. Beauregard as one of the characters, and it was supposed to be historically accurate. I wish I could remember which one it was; I read a lot of her books back when; she was a thoroughly enjoyable writer.

Shelby Foote's Civil War tomes were apparently not pleasing to true historians and scholars. I don't know if I could work my way thru' three volumes on the civil war. Johnathan, I'll wait for your review. ...Babi

Who cares about the dry-as-dust historians and scholars? As often as not they're just trying to impress each other. Sometimes I think that with all their thoroughness they have allowed their imaginations to atrophy, their judgements to become paralyzed, and their usefulness as providers of the kind of history that ordinary people crave, to be minimal. Bread is asked of them, and they offer stones.

I'm in the middle of checking out some man/woman-in-the-street reviews, and I'm not sure that attempt at gender balance is appropriate, of Shelby Foote's Civil War and here's a humdinging bit of reader enthusiasm that I just have to pass along, before we get into Chapter Seven.



'Reading this is simply a wonderful experience--from the first page to the last, from Jefferson Davis's final speech in the US Senate to Lincoln's "last, best hope" speech of December 1862. Foote's narrative flows, sometimes soars, and other times is just downright eloquent. The generals and leaders come to life and jump off the page--all in their own words and deeds, of course, with no embellishment, but with such vigor and color that other works simply do not or cannot convey. Foote takes us into the world of battle, of strategy and tactics: we hear the bullets, encounter the fog of war, watch the generals maneuver and engage. His account of the Virginia-Maryland theater in 1862 is superb as he moves from McClellan's landing on the Peninsula and fighting the Seven Days to Second Bull Run and finally Antietam; the strategies of both sides come across in full force, with a degree of suspense. The Eastern Theater really does seem a chessboard in Foote's narrative. Frequently--maybe too often for some readers--the story is told through the eyes of Confederate commanders, and Foote is certainly sympathetic to the South. Yet I'm prepared to believe him when he says, in his bibliographical note, that any tilt toward the South is attributable to his own heritage and his support for the underdog in a fight. Besides, his concluding section on Lincoln is almost glowing. Foote's The Civil War is a true achievement. --.'

I'm going right out to get it. This sounds like the guy who told me about it twenty years ago. Three hefty volumes, and I'm a slow reader. See you later.

Jonathan

JONATHAN, I have been meaning to tell you that you were correct in that the colloquial “gee-haw” means that two mules are going in opposite directions; so it is not necessarily a southern expression unless you lived down south part of your life, did you? You seem acquainted with many parts of the USA.

I’ll wait with BABI (hahaha) for your review of Foote’s three volumes of the Civil War – when may we expect it? But doesn’t he have wonderful answers to questions such as why is the Civil War so enduring a memory:

”Because it’s the big one. It measures what we are, good and bad. If you look at American history as the life span of a man, the Civil War represents the great trauma of our adolescence. It’s the sort of experience we never forget.”

Can one dispute that?

Speaking personally, Foote told Horwitz his impression of this century (p.147). Well, for some of us (I’m 76 so I’m in the same category as Foote) he expresses the sentiments we all feel! A bloody century and the 21st isn’t starting very well either! But reading further, Foote missed the big war – the Good War as Studs Terkel called it – by his own misdeeds.

BABI – G.I. means “government issue?” I never knew that, how very stupid of me - I just assumed some musical or humorous story had been the origin of those initials. Actually, I never gave it much thought and probably today most of our soldiers wouldn’t know that either????

Later -

Love your enthusiasm, Jonathan! Don't wait to read all three volumes before you return, please.

One last thing before I turn in for the night. I was glancing through the next few pages and saw that I had marked one paragraph on pg. 150 - ONE'S PEOPLE BEFORE ONE'S PRINCIPLES

The southern code of honor that led to defeat. What do you think of that? Takes a heap of thinking about.

Foote's actual words were, 'I'd be with my people, right or wrong. If I was against slavery, I'd still be with the South.'

That's only one of the many surprising thoughts that Horwitz draws out of Foote, after that unpromising start with the old, aloof curmudgeon. He really does say some surprising things, which will have to be thought about.

'Foote also admired Nathan Bedford Forrest, the Klan's first Imperial Wizard...' And he was guilty of atrocities during the War. Well, allegedly so.

Horwitz is obviously surprised by some of the things that he hears from Shelby Foote. I get the impression that Horwitz doesn't mind getting Foote on the ropes so to speak, to get him into a corner, to get Foote to reveal that at heart he is a rebel on the wrong side of a moral and political issue. From Horwitz's perspective.

It's almost as if Horwitz is doing to Foote, what Foote admits doing to Robert E Lee:

'Nothing pleases me more than to find some short coming in Lee, because it humanizes him.' p156

Horwitz has done exactly that with the author of The Civil War. Just a great piece of interviewing and reporting on the part of the war correspondent.

Come to think of it, they are both professionals always going after a good story.

Jonathan

Johnathan, the icon was the big smile; the one you give people when you want them to do the hard work while you wait 'til it's done. (hehehe).

Forrest was involved in the initial formation of the KKK, which is compared to the Greek Resistance fighters in WWII. To his credit, however, he also disbanded it when it began to get out of hand. It was brought back again many years later, for far less creditable purposes, and has been a bulwark of hatred and prejudice since.

There was a well-known pocket of KKK supporters not too far from here, in Texas. The agency I worked for some twenty years ago was careful not to send any of their African-American employees to work there, if they could avoid it. It was not safe for them. I went down there on survey one time with a black nurse and the atmosphere was really oppressive. We all felt uneasy until we could get out of that place.

Babi

Very good, Jonathan, I like the way your mind works, comparing the two reporters or authors! I would not have thought of that, so I'm so pleased you are with us.

Can anyone think of a person who DID PUT PRINCIPLE BEFORE FAMILY? Certainly there must have been a few during the Civil War?

BABI, I thought your smiley face was bruised by someone who had a bad "hair day." Looked purple to me! Hahahahaa

Hard to believe that Mississippi did not celebrate the 4th of July until 1945 when the patriotic fervor of WWII inspired the nation.

A short biography of Shelby Foote: Shelby Foote - a private reclusive man who “wrote with a dip-pen and distrusted modernity, Foote had gained his greatest fame appearing before millions of television viewers in the guise of a warm and folksy raconteur.”

I hope Harold can come in and give us his insight into Nathan Bedford Forrest, a controversial man certainly! But an excellent soldier!

Foote had recently read several soldier’s memoirs and told Horwitz: “It is the simplicity of the people that fascinates me. Their minds don’t seem to have been cluttered like ours, they didn’t have all the hesitations about things being right or wrong. They knew, and they acted.”

So, what does he mean by that? How are our minds cluttered? And once again, Horwitz deplores (as do I) a “hideous strip of franchise outlets.” It’s bad enough in America but if you go overseas or even in South America the first thing and the most prominent structure (or maybe it’s just me) is a McDonald’s!

SHILOH, TENNESSEE! Did you know that Shiloh is a “place of peace” in the Bible? Sounds lovely doesn’t it, but what a bloody place it was in 1862. Horwitz’s description of what the place must have looked like then is lovely – a wilderness of lazy rivers, log cabins and creeks such as Dill, Owl, Snake and Lick. Would I have found it beautiful or lonely; would I have been contented to live in the 1800’s with all its attendant chores, even obtaining warmth and water was tremendous work.

Now I have ask where is Scrawler? Must keep our little band together to discuss the rest of the book which is well worth perusing!

I may be digressing again, but

Babi, thanks for the clarification. I'm surprised to hear that the icon (84), was meant to indicate the BIG smile. I've looked at it again and it still leaves me mystified. Don't get me wrong. I like it. It looks very nuanced. For me it has a kind of quizical Mona Lisa quality about it. It's going to have me working very hard at that review of SF's Civil War, all the while wondering what your expectations might be.

I feel really challenged by it. I'm told that the three volumes take anywhere from three months to three years to read. And I always like to read something twice before sounding off. With the additional effort called for by that mysterious smile, I dunno....hahaha.

More seriously, your comments about the KKK certainly deserve to be taken very seriously. What a strange organization. And what a peculiar, changing role it has played off and on ever since the Civil War. This is a tough one. One man's Resistance Fighter is another man's Terrorist. Obviously the KKK group you and others made contact with, still has the power to terrify. That's not right. I can understand someone's determination to preserve a way of life, but those hoods...that's cowardly. But if they were driven to it in desperation, as a consequence of having lost the war, then it certainly should be looked at as a part of the traumatic legacy.

'It's the simplicity of the people that fascinates me. Their minds don't seem to have been cluttered like ours.' Shelby Foote

Somehow I connect that and the phrase 'one's people before one's principles'. Principles are so hard to come by these days. Better to find out who one's people are. Or were.

Shiloh. It struck me that Foote and Horwitz were hitting it off very nicely by the time they took a drive to look at the Forrest monument. Horwitz asked Foote to come to Shiloh with him, and Foote declined. What a guide he would be. Foote has guided half a dozen presidents around some of the Civil War battlefields.

Was their ever such a tour as the one Horwitz has us taking? April 6th. I think I'll try to get down there. Anyone else? We're bound to meet some of these people we're reading about. For the one, his annual visit is his Easter Morning' and 'Midnight Mass' rolled into one. It must be an awesome place.

Jonathan

"I Shall Return!" made famous during WWII. Here are a few words we have today from 1940. "Cat" and I don't mean the furry kind! Think "cool!" Or how about you "dames" and "guys" "cutting a rug". How about "dig"? Which my generation took to a higher level. And my personal favorite "cutting out paper dolls" which referred to a recreational acitivity in an insane asylum - "crazy, baby! Can you dig it?"

On April 12, 1861, Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, signaling the beginning of the Civil War. The firing on Sumter itself was a West Point event. The commander of Fort Sumter, Maj. Robert Anderson, was a West Point graduate and been an artillery instructor at West Point. The commander of the Confederate forces opposing him, P.G.T. Beauregard, had been one of Anderson's students. It was with some anguish that Beauregard gave the order to fire the first shot.

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain graduated from West Point in 1861 and had been wounded at the battle of First Bull Run receiving the Medal of Honor for his actions that day.

The battle of Brice's Cross Roads was the most perfectly planned engagement of Forrest's career. There the self-taught Forrest, pitted against West Point-trained Samuel D. Sturgis, chased the Federals back to Memphis. Sherman is quoted as saying, "...go out and follow Forrest to the death, if it cost 10,000 lives and breaks the treasury. There will never be peace in Tennessee till Forrest is dead!"

Joseph Wheeler graduated nineteenth in the West Point class of 1859 and entered Confederate service.

Edwin H. Stoughton graduated seventeenth in the West Point class of 1859. He is remembered for being captured in his sleep by John Mosby at Fairfax Court House in March 1863.

Thomas Lafayette Rosser resigned from West Point two weeks before he would have graduated with the class of May 1861. He served throughout the Virginia battlefront and fought against one of his closest friends, George A. Custer, in the Shenandoah Valley.

George Armstrong Custer was ranked thirty-fourth-last in the West Point class of June 1861. His regular uniform was a suit of black velvet, trimmed with gold lace, and a navy blue shirt turned down over the collar of his black jacket and set off by a brilliant crimson necktie. While this costume made him an easy target on the field, Custer maintained that he wanted his men to see him in combat. Custer was the first to go up in a balloon to do reconnasissance.

Stephen Dodson Ramseur graduated fourteenth in the West Point class of 1860 and joined the Confederate service as an artillery officer.

Fitzhugh Lee graduated forty-fifth in the West Point class of 1856, after almost being expelled for misconduct by his uncle, Robert E. Lee who was than superintendant at West Point.

Emory Upton graduated in the West Point class May 1861 but held the reputation of being the class genius. He was the first Union commander to defeat Nathan Bedford Forrest.

Throughout his time at West Point, U.S. Grant held a place near the middle of class, though his work in mathematics was above average. As a rider he had no peer among the cadets, but in other respects he was colorless. Quiet, unobstrusive, as tidy as necesary, Grant sought neither honors or popularity.

Stonewall Jackson graduated from West Point and fought for the South. Shortly after midnight on May 3, Jackson was returning to his own lines when pickets of the Eighteenth North Caroline Regiment detected the sound of horsemen advancing on them and fired. Jackson was hit in three places. He died on May 10, 1863.

Robert E. Lee graduated first in his class at West Point. In life, Robert E. Lee used words like "gentlemen, honor, and duty." In legend, he defines them so completely that in Virginia they still tell the story of a little boy who came home from Sunday school and said, "Mama, I'm confused. Was General Lee in the Old Testament or the New?"

Following a better service record in Mexico than his last-place ranking in the West Point class of 1846, George E. Picket served under James Longstreet.

George B. McClellan was probably greatly influenced by the military legacy of Napoleon. Certainly all students of West Point had read Napoleon's memoirs and studied his campaigns, which were, up to that time, the most sweeping campaigns and most exciting in what was then modern history. McClellan in time, came to see himself as a young Napoleon. He did not call himself that, but he certainly did not discourage anyone else from making the camparison. He had graduated second from his class at West Point.

The men above are just a few West Point graduates. Not all those at the top of their graduacting class were successful in the military and as U.S. Grant showed he was a middle of the roader who succeeded in the military where he had failed in business.

There was another military man who succeeded as general during WWII, but was considered a "middle-of-the-road president." Anyone want to guess who he was?

Scrawler's post, #92, on West Pointers who rendered their services to the Union and the Confederacy, reminded me of my visit there years ago. No doubt the security is much tighter now. Then one was permitted to wander about on the grounds of the Academy and soak up the storied atmosphere. Of course its location alone, on the Hudson, makes it a magnificent place to visit. Seeing all the cadets who have come to study the business of war does leave one wondering what lays in store for each of them.

Switch now to the McDonalds at Fort Drum near Watertown, NY, where I have often stopped for lunch, just to see all the young soldiers, men and women, from all over America, milling about, some sombre, some high-spirited. God knows, where they will be in a few days time, or a few weeks. The10th Mountain is based there. If only I were younger.

A little health problem is going to keep me away from the discussion for a few days.

Isn't that a touching scene described on page 171, there at Iowa's memorial at Shiloh? With the Boy Scouts sucking at the breast of FAME? How thoughtful of the sculptor to leave the 'nurturing breast' uncovered. He must have known that the young men would come.

Jonathan

"The most striking by far was a monument honoring soldiers from all Southern states, "Whether sleeping in distant places, or graveless here in traceless dust." Erected by the Daughters of the Confederacy near the high-water mark of the rebel advance at Shiloh, the memorial showed a downcast angel surrendering a laurel wreath to a Grim Reaper-like figure. The sculptor titled his work "Victory Defeated by Death and Night." The death was that of General Johnson; night referred to the darkness that denied the rebels a chance to complete their near-triumph on the battle's first day."

"This was a microcosm in marble of the Lost Cause romance that took hold in the South after Appomattox. The Civil War became an epic might-have-been, a "defeated victory" in which the valorous South succumbed a flukish misfortune - Johnston's untimely death, for instance, or Stonewall Jackson's mortal wounding by his own men at Chancellorsville - and to the North's superior manpower and material."

The Shiloh Campaign - Pierre G. Beauregard, General, C.S.A.:

"...The greatest number of them [troops] were very indifferently armed and equipped. Some even - the cavalry especially - had no arms at all. They were mostly raw troops, unhabited to camp life, undisciplined, and hardly drilled. But they were composed of the best element of the South, and had answered the call of their respective governors, and my own, with the determination of doing their whole duty toward the cause they had espoused."

"Nature has claims that cannot be disregarded. The best disciplined troops do not fight well on empty stomaches. And this is all the more true of raw troops, unaccustomed to the hardships of war."

"When at last the news was brought back that Van Dorn and his forces had not arrived, and that not even his whereabouts could be ascertained, I began seriously the difficult work before me; difficult, because it had to be done without weakness or hesitancy, so as neither to make it appear a defeat in the eye of the enemy, nor a cause of discouragement to our overwrought troops.

There was no flurry, no useless haste among men or officers, and even the stragglers dropped into line and rejoined their commands as they passed. No pursuit whatsoever was attempted by the enemy. In fact, the Federal troops that had fought the day before were as outdone as our own.

Our loss on both days was heavy; but it must be borne in mind that we were the assailants during the whole of Sunday, and also, very frequently on Monday."

These remarks were taken from Beauregard's report of the battle of Shiloh to Jefferson Davis.

”PRINCIPLES ARE SO HARD TO COME BY” Jonathan stated. Why? Should they, do they change over the years? I looked in the dictionary for the definition of the word and there are many, but the one I think most of us adhere to is: “A rule or standard, especially of good behavior.” Doesn’t the Golden Rule say it all: Do Unto Others what you would have done to you?”

On the other hand, how does that apply to war? What do some of you say are principles to live by?

YES, YES, I DIG THOSE WORDS, SCRAWLER! What fun to hear them again and thanks so much for informing us of other West Point graduates. Harold and I at one time were thinking of discussing a book about Joshua Chamberlain, such a brave young fellow, as I remember he was from Maine and was pivotal to the battle of Gettysburg.

How difficult, I wonder, was the decision to join the Confederacy on the part of the West Point graduates.

My husband and I spent a week studying the battle of Gettysburg, listening to 3 lectures a day at an Elderhostel – much, too much to absorb on my part, but my husband was fascinated and we have been to many of the Civil War battlefields. I can’t remember if we were at Shiloh – isn’t it tragic to read about!

24,000 dead in this one battle!

A bus driver who had looked up his great-great grandfather recalls:

”He joins the Sixteenth Wisconsin in the late fall of ’61, travels by train from Wisconsin to St. Louis, then by boat to Pittsburg Landing just in time to march out here. Then he gets shot in the knee and sent to a hospital in Cincinnati. He dies there a few weeks later. That’s his war.

Sad! The only reason to read about such tragic events is to remember the horror of war and to try to prevent it! I think of all the mothers who grieved; still grieving as our soldiers die in Iraq.

SCRAWLER, are you thinking of Eisenhower as a middle-of-the-road president?

We will miss your astute observations, JONATHAN, hurry back and I hope your health problems are slight and will soon be over.

There is a monument to Confederate soldiers at Arlington Cemetery which is appropriate, I think, as the Southern monuments on the War battlefields were greatly outnumbered by the North, as were the men who fought the battles. This is the inscription on the monument:

Not for fame or reward
Not for place or for rank
Not lured by ambition
Or goaded by necessity
But in simple
Obedience to duty
As they understood it
These men suffered all
Sacrificed all
Dared all - and died.


Seems to me that is true of all soldiers.

I was so surprised to read that William Tecumseh Sherman had a nervous breakdown, it makes him so human in my eyes!

Later, eg

I was impressed with Ranger Paul Hawke at Shiloh. It was he who pointed out to Horwitz the importance of the breastworks, and that they could only be well discerned thru' infrared photography from the air.

He went on to say that a lot of history is simply written wrong. He gives the example of a supposed 'turning point', the "Battle of Hornets Nest", which claimed to involve multiple charges across an open field. A study of the area, according to Hawke, does not support the purposted history. Most of the info. re. that battle comes from survivors; ie., the "Hornet Nest Brigade", a veterans group formed by C.O. Benjamin Prentiss, an influential politican who outlived most of his comrades. Per Hawke: "He was eager to foster the impression that the Hornets Nest battle and his role there were crucial to the battle.

One can't help but wonder just how much of our 'history' is just as inaccurate. I know that history is written by the survivors, but I guess I naively thought they would at least tell it as it happened.

Babi

"Wars leave what's called 'ghost marks' on the landscape," Hawke said. This struck me as an apt metaphor for the traces of Civil War memory I myself had been searching for in the course of my journey.

I would have to agree this sentence struck me the same way. But wars not only leave 'ghost marks' on the landscape, but also on those who fight them as well as well as those close to them. My life changed with Vietnam. I can't help wonder IF THERE HAD BEEN NO WAR! My whole adult life centered on that war. "GHOST MARKS - yes war does make its mark. And now I want to cry every time I turn on the TV and see what's happening now in Iraq.

"Ambrose Bierce, of course, made a clinical examination of one such assembly; the rain had come too late to save their nails." In the end, many bodies may simply have vanished without ever being counted."

This seems like a gruesume thought, but clinically speaking I can't help but wonder if this happened at other battles. We tend to glorify war with ideals and such, but in the end we are what we are - human beings who like the rest of nature will return to dust.

"Each generation sees the War differently, and that's why interest in it will never die," he [Allen] said. The first generation - the veterans themselves - tended to couch tales of battle in high-blown Victorian prose about courage and sacrifice. "It wasn't their style to dwell on the graphic details of injury and death," Allen said. (An obvious exception was Ambrose Bierce, shot in the head at Kennesaw Mountain and deeply embittered by his wartime experience.)

Later historians, relying heavily on veterans' accounts, also glossed over the War's grisly side, highlighting instead the battle tacts and personalities of generals. But Allen, born in the mid-1950s, belonged to a generation that had grown up watching the Vietnam War on the nightly news."

What do you think does "each generation see War differently?" I know that just recently that school children in middle-school here in Portland, Oregon, according to the local media, couldn't even tell you where Vietnam was let along what happened there. What I found interesting about that information was that I too couldn't have told you where Vietnam was when I was in school, it was only after 80% of the guys in my high school graduating class went to fight and died there that I learned where it was.

SCRAWLER, you might be interested in a link posted by PERSIAN in the Gratitude Journal. She says it is an excellent tool for helping young people become more familiar and aware of the non-Western world.

Babi

Hello, Ginny, and thanks for the poem. A sad one to be sure but is there anything to be glorified in this dreadful war?

BABI – what is meant by “earthworks?” They were put there by the soldiers themselves and I’m not sure what they are? I know at Gettysburg there were these wooden crosses in the shape of an “X” that the soldiers leaned their guns on when they shot them – those guns were heavy! But I think something more is meant here? Perhaps earthern hillocks to crouch behind? I’m not sure, but I agree that history is not accurate – that is exactly why more research is constantly being done and more books written. Old letters come to light, old artifacts are pored over by new technology, history is alive!

SCRAWLER, YES, YES, Vietnam – every war – changes lives forever! Why, Oh, Why does civilized people allow such carnage? I had never heard of Vietnam either; but then I didn’t know where Pearl Harbor when I was in high school and everyone was shouting that Japan had bombed it! Hawaii was not a state, just a territory then and perhaps I was not paying attention in geography class, but I learned all too quickly as my BIL’s and my high school graduates went off to war, some never to return.

Today, we are to start on Chapters 9-12 and enter Mississippi – it’s lovely when you travel the Natchez Trace! Have either of you been on it perchance? We spent hours and hours traveling it and stopping along the way to read all the signs and look at locations posted – beautiful highway!

We drove through the National Park among vast and large monuments (monument overload as one park ranger put it) and stopped at a cemetery where not just Civil War veterans are buried but recent war veterans also. Any veteran can be buried in any of the National cemeteries if there is room which I had not known before.

Here is a short version on the Internet of Vicksburg – there are more that are complex in nature: The Battle of Vicksburg

“In this life I am a pharmacist” said the owner of a drug store Horwitz talked with. He told some gruesome stories – the medicines almost killed more than did bullets. Carbolic acid to cleanse wounds just ate up the tissue and isn’t it pathetic to realize that had they diluted it a hundred times they would have had Lysol which is a perfect antiseptic.

Throughout the early part of history physicians, were unaware of the existence of disease-causing pathogens such as bacteria and viruses so they continued to dream up imaginary causative evils. And though new chemical compounds emerged, their effectiveness in treating disease was still based largely on trial and error. When a new drug worked, no one really knew why, or how.

Such is the complexity of disease and human biochemistry that even today, despite enormous strides in medical science, many of the lastest sophisticated additions to our medicine chest shelves were accidental finds.

Prior to the 1840s, patients sang hymns, bit a bullet, got drunk or took opium to distract themselves from the horrific pain of surgery. Nitrous oxide or "laughing gas" was first used as a form of entertainment at parties and on the stage before it found favor in dentistry around 1844. Ether was introduced - with religious protest - in 1846 and cholorform, the anesthetic of choice among European and Civil War surgeons, followed in 1848.

Morphine was first used extensively during the Civil War to control the pain of the wounded. Morphine was also found in Winslow's Baby Syrup and Kopp's Baby Friend, medicines used to lull a child to sleep, with addictive side effects that sometimes lasted a lifetime. Morphine and belladonna were given to Mrs. Lincoln for her medical problems which led to addictive side effects which lasted her lifetime.

Opium was used to control mild pain through much of the 1800s. It was abused as a recreational drug from as early as 1840.

Surgery was performed without anesthesia before the 1840s and without antiseptics before the 1880s. Surgeons typically wore their street clothes and frock coats while operating up until the 1880s.

Civil War Medicines: "He picked up what looked like a carpentry shop hacksaw. "This was the most popular tool in the Civil War. They sawed a lot of bones in that war." Beside the saw lay a trepanning tool, a corkscrew-like instrument used to bore holes in skulls. "By the time you finished with this, the guy went home in a box or with a drool bucket. That was the beginning of neurosurgery."

Gerache reached for an anesthesia mask. "Luckily, we had painkillers, either and choloroform mostly," he said. "But if we administered them wrong, it was a one-way trip." When drugs werent' availbable, soldiers bit bullets during surgery. Gerache showed me a minie ball scarred with teeth marks. "Soldiers bit so hard that they'd throw their jaws out. So it was determined that two bullets were better, one on each side. That way the bite was more even.

"The biggest killer in the Civil War wasn't the rifle but the microbe," he said. "These medicines killed a lot, too." He ticked off the potions and tinctures in the medical wagon of a Civil War physcian, including silver nitrate, castor oil, turpentine, belladonna, opium, brandy, and quine. "Only one came close to curing anything, which was quinine for malaria." He showed me a bottle with a skull and crossbones. "This is carbolic acid, used to clean wounds. But what it mostly did was eat tissue."

It makes one glad to be in the 21st century doesn't it. I read the other day that the first surgery over the Internet was performed a couple of years ago. The doctor was in England and the paitent was here in the states. I assume someone here the states did the actual surgery. But with the way they are shooting laser beams around these days, who knows for sure. Personally, I want my doctor a little closer - thank you very much.

Ella, you guessed correctly. Earthworks were trenches dug and the earth piled in front as a bit of protection for the soldiers.

I was surprised to see trepanning mentioned as the beginning of neurosurgery, with a very high failure rate. The ancient Egyptians were using trepanning, and doing so quite successfully. But then, I believe their surgical hygiene was much better, too.

The mention of silver nitrate rang a bell. The pharmacist didn't mention specifically what it was used for, but on checking I found it was used to cauterize wounds.

Confederate CO John Pemberton was a clever fellow, wasn't he? When it was evident the rebels were losing the battle of Vicksburg, he told his men they would surrender the company on July 4th. He rightly predicted the Yankees would be most inclined to generosity on that day of national pride.

FAIR ENOUGH: The Vicksburg museum curator who said "This is Vicksburg's attic. People might say 'That's a Southern view', but this is a Southern town."

Babi

SCRAWLER, you’ve done some research on medicines – how fascinating to read all that you posted. I think I would have preferred to go home in a pine box or be buried where I lay, it’s gruesome, but at the same time doesn’t it make us thankful we live in age where we have anesthetics and painkillers (even though lately some of those are doubtful. I’m taking Bextra and trying to decide if I should stop it – any opinions?)

Thanks so very much for that information, I knew that more soldiers died from diseases and wounds rather than in battle but not about how they died.

BABI, it was a guess but I suppose – or did I read it somewhere in this book – that those trenches were the beginning of trench warfare which was so prevalent in WWI. My father was in France in WWI but I didn’t know him very well and don’t recall any family stories about it; also I had an uncle in WWI, whom I never knew, but he was “shell-shocked” as they called it then and never worked at all when he came home – his school teacher sister always took care of him until he died.

THANKS SO MUCH, BABI AND SCRAWLER, for your posts. I always look forward to hearing from you and it’s just the three of us (with possibly others reading along) until JONATHAN returns.

“HISTORY SHOULDN’T BE DULL!”

The story of the minie ball pregnancy (p.199) was hilarious – the baby was the first son-of-a gun! Hahahahaaa And the girl’s mother believed it!

Try to top that one!

And the Tennessee two-step is called the "flux" by pharmacist Gerache and if they had found a cure for it, he believes the South would have won the war - well, the Northern boys had it too so I don't understand that opinion.

How do you feel about the proliferation of gambling casinos in America? Vicksburg is full of them and the townsfolk, or some of them who find jobs in them, think they are grand.

People here travel to the Ohio River or across to Canada somewhere to gamble and, of course, fly to Las Vegas. I’ve never been in one so have no opinion, but I don’t buy lottery tickets either. I don’t feel lucky when the odds are so high!

I loved Joe Gerache – (actually I would love to meet many of these people!) – particularly when he said he was Catholic and his wife was Jewish and they attend each other’s services! And in order to make a quorum (a minyan) in the synagogue in Vicksburg they often had to include three non-Jewish women and several black custodians as well. Hahahaaaaa Wonderful – wouldn’t you like to know them all?

I didn’t know that Memorial Day was started in memory of the fallen of the Civil War, did you? And again I think of the many mothers who grieved not knowing where their sons were as I read that of the 17,000 soldiers buried at Vickburg, only 4000 were known by name.

Were you surprised to learn that the racial divide in Vicksburg was so deep so many years after the War? It’s not that way in other Southern cities – 2 American Legions, two YMCA’s – “we’re self-conscious around each other” one said.

Do you feel that racism in America has improved since the Civil Rights Act of 1964? We have a black Mayor in our city who is running for Governor this year, he's been a wonderful asset.

"The Vicksburg siege produced other oddities. The Confederacy experimented with camels, and one colonel used a dromedary to carry his personal baggage- until a Union sharpshooter killed the animal. There were also Vicksburg's famed caves, dug by civilians as protection against the Union bombardment. Some of these burrows became elaborate affairs, furnished with carpets and beds and serviced by slaves. But most were crude, crowded dugouts that one resident described as "rat-holes." Like the soldiers, civilians also saw food supplies dwindle to a meager daily ration. When beef ran out, they ate mule meat, frogs and rats. Flour was replaced by a blend of cornmeal and ground peas. "It made a nauseous composition, as the cornmeal cooked in half the time the pea-meal did, so this stuff was half raw," one Southerner wrote. "It had the properties of India-rubber and was worse than leather to digest."

I read somewhere in my research that the government of India offered to send Abraham Lincoln some "elephants." Lincoln politely refused. Can you imagine "elephants" tramping through the Southern states?

The description of the "fancy-decorated caves" made me shake my head in amazement. Who said you can't take it with you?

But the description of the "rat-holes" started me wondering about "modern warfare." Up until the American Civil War, warfare was considered a gentlemen's war. But it was during the Civil War that new killing weapons emerged. Weapons that not only killed soldiers but also civilians.

The Civil War soldier faced more misery and more kinds of misery than did his counterparts in either World War I or II. In addition to receiving poor medical treatment, the Civil War soldier was underfed, poorly clothed, and at time unshod. After battle, his wounded limbs were hacked off with little or no anesthesia by assembly-line surgeons; gaping bullet wounds were simulanteously dressed and infected by dirty hands of these inadequately trained physicians. Blood transfusions would have saved many, but the technique was so poorly understood that it was attempted only twice during the entire war.

Unlike modern, calculated warfare, some Civil War battles were little more than free-for-all slaughters. At the end of it all a quote from a Confederate soldier, fraternizing with the enemy between the lines, stands out: "We talked the matter over and could have settled the war in thirty minutes had it been left to us."

As far as modern warfare goes I read only yesterday where the U.S. government is trying to design a "robot soldier." There's something about that that to me seems immoral. Like the Confederate soldier I think if we left it to the soldiers and not to the politicians, "[they'd] talk over the matter and the war would be settled in thirty minutes..."

SCRAWLER, you really have me curious with your remark about warfare prior to the Civil War being "gentlemen's war". Is that in Horwitz' book, or did you find that somewhere else? It seems to me there has never been anything particularly 'gentlemanly' about war. The gentleman were generally the ones up on horses while the foot soldiers did the heaviest fighting.

I was interested to hear of the first black woman millionaire, (possibly the first woman millionaire in the U.S.?) Ran a quick check, and find there is a biography of her. And of course some references in Afro-American studies.

"Socially, the color line remained intact." That line caused me to stop and consider. The speaker was right. Now that I come to look at it more closely, while there is a great deal of comfortable comeraderie between races on the job and in public, there still isn't much visiting back and forth in people's homes. I guess we're not as 'integrated' as I thought.

Babi

There are worthier incidents in the book to exclaim about, but I enjoy as much as anything the little vignettes of comic relief that come with every appearance of Robert Lee Hodge. What could be funnier than the encounter, at Harpers Ferry, of the two Appalachian Trail hikers with the two Civil War reenactors, Johnny Reb and Billy Yank? Hodge and Horwitz.

Try imagining these two Gasm chasers, scouting Harpers Ferry. Robert Lee Hodge, the guy on the cover, dressed in his 'customary Confederate rags.' And Horwitz, the author, looking 'ready for Andersonville, in his Union duds. Is it any wonder if they induce a paranoia into the two hitchhiking trailwalkers? They request to be dropped off after only a few blocks.

At least Horwitz interprets their behavior as paranoic. It might seem a little strange that he has little more to say about them. One has to conclude that by this time Horwitz has become inured to strong odors. Those long-distance hikers aren't exactly sweet-smelling roses when they come out of the bush. I've picked them up myself.

It seems we're heading for a climax in Chapter Ten. I just had to be in the discussion for that. All in all, Horwitz does a remarkable thing in exploring the memory of the Civil War in this way. A unique odyssey. A modern Ulysses trying to find his way home?

Page 220. 'Then one of them leaned forward and asked, "You guys part of the living history demonstrations here?"

' "No," Rob said, flashing the hitchhiker one of his patented thousand-yard stares. "We're just living it." '

I liked those lines, Ella. 'Not for fame or reward, but a simple obedience to duty.'

And Scrawler's post on the medicinal and surgical practices at the time of the Civil War. How far we have come.

Babi, I guess we sure do have reason to doubt historical fact. Especially the details? And it worries everyone who thinks he is making his mark in history. Just look at all the official chroniclers at every court, whether it's the Oval Office, or Versailles, the Kremlin. And especially that guy who occupied 10 Downing St.

Ginny, how about Nathan Bedford Forrest as Achilles? Or Diomedes? Or...? What a terror!

Jonathan

“Like the Confederate soldier I think if we left it to the soldiers and not to the politicians, "[they'd] talk over the matter and the war would be settled in thirty minutes..."

SCRAWLER - suppose we left it to the women – there wouldn’t be a war would there?

“It seems to me there has never been anything particularly 'gentlemanly' about war.” – I agree, BABI. Killing is not a particularly gentle thing to do.

JONATHAN! We are glad you are among us again! My post will be short this evening as my daughter is flying in and will be here for the next four days. We have much to do in those short hours! Besides that…..

There wasn’t much in the next chapter titled “The Civil Wargasm” that incited my interest – how about the rest of you? I don’t understand this hobby or fascination with playing war that these adults are doing – dressing up as soldiers, getting bitten by mosquitos and eating rotten food.

When we were a young married couple with children we went camping, but we had modern equipment and I still thought it was rough! Hahahaaaaa

I did learn a couple of new things – that the Battle of Bull Run and Manassas are the same battles; Northerns and Southerns gave them different names.

But I remember the battle of Disneyland and thank goodness, Disney lost that one!

Oliver Wendell Holmes said of Brady’s stark portraits of the dead that mankind possessed images that stripped war of its romance and revealed combat for what it really was: ”a repulsive, brutal, sickening, hideous thing.”

That opinion and the following paragraph should be a running commentary (the kind that runs at the bottom of the programs) on all news program that are speaking of the war in Iraq or any war:

”After the Civil war, it (the military) censored photographs of American battle dead for almost eighty years. Not until the 1960’s would the public routinely see vivid images of their own sons at war. In that sense, the TV-fueled opposition to Vietnam wound back to the pictures of the Antitetam dead.

How confusing it must be to anyone reading histories of the Civil War. Different writers would have completely different names for the same battle! At least I now know that the South named the battles after nearby towns and the North named them after some geological feature, like a creek or hill.

IMHO, traveling with Robt.Lee Hodges has to be above and beyond the call of duty. Whew! :C He describes his first trek, taking in 30 sites in one week, as "dreamy, religious, a holy trek". I can't help thinking it was fatigue and grogginess he was feeling.

Something happened at Manassas that I know has happened at other battles as well: picnickers and sightseers following the troops to spend a 'festive afternoon' watching the fight. I have to believe they had no grasp of the horror of what they would be seeing.

It is saddening to think of all that beautiful countryside, described by the English journalist Russell, now filled with suburbs and franchise chains.

Manassas sounds like a good center from which to make a tour of CW battle sites. Horwitz says there are 16 battle fields within an hours drive. As best I can recall, we made a brief stop at Gettysburg on one trip, but there wasn't much to see. I don't think I've visited any of the other sites.

Babi

When I said "gentleman's war" I refering to the ancient wars like the Trojan War. In that war and others like them, the soldiers had respect and understanding for their enemies. The Greeks and the Trojans were very similiar in culture. Also, the common soldier and their commanders fought side by side.

Women were some of the most ruthless warriors in our past history. For example the female Picts of early Britain used to paint their bodies and fight naked along side their men against the Saxons. Even in the American Civil War there were well over 3,000 women who followed their husbands, brothers, fathers, and lovers into battle.

"War is the congress of adolescents." ~ John Berryman, "Boston Common"

I wonder if Berryman was refering that the soldiers who fought the war were adolescents or that "congress" who declares the wars were adolescent in nature.

"...Bug bites are spiritual. You're lying there listening to mosquitoes buzz in your ear, trying to sleep, and thinking, "This is what They experienced. This is the real deal."

Hey! I can get this experience just by lying out in my backyard. I'm alergic to mosquitoe bites so - to them - I'm like a nice juicy steak!

"We turned off the beltway and crawled along Route 29, known in the 1860s as the Warrenton Turnpike. Federal troops traveled this same route to Manassas in July 1861. They were trailed by politicians and picnickers who expected to see a festive afternoon spectacle that would quickly snuff the South's rebellion."

How about sending some of today's politicians to Iraq - they seem to think that today's war will be "quickly snuffed out" as well.

"Modern Manassas, a fast-growing bedroom community for Washington, was so hideous that some locals called it "Manasshole."

The town's historic railroad junction, which had caused North and South to clash here twice in the space of thirteen months, was now swaddled by miles of housing tracts, fast-food joints and car dealerships. Civil War entrenchments had been bulldozed to make way for bowling alleys, shops, offices and access roads, many of them named for the history they'd obliterated: Confederate trail, Dixie Pawn, Battlefield Ford, Reb Yank Shopping Center."

So what do you all think about this? Should we try and preserve our history or should we just let the bulldozers come? We are having this problem here in Portland. Some of us want to perserve the old downtown with its Victorian homes and shops and others want to put up shopping malls etc.

HELLO BABI AND SCRAWLER – I just have a few minutes to comment tonight but I did read your posts and was struck by the similarities in what you both are saying:

”It is saddening to think of all that beautiful countryside, described by the English journalist Russell, now filled with suburbs and franchise chains.” – Babi

”Should we try and preserve our history or should we just let the bulldozers come?” - Scrawler

And then we have Rob (our farb) who states:

”I want our history preserved, and I think the Confederacy’s a great story about men who did incredible things”

And I want it all preserved, we must fight for it when we can, write letters, form committees when we see the developers come.

I was delighted to learn that Arthur Ashe’s statue was placed on Monument Avenue, weren’t you?

As the countryside narrows down and the city encroaches on more and more land, the price of it all goes up – at the same time many inner cities are suffering from neglect, poverty and have become drug infested.

It’s a very sad situation!

Must go for tonight. Thanks to you both for being so faithful and so interested! I do appreciate you both!

Another example of the embarrassing ironies of war. John Brown raids Harpers Ferry intending to arm slaves and ignite a rebellion. The first casualty of his raid was a free black man, shot by Brown's men.

I had to laugh when the two hitchhikers picked up by Rob changed their mind and decided to walk. Horwitz wrote: "Rob gave more than a flicker; he fairly broadcast wacko."

Still, we get a clue as to what motivates Rob in this chapter. After Lee crossed into Maryland, we find observations by the Marylanders of the region. "ragged, lean and hungry set of wolves. Yet there was a dash about them that the Northern men lacked. They rode like circus riders." Later, Horwitz describes Matthew Brady's photo of Confederate soldiers on the move:"the photograph-crowded with lean jaunty men in slouch hats-perfectly captured the ragged panache of the rebel army."

At this point, I really felt like I needed to take another look at the meaning of the word 'romantic'. The definition that best fits here is:

"marked by the imaginative or emotional appeal of what is heroic, adventurous, remote, mysterious, or idealized.

Babi

"It was on the gallows that Brown sealed his fame by handing a prophetic note to one of the guards: "I, John Brown, am now quite CERTAIN that the crimes of this GUILTY land will never to purged AWAY but with Blood."

Wasn't John Brown's thought PROPHETIC. Perhaps it would have been wise than and now for our politicians to think about what Brown was talking about before they acted.

Perhaps the powers-that-be didn't really think much of Brown because of the physical impression he gave them. "Brown, with his shovel-shaped beard and blazing eyes, had always seemed a SPOOKY figure, and Harpers Ferry struck me as a SPOOKY town."

Why do you think Horwitz used the work "spooky" to describe the man and the town? Spooking, according to Webster, suggests spook or spooks or it can also mean "weird." So what we have here is a "weird" man who made a Harpers Ferry into a "weird" town.

"The main street pitched down an impossibly steep hill, dead-ending at a peninsula shadowed by sheer bluffs. An ancient, white-wash advertisement for Mennen's talcum blanched the rocky crags on one cliff, with only the gigantic word POWDER still legible.

The town's cramped streets bore the seedy cast of an unprosperous tourist trap, which Harpers Ferry had in fact been for 135 years. Merchants began hawking relics within weeks of John Brown's raid even manufacturing pikes and selling bits of rope and pieces of wood allegedly taken from the gallows. Post-War speculators bought the engine house in which Brown and his men holed up during the raid, and carted it off to the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. Later, the engine house returned to Harpers Ferry, eventually coming to rest near its original location by the river." - It's WEIRD right!

I find this conducted tour by Hodge and Horwitz of Virginia and Beyond strangely moving. The meaning of 'Lost Cause' is becoming more real, darker, and more ambivalent with every chapter. I find it difficult to put some thoughts together that would seem coherent. Now it's this side. Now it's that side. I even find myself thinking that something like the Gettysburg Address is grossly unfair to the South. But then I find it offensive that even the author should find a 'losers' boneyard' in the hallowed ground of Hollywood Cemetery, the Richmond burial ground of Confederate dead, 18,000 of them. p248

Chapter Ten is an extraordinary battlefield account from war-correspondent Horwitz. It makes the skin crawl at times. Then again one just has to wonder along with him about the 'anonymous' soldier in Shockoe Hill cemetery, the burial place of Hebrew Confederates. The implications are serious, as Horwitz implies. I wonder if he would have been satisfied if the Hebrew Ladies Memorial Association had simply made it the Unknown Soldier?

It's always interesting to read what you others are seeing in this very remarkable book.

Jonathan

Please accept my apology for not being here yesterday, we got in too late and I was very tired.

YOUR POSTS AND YOUR THOUGHTS ARE JUST FABULOUS AND I KNOW YOU ARE ENJOYING THE BOOK AS MUCH AS I HAVE. THANKS SO VERY MUCH!

Just have time for a few words this morning, my daughter and I are leaving soon for a bit of fun after a morning spent catching up on our news! A few thoughts…..

There is a lot of material Horwitz gives us in this chapter, which I found tremendously fascinating. Some of it I knew, much I didn’t. I was particularly struck by the reference to men who had failed in businesses but had found success in war and politics, unlikely fields – Truman, Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant , Stonewall Jackson – we could add a few people of recent vintage to that list couldn’t we? President Clinton – has he ever tried his hand at anything other than politics? And could we add our current President to the list?

I’ve been to Appotmattox Court House and spent considerable time there. I always expect too much from a place I’ve read and heard about – the McClean house where the signing took place is a small farmhouse, seems so insignificant but, of course, it was THE SITE WHERE THE UNION OF ALL THE STATES – THE USA – FINALLY, AFTER SO MUCH BLOODSHED AND HEARTACHE – WAS ENACTED. . Forever, we hope!

Why are internal wars called “civil wars?” Anyone know the answer to that?

”You drive through Atlanta….and take a look aroundm, and up, and you wonder, what is this place? Is this a place?” – Walker Percy, Going Back to Georgia, 1978.

Let’s continue on to “GONE WITH THE WINDOW” chapter, shall we?

"I begin to regard the death and mangling of a couple of thousand men as a small affair, a kind of morning dash," William Tecumseh Sherman wrote to his wife in July 1864, after a bloody repulse in north Georgia. Five weeks later, Sherman tersely telegraphed his superiors, "Atlanta is ours, and fairly won"- a victory that saved Lincoln from defeat in the fall elections and helped seal the doom of the Southern Confederacy."

"And fairly won"? How can anyone call the death and mangling of a couple of thousand men as a small affair - just a morning dash! I realize that what Sherman did to Atlanta helped to assure Lincoln's win in the election, and save the Union, but at what price? When do leaders and commanders stop thinking of soldiers as individuals not unlike themselves and only as obstacles? There must be another way to reach our goals than through the death and mangling of men!

One definition of civil is: of a community of citizens, their government, or their interrelations. Civil War is defined as a war between geographical sections or political factions of the same nation.

There IS a lot of material in the chapter we are leaving. And graphically written up. Seventy pages in the company of Rob Hodge and Tony Horwitz. Stopping in so many historic places. I felt I was sleeping alongside them in the ditches and porches. Listening to Rob read from old accounts of bloody warfare. What a guy. Doing his thing to keep history alive. Reenacting mighty deeds. And the author tying things together and adding perspective. It's a very unusual book, Ella. Thanks for putting us on to it.

What an interesting thought to ponder. Business failures find success in war and politics. Would we have less of each if these ambitious men had succeeded in their business ventures? Would war and politics have been more humane without these losers getting involved? Is war there to gratify ambition, or vainglory? And then again, war is just contracts and profits for some.

What a pleasure to come out into the sunshine of what Horwitz describes as 'the modern sprawl of fast-food joints, wax museums and cheap motels that encroached on the Gettysburg battlefield.' That's unfair. Having dinner at General Pickett's Buffet was fun. It is right at the edge of the battlefield, and I wondered if the General had a quick breakfast on the spot before his famous charge. It was very busy, but meeting others waiting for a table was a opportunity to mix. And when we did get a table it was right in the middle of a brigade of Boy Scouts. They put me onto several great monuments. The food was good. Contrary to what Horwitz says, the motels around Gettysburg are not cheap. Sleeping the way he did in the wildest places, it must have been a matter of sour grapes for him to say that.

Civil War! What an oxymoron. I can't imagine who could have coined that phrase.

On to Altlanta. And 'War is Hell' Sherman.

"One group, though always wanted more. "The Japanese worship Scarlett," Mary Ann said. "They always come in here and say, I' am searching for Gone With the Window.'"

I guess in some ways the only way foreign countries catch a glimpse of America is through our Hollywood movies. And we as well catch our first glimpse of other countries through foreign films.

"I asked him why "Gone With the Wind had such strong appeal in Japan. "You must understand the times," he said. "In the 1930s we saw American movies, then during the war we didn't. These movies came back after the war and "Gone With the Wind" was the most popular. I think it gave people hope to see this woman fighting so hard to build her land back. Also, she stands by her family, which is something we admire.

He paused. "There is something else, but this is just my idea. I think people watched the movie and thought, "This is the real America, a wonderful place, not the one we fought in war.'"

"I was intrigued by Mary Ann's comments, which confirmed something I'd sensed throughout my travels: "Gone With the Wind" had done more to keep the Civil War alive, and to mold its memory, than any history book or event since Appomattox. Anyway, Atlanta begged for a different approach. Why dig for the real and unremembered past when I could search like the Japanese for the fictional one instead?"

When I heard that the author only got $500 for the story of "Gone With The Wind" I thought how sad because Hollywood made and is still making so much off of the movie. Civil War movies were a rage during the thirties and the niece of the author met the producer at a party and told him about her aunt's book. He read the book on the train back to Hollywood from Georgia and somewhere in New Mexico he made a phone call - and said sign her up whatever the price! Well, the price was $500 and grant you that was a sizable sum in the 30s, but what Hollywood did to her story was a shocker even for the author. According to her husband, "That many soldiers didn't die during the whole Civil War..." when he saw the takes for the Atlanta scene.

Would you like to be a reenactor, JONATHAN? What battle would you choose – what war would you choose? One in Canada or one in the States? Are you up for it?

I love reading your enthusiasm for those guys.

You have no answer to “Civil” War? Well, someone certainly must know how that came about! I’ll have to investigate a bit and see what I can find out.

Fabulous post, SCRAWLER! Must repeat this quote: “the only way foreign countries catch a glimpse of America is through our Hollywood movies.” It is such a false picture of the country isn’t it? But we do them well, apparently??? I know somewhere I read or heard that the biggest – the money making exports of America – are music and movies. Neither of those give an honest picture of the country that I am proud of, but what can we do?

”I begin to regard the death and mangling of a couple of thousand men as a small affair, a kind of morning dash” – William Tecumseh Sherman, in a letter to his wife in July 1864

Shivers go down my spine on reading that – do you wonder what his wife’s reaction was to those words? Anyone know if Sherman had children? Did any of these generals we have been speaking of have any sons fighting in the Civil War?

If our presidents had sons old enough to fight in a war, would they declare war? I can think of only one president, FDR, who had a son in WWII, but FDR had no choice but to declare war. I know Teddy Roosevelt – a war monger himself – lost a beloved son in WWI and the grief nearly killed him.

Do president’s sons ever go to war – get killed? Obviously our current president did not have to worry about a son going to Iraq!!!

The victory in Atlanta “saved Lincoln from defeat in the fall elections and helped seal the doom of the Southern Confederacy."

And spelled the death of Abraham Lincoln.

Back to Atlanta:

it is the anti-South; a crass, brash city built in the image of the Chamber of Commerce and overrun by carpetbaggers, corporate climbers and conventioneers;


Atlantans rank below average in their hospitality to strangers;


Every time I look at Atlanta, I see what a quarter million Confederate soldiers died to prevent.


whatever peach trees once bloomed were gone, supplanted by a forest of office towers bearing corporate names


A city too busy to hate


Atlanta’s inner city remained among the poorest and most crime-ridden in America;

And that’s just on the first 3 pages of the chapter. I have a friend on Seniornet who lived in Atlanta for a number of years and I have asked her to come in and give us an opinion of the city as we get into the discussion of the city a bit further.

Anyone been there?

I have never been to Atlanta, and I confess my mental image of it consists of gambling and a boardwalk. I was surprised to learn there wasn't much left of the 'Old South' there, and that "Atlantans leveled much more of Atlanta than Sherman did."

Having read what this chapter has to say about Atlanta, I find myself not in the least interested in visiting there. That is probably not a fair assessment.

Babi

I thought I might like to see Atlanta the last time my wife and I were driving south on 75, without knowing what exactly I could expect to see there, or look for. It's not really 'Southern', is it? Atlanta seems to be becoming the hub of America. I was surprised, and pleased, at how quickly we got through the city on the expressway. Plains and Carter country beckoned. And Andersonville. But that left me puzzled, having read John McElroy's THIS WAS ANDERSONVILLE. More about that when Horwitz takes us there.

Isn't GONE WITH THE WIND a phenomenon in every way? Fail-proof fictional plots, packaged in a Southern Civil War wrapper. Horwitz couldn't possibly have left out an account of Margaret Mitchell's book on this tour he is taking us on. Thanks for your thoughts on it, Scrawler.

Yes Ella, I have every intention of contacting Rob Lee, and tagging along on one of his Wargasms, if I can pass muster. Better still, if the 10th Mountain will have me. I pass their base on my way to the Adirondacks. God, I've walked thousands of miles in those hills.

About Sherman, and those terrible lines he wrote to his wife. This is tricky. Taken at face value, the words do send shivers down the spine. No doubt they were meant to have an effect on his wife. Was it, perhaps, to reassure her that he was not cracking up under the strain of war? I have a hunch she was very anxious about him. He had suffered a nervous breakdown in the past. Perhaps he was writing it to himself as well as to his wife. When the fighting was over he offered generous terms to his once-again fellow officer, as we read.

Yes, it seems he won the war for President Lincoln, and thereby sealed Lincoln's fate. An heroic fate. Wasn't the Civil War a tremendous historical drama? Strange how it is still being played out. High tragedy. The stuff legends are made of.

Jonathan

West Point graduates and drop-outs accounted for 156 of the Confederacy's 425 generals or 36.7 percent and 228 of the Union's 583 generals or 39.1 percent; in addition, one graduate of Annapolis became a Union general which comes out roughly to be .0017 percent.

Robert E. Lee and Jerome B. Robertson were the only Confederate geneals to have sons who were also Confederate generals; no Union general was the father of another Union general, although Pennsylvania state militaia Maj. Gen. Robert Patterson's Francis E. Patterson became a brigadier general and Union Brig. G. Phillp St. George Cooke was the father of Confederate Brig. Gen. John R. Cooke.

The record for number of generals in one family - including first cousins - is tied between the Union's "Fighting McCooks" of Ohio and the Confederacy's Lees of Ohio, whose foster brother and brother-in-law William T. Sherman was also a general.

Despite four years of strenuous diplomatic efforts, only one country extended recognition to the Confederacy, the tiny German Duchy of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, and that was because Duke Albrecht was married to an Alabama belle.

As a result of an administrative foul-up late in the war, the Confederate Conscription Bureau once drafted a bed ridden, dying 65-year-old man.

Despite the difficulties between his wife and Sherman, following his nervous breakdown the first year of the war, she devoted all her energies to promoting his career. When he married, began a family, and accepted a posting to San Francisco he was frustrated by his inability to earn a sufficient living. In Kansas, separated from his family while he searched for financial security, he began drawing pictures for his children.

The July 22, 1864, battle of Atlanta gave way to the bombardment of the city, with Sherman closely supervising siege, but the loss of the last railroad out of town on August 25 led the Confederates to abandon the city.

Sherman's army was not responsible entirely for the destruction in and around Atlanta. The Georgia Central track are littered with the debris of a Confederate ordance train that was destroyed by the Southerners to prevent its capture.

The fall of Atlanta was a blow to Southern morale, and a much-needed lift for Northern spirits. The headlines of a Northern newspaper sketch out the primary stories of the fall of Atlanta, although the news of Confederate General William J. Hardee's death was greatly exaggerated.

At the end of the campaign, Sherman noted, "The rebels have lost, beside the important city of Atlanta and stores, at least five hundred dead, two thousand five hundred wounded, and three thousand prisoners...If that is not success I don't know what is."

One last word about "Gone With the Wind": "Mitchell told how she'd scoured the backroads of Clayton County while researching her novel to make sure that the scenery she described was indeed fictional. She even jumbled the country's geography and checked that there were no Tara-like homes with tree-lined avenues. She did this so that no one might think their own grandmother was the model for Scarlett O'Hara. Mitchell was miffed that people were nonetheless detrmined to pin her fictional creations to firm ground.

"My trouble," she concluded, "seems to have been all for nothing."

It reminds me of the saying: "Let the buyer beware!" Imagine paying $50,000 for what you thought was Tara when "modern split-level with swimming and tennis privileges were selling down the road for seventy something."

JONATHAN, did you stop at all in Atlanta on your trip? Wasn’t there anything you wanted particularly to see in the city? You said you drove through it very well – obviously it didn’t attract your attention, right? We bypassed altogether on a trip south once, not caring to maneuver our way through a big city.

Do keep a diary, Jonathan, on your adventures with the 10th Mountain Men, you may have a book in the offing. Are you serious or are you joshing?

Horwitz doesn’t find much about Atlanta proper that is interesting –the “inside the doughnut” – and “outside the doughnut” type of a city isn’t appealing to him apparently. Nor to me!

What did you all think of the “heritage movement” – the brand-new industry!

And the beat goes on.

What a lot of information you have given us, SCRAWLER! Fascinating figures, thank you so much for that research. And I had forgotten about Margaret Mitchel’s story, the low sum she was given for her book and all those other facts – I knew them once long ago. Not one scene of the movie was shot in Georgia, the whole thing was filmed in California!

But the movie goes on and on doesn’t it – it has a life of its own! And keeps the interest of the Civil War alive and I wonder if that is good?

A special affinity for the movie from the Japanese? Oh, come on, that’s stretching it a bit far I thought. Of course, both rebuilt themselves after a war, what city or country doesn’t?

The Japanesse tourists had picked out three places in America to visit: Niagra Falls, Las Vegas and Atlanta – which they believed represented the “history and beauty of America.”

Oh, we are in trouble internationally!

Later, eg

My gosh, where did they get their information?? They have missed so many of our wonderfilled cities. Hmmmmmm! We need to reeducate their travel guides, for sure.

As for Atlanta, where I lived, off and on, for 18 years. Babi and Jonathan, were not wrong concerning what there is to see. It has become the most commercial of cities and, in spite of their obsessions with the Civil War, the people are just like you and me. There are pockets of Klan believers, one particularly obnoxious business resides in Kennesaw where the belief in carrying guns has caused the city fathers to pass a law about guns. You are almost obligated to own a gun, according to the stupid wording used in the law. The business was called "Civil War Souviniers and Herb Shop" and offered many choices of major junk pertaining to the war plus one could buy mags and papers which touted the strong beliefs in Naziism, the Klan, and all kinds of sorry thinking.

Having said that, if one is interested in learning about the many different battles, there are many National parks where you will see movies, listen to the Park rangers tell their particular story and then you will go to the gift shop to see if anything is on sale that will remind you of this visit.

So, you can learn what happened during the war and then you can drive around this city which really is no different than any other American city, in this day and age. They have a botanical garden, a zoo, the Underground(which is not more than a large mall except for the Underground museum which I have never found open on my many trips there) the Coca Cola museum and much more of the usual things that tourists expect.

But, if you read up in a tour guide, you find the smaller places to go to learn the history of Martin Luther King, the church involved in King's beliefs, the Indians that were forced to take the "Trail of Tears" who lived just north of Atlanta, the citizens of smaller towns whose history almost always pertains to the Civil War. Its as if they didn't live before that war occurred.

There are cultural things in the city which is trying to go forward. There's a chance to see the governor's mansion on Tuedays, the Paces Ferry House, Stone Mountain and its museum which also doesn't seem to care to tell us much of what happened before the war and a 'don't miss' fireworks display with Civil War history projected on the mountain. They have good theatres which offer much to pay a ticket for and they have a decent symphony and they get Broadway plays on a regular basis. The theatre showing these plays, believe it or not, has a fascinating tour of the many other things going on backstage, at the theatre. Its where GWTW was first shown back in the '40's.

In the '70's, the folks in Marietta voted against extending MARTA(their underground transportation trains system) into its little city because they said, "It will bring crime and people whom we don't want." Guess what? The crime and people are there, via their cars. And, modern transportation on underground trains, which would have taken many cars off the already packed streets, allowed folks an alternative choice on getting around this clogged city, wasn't built there.

Now, I want you to know I loved Atlanta from the first time that I drove through there and I would go back in a flash. What drew me there was the beauty of the trees and rivers and of course, the sun!! The weather is mild but has seasons. There are many public parks where one can walk and admire the beauty of nature.

North of Atlanta lie many mountain villages with huge streams cutting into the mountain and one can loll on the banks and breathe in the soft air or tube on the creek, see the tourist trap of Helen, GA and visit the hospital of Xavier Robert's Cabbage Patch dolls where for the cost of a doll, if you buy one, you can watch it being born in the Cabbage Patch nursery. Cabbage Patch clubs abound in Atlanta and the company sends nurses to visit once or twice a year to make sure the dolls are being well-taken of plus to repair any damage to the dolls or their clothing. Held in one of the largest parks inside the city boundaries, its a panic. Well, I'm way off the topic here so I will go back to doing the laundry.

"His [Sherman's] terms cetainly were. When Joseph Johnston yielded his forces soon after Appomattox, Sherman drafted an agreement so lenient that it provoked outrage in the North, compelling Sherman to match the terms Grant offered Lee. Sherman had lived in the South for twelve years before the War and shared many of its attitudes. All this helped to explain an odd circumstance; Sherman was much less reviled by Southerners a century ago than today."

To say that the "North was outraged" was pointing it mildly. Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton wanted to hang Sherman as a traitor. Both Grant and Lincoln agreed with Sherman and Grant wanted to match terms with Sherman not the other way around, but Stanton used his muscle to convince both Grant and Lincoln to demand Sherman change the terms.

Stanton sided with the Radical Republicans who saw the South as a defeated "foregin" country and wanted the war to continue. He also sided with Nothern speculators who wanted the military in charge of the South. They also wanted the war to continue so they could take the cotton that was laying around warehouses throughout the South and make a profit for themselves. Some of these Nothern speculators were also friends of Lincoln.

The Radical Republicans and the Nothern speculators joined together to rid the country of Lincoln by kidnapping him. John Wilkes Booth was part of this plan at the beginning, but towards the end he was "demoted" which outraged Booth. As the War was coming to an end Booth was considered a "loose cannon" but before the conspirators could go through with the kidnapping plan of Lincoln, John Wilkes Booth put his mark in the history books not only because he was angry over the meat-for-cotton issue but also the Dalghern raid very early in the war. Kennedy had the "Bay of Pigs" and Lincoln had his failed "Dalghern raid."

At any rate, the more I research I do for my novel about an alternate history of Lincoln's assassination the more I feel that the South has every right to hate the North. Stanton used the military to lord it over the South and the speculators stole their cotton which the sale of which could have helped them get back on their feet, not to mention the fact that the money men of Wall Street diverted thousands of dollars to the railroad barons which was ear-marked for the South according the reconstruction plans Lincoln favored. Johnson tried to live up to Lincoln's plans but he was weak and also part of the Nothern speculators. In the end the Radicals in congress wanted to impeach Johnson, so he complied with their wishes.

Thanks for coming in, Ann, and giving us the tour! I would love the weather and the scenery that you describe north of Atlanta, in fact, I could move there myself to spend the winter - it's been a long, dreary, cold, nasty winter in Ohio.

Hey, SCRAWLER! Let us know when that book is finished - you have some "novel" ideas; some I would like to know more about. I knew a little about the Secretary of War Stanton, but would enjoy knowing more about the guy.

Betty Talmadge was colorful wasn’t she? I would love to meet her – even the farm animals are delightful – Rabbit E. Lee, Clark Gobble, Scarlett O’Hen. Hahahaaaa A sense of humor in life can get you everywhere!

And Peggy Root, her brother Ray and Herb Bridges – a few more characters that add to Horwitz’s collection of stories. How he must entertain people at dinner or at a party.

As we were talking about presidents’ children in past posts, I will mention a book I got at the Library today titled “All the Presidents’ Children” by Doug Wead (the fellow who taped President Bush secretly during his father’s campaign and just leaked it to the press.) A statement from the Preface:

”Research showed that being related to a president brought more problems than opportunities. There seemed to be higher than average rates of divorce and alcoholism and even premature death. Some presidential children seemed bent on self-destruction.”

Does that make us happy that our fathers had no political ambitions? But leafing through the book is interesting as I remember so many of these presidents and their children and have often wondered what happened to them, e.g. Amy Carter!

I don’t need to tell any of you that George W. became the first child of a president to win that office since John Quincy Adams.

”The time is not come for impartial history. If the truth were told just now, it would be not credited.” – Robert E. Lee, 1868

How very true! Georgia, Still Prisoners of the War – Chapter 12.

What are your comments? I’m ready to read and discuss a book about Sherman, any of you? An interesting character!

Those are the words of Bruce Catton, written half a century ago, in an introduction to a new edition of Lloyd Lewis bio of Sherman. Catton goes on to say:

'It (the war) came somehow out of what people a century ago were, it took its shape and its color from them, it was like no other experience America ever had, and it remains something to read about and to dream about because, in a queer but compelling way, it reveals something fundamental about the American spirit. The sober analysis of social trends, economic forces, political tensions, and strategic planning may continue until doomsday; we will not get a complete picture unless we begin by establishing an emotional kinship with the men who fought the war.'

Catton then goes on to quote words spoken at the memorial service for Lloyd Lewis in 1949:

'That was why Lloyd could walk in comradeship with the men of the Civil War. That was why when we join Lloyd in discovering...we are identified with the time, with the places, the smells, and the sights and sounds of those who are only, in a physical sense, of the past.'

The talk is about SHERMAN: FIGHTING PROPHET. How about this bio, Ella, some time in the future? I would really look forward to reading it again after many, many years. It is good, in Bruce Catton's opinion. But perhaps there other bios of Sherman. I'll check it out.

Good luck with your novel, Scrawler. Do you mind if we discuss it when it's published?

Thanks for the tour of Atlanta, Ann. It makes me realize what I missed by tearing through it like we did. Blame it on their efficient road system. I was impressed. And thereby hangs a tale. Well, more like a digression.

Later, same trip, my wife and I found ourselves in Savannah, strolling about its beautiful squares. In one was the house in which Sherman stopped after his march through Georgia. I struck up a conversation with a young couple from Atlanta.Remembering the good impression that Atlanta had made on us just passing through, I suggested that it had been abysmal the way the world media had treated Atlanta for a few minor glitches while hosting the Olympic Games. I can still hear that tone of Southern hauteur, as she looked at the aforementioned house:

"Atlanta has survived worse than that."

Sorry, I've been feeling poorly the last while; but my doctor tells me it's nothing more than a little indigestion. I'll accept that diagnosis, and look forward to spring.

And some future discussion of Sherman.

Jonathan

I'd love to discuss my book when I've published it. I've never met an author yet who doesn't love to discuss their writing. And I'd love to read that book about Sherman.

If you want to read more about Stanton. The book to read is: "Stanton: The Life and Times of Lincoln's Secretary of War." Excerpt from the preface: I did not know Benjamin P. Thomas except through his writings. When he died, he was at work on a biography of Edwin McMasters Stanton, and I [Harold M. Hyman] undertook to complete it. I soon learned that my task was more difficult in some ways than initiating a book alone. A man who was not at hand to counsel me or argue with was my co-author."

Descriptions of Robert Lincoln:

Robert's reticence, however, was not perverse. It was one of those qualities which children mysteriously absorb from their parents' behavior, in this case, Abraham Lincoln's inability to be demonstrative, Abraham Lincoln's reticence, Abraham Lincoln's secretivenes, Abraham Lincoln's shut-mouthed nature. Robert's father was blessed with a marvelous sense of humor, which made all but his closest associates overlook that trait, but Robert was not. He consisently denied to history any substantial record of the inner man. It would be interesting to know about Robert's own later periods of severe mental stress. In 1906, for example, he admitted suffering "a nervous break-down" after the death of a close friend - reminiscent of his mother's prostrations after family deaths - but, of course, he revealed little else about his mental state. With Robert the quest for privacy reached the proportions almost of a personality disorder.

He certainly didn't take after "Honest Abe, the Rail Splitter"; didn't even look like him as the reporters first setting eyes on Robert could plainly see. A head shorter than his father, he was round cheeked with a little walrus mustache and slicked down hair and a kind of surly expression. Tell the truth, he did resemble "The Prince of Rails" which is what the papers called him when his father's first campaign concided with an American visit by the Prince of Wales. He dressed like a prince in that silk trimmed double-breasted frock coat and silver filgreed four-in-hand tie, and they said he lived like one in the house on Wabash Avenue. He was shy and standoffish. Because his work didn't require it, he was never available to the press.

Robert Lincoln, only surviving son of the Lincolns, later became Secretary of War under Grant. He was a witness to two other presidential assasinations - James Garfield and William McKinley.

I had to laugh at this sentence: "Excuse the mess - it's always 1860-something in this house," she said, leading me into a kitchen cluttered with reenators' uniforms, Civil War calendars, and piles of books." This sounds like my apartment except for the reenators'uniforms. My apartment is piled high with books and binders dealing with the Civil War. I even have playing cards with Civl War heros on them.

"Joslyn said these letters had punctured her stereotypes about relations between the sexes in the 1860s. "There's a frankness and flirtatiousness that isn't what we think of as Victorian," she said. "And the men aren't talking down to these women at all. They write as equals."

I discovered this as well, when I began my research. Everyone, man, woman and child wrote their "feelings" down in journals or notebooks. I guess I was a little surprised at how much men wrote. It almost seemed like a day didn't go by that they weren't writing in their journals. Part of the reason that got me started on my novel was the discovery of John Wilkes Booth's diary. From there I realized that other men kept diaries - some detailed and some very revealing. And like Joslyn's letters - many talked about the women in their lives in ways that to me seemed very intimate.

In some ways I'm sorry more people don't write letters like they used to. I have some of the letters my parents wrote to each other while my dad was overseas. In one letter he got from his sister, at the end of the letter she told him he had a baby girl - Me! Mom told me dad carried that letter with him all through the war. They are still together after 62 years of marriage and have kept all the letters they wrote to each other. With the advent of computers and E-mail I think there is a whole generation that have never written a letter. It seems a little sad to me.

Oh, golly, JONATHAN, we are so happy to learn of the diagnosis of indigestion – time now to “establish an emotional kinship with the men who fought the war” by joining Rob Hodges and his merry band of reenactors! hahahaa

But I don’t understand what Catton meant when he said that the Civil War revealed “something fundamental about the American spirit” do you?

Yes, I would love to discuss a bio of Sherman – it was news to me that he had lived in the South for years before the war - and one of Stanton also! But, golly, we have a bio of George Washington coming up sometime in the near future – another war, another time, the beginning of it all and you wonder how and why some 80+ years later the dream of a United States was almost pulled asunder!

SCRAWLER, thanks so much for that post! Robert Lincoln is extensively written up in the book I previously mentioned under the chapter “TRIUMPHANT SON.” – his is a success story even though he was beset with guilt and grief over both his father’s death and his mother’s behavior and possible insanity.

How marvelous that your parents are still together after 62 years of marriage and have kept their letters! I think everyone agrees that letter writing is a thing of the past – isn’t it terrible to think of that??? The books that will not be written based on sources such as old letters; the history of our age – how will it be preserved? Certainly not in emails! Or computers!!

Joslyn’s (Georgia author) game of guessing which war atrocities were perpetrated was right on!!! WAR IS HELL, no matter where and with whom!

”This may sound sexist, but my theory is that men like the Civil War because it’s an action story, they’re caught up in the battlefield drama.”

But all battles are action stories and I don’t see that the Civil War battles are any less or more interesting than any other battles, do you? But I do agree with Joslyn when she says that women are attracted to the emotional side of war, it brings out a mothering instinct.

Do you agree, SCRAWLER? How much of that aspect are you writing about in your book?

The story of Andersonville is a long and terrible one and so many books have been written about it and I believe it is still controversial; there are two sides to it.

Just as Horwitz described in the book, cotton was a strange crop to me and we picked some while we were on our trip. They look so artificial and how they could be picked by hand with those thorns I will never understand!

Enough for tonight!

In my novel my focus is on Lincoln and his relationships with the people around him. Many of those will be women. What I want to do is create fictional journals and diaries based on the historical facts of that time period. So, yes, there will be many female voices heard in my novel. Picture if you will going up in an attic and finding a bunch of old Civil War journals and diaries and sitting down and reading them. This is the kind of "feel" that I'm trying to get from my novel. I'm going to let the reader be the judge.

"This may sound sexist," Joslyn said, "but my theory is that men like the Civil War because it's an action story, they're caught up in the battlefield drama. The prisoners are an emotional side of the War. Women are attracted to all that raw feeling, we understand it better, it brings out a mothering instinct." She fingered the autograph album. "Remember, a lot of these soldiers were still boys, not yet twenty, starving in Northern prison camps, with no idea of when if ever they'd get home. more than anything, these guys desperately needed their mommies."

I think that I agree and disagree with this statement at the same time. Not all women have the "mothering" instinct. I think when the women wrote to the Civil War prisoners, it was out of friendship.

I think what we have to keep in mind is that the war split several families some fighting for the south and some fighting for the north.Their own brothers, fathers, and husbands could have been fighting for both the north and the south.

Mary Todd Lincoln had four brothers fighting for the south and several brothers-in-law as well. She only had one brother who was in the north although he never fought for the Union. He deserted his family and when Mary asked Abraham to help him; Abraham refused because he felt that her brother should never have deserted his family. When her brother died of starvation, she never forgave Lincoln.

I personally have always liked to read about war, especially the American civil war, because of the battle scenes. Than I'm weird that way. I can't however, watch a movie about war. But within the scenes of a major battle what I look for is how they manuvered the various troops. I like puzzles and I think a battle is like a puzzle. Now a days CSI is very popular. When we watch shows like that we are trying to find out why and how someone was killed. I do the same thing when I read about a battle. I want to see why and how these troops were manuvered and why some of the soldiers got killed.

"Joslyn's own love life had imitated her research. A tomboy who liked playing war as a child ("The boys were bullies, so they always played the Yankees"..."

I guess I thought of my own childhood when I read this. I used to play with boys more than I did with girls. They just had "cool" things like toy cars etc. My mother had to wrestle with me to get me to wear any kind of a dress.

I never knew that about Mary Todd Lincoln's brother, SCRAWLER! Abe and Mary didn't have a good marriage in many respects did they - so much happened to them - deaths of their children, the war, their different backgrounds. The stuff of many books!

Your fictional journals and diaries should be fascinating - actually on the phone tonight with my daughter who belongs to a history book club, she informed me that this coming month they will be reading and discussing two diaries (true diaries) of a northern soldier and a confederate soldier and if you are interested you can find them here:

A Confederate Memoir of the Civil War

The Civil War Diary and Letters of Elisha Hunt Rhodes

I miss JONATHAN's voice tonight and I think we have lost BABI as she hasn't posted much.

Actually, we are so near the end of the book - shall we go on?

I was just going to remark on a few of the stories in these last few chapters. As people interested in history, I’m sure that you know the story of Andersonville, perhaps even been there?

But I had never heard of Fitzgerald, an hour’s drive from the prison camp. What a sweet story – a Blue and Gray Museum and an extraordinary little town started by a Civil War drummer who dreamed up the idea of Northerners emigrating south!

And if we have another winter like this, I think a few more Northerners might start a southern colony, although many have already decided to do so. The road to Florida in the wintertime is crowded with retired Ohioians!

And the only living confederate widow tells her story!!!!

“She’s a real, sure-enough country lady, she dips snuff and keeps a spittoon in her sweater pocket. And she tells it like it is.” – And she looked as yellow and mottled as an apple-head doll!

“I hoed peanuts, picked peanuts, shook peanuts with a pitchfork to get the dirt off, stewed peanuts, And that was just the peanuts”

I asked her if she had any regrets about marrying a man 60 years her senior and smiling, she said “Better to be an old man’s darlin’ than a young man’s slave.”

In Jimmy Carter country we visited Jimmy Carter’s little depot where he had his first campaign office for president and drove through Plains. And we also visited Warm Springs, GA where FDR went to swim in the warm waters and died in the little house there. The touring car that he drove is encased in a glass museum there as I remember with many photographs.

Once you get out of Atlanta, the big city, there are many places to see in Georgia. I would like to go back.

Hope JONATHAN is all right - let us hear from you, okay, Jonathan?

In the end it turns out William Jasper Martin was a deserter! Saw no fighting at all. But he lived such a long useful life. Fathered 16 children with the help of three darlin's. What more can a man do? I'll never forgive Horwitz for uncovering the old soldiers secrets. For the sake of his professional reputation he has destroyed my faith in the chivalry and honor of every Southern soldier. It was such a good story. I only hope that Alberta never learned the truth about William's war record. Horwitz could have left it at 'he could not furnish the evidence needed' to get that pension. Old men DO forget. But the chapter on the Confederate Widow is delightful to read. Alberta was such a practical darlin. Spending the veteran's widow's pension she finally got for an A/C, a hearing aid, and a new set of teeth.

Shucks, it was that food I 'et, when I was wargasming with the boys that upset my stomach. I thought I had the stomach for it, but it seems not. Next time I'll farb-food it.

But now comes the tough part. Call me a deserter if you like, but my time is suddenly taken up with another book I've come across. I think I'll propose it for discussion. It's that good.

Good luck with your book, Scrawler.

Ella, it was a wonderful read, and a wonderful discussion. Let's do another book on the subject sometime.

Jonathan

Not lost, ELLA. Now that my daughter has a job working via computer from home, I have less computer time. I can't complain; we're both just happy she found the work.

This may be out of place, but I have a note about Selma, AL. After all that happened there, Horwitz wrote that the political and tourist landscape changed, but the social economic was much the same. There is still a black shantytown, and white males earned three times as much as blacks.

Actually, doesn't the rural shantytown, and the big city slum exist everywhere? And the inhabitants are always the poor of whatever race or nationality. I can remember when making trips as a girl, I noticed that the poor section of town always seemed to be on the south side of town. I wondered how that came about. I was surprised when Horwitz mentioned such an area as being on the east side of town.

One statement re. the Civil War really rang a bell of recognition. That was the quote: "That was our Homeric period." I have recently been participating in a mythology discussion that included the stories told by Homer, and there really is a similarity. The gallant efforts, the tragedy, the ugliness and misplaced pride.

Babi

Jonathan: I'll miss your comments. And, Babi, post when you can. After five years of separation my daughter and her husband are coming back to Portland, Oregon to live. They have decided that they no longer want to be in "snow" country. I'm looking forward to their return; although, I've been alone for so long, I do have mixed feelings. To some extent Alberta Martin reminds me of myself. Kinda set in my ways.

"...But I was glad to be there and Alberta seemed glad to see me. Her son was what she called "high strung" and couldn't be counted on for company. "I made his bed 'fore I left this mornin," she said. "Don't never leave the house till I done his and mine. maybe you have to be carried away, somethin' wrong with you, and your bed will be unmade."

"Better to be an old man's darlin' than a young man's slave," she said.

Truer words were never spoken.

I have to agree with Jonathan. I wish we didn't know what really hapened to "old Martin." And I agree with Alberta. Life goes on. "He's been dead forever. I was married to my next husband, Charlie, for fifty years and six months. Why don't nobody ever ask after him?"

Good Evening to all of you! So nice to read your posts tonight and I agree that it is time to leave Horwitz, the Civil War, Rob Hodges and all the wonderful characters that were interviewed for our reading pleasure and discussion.

I enjoyed the book so much, learned a few new things, read your posts each evening with anticipation and want to thank you for your interest and participation. I know somewhere in the future we will meet again in a discussion.

In Horwitz's last chapter I felt a sense of incompleteness in his words and emotions about his journey through the South. He is ambiguous about the future of America as expressed in this paragraph:

"The issues at stake in the Civil War-race in particular-remained raw and unresolved, as did the broad question the conflict posed: Would America remain one nation? In 1861, this was a regional dilemma, which it wasn't anymore. But socially and culturally, there were ample signs of separatism and disunion along class, race, ethnic and gender lines. The whole notion of a common people united by common principles-even a common language-seemed more open to question than at any period in my lifetime."

This statement echoes what BABI was alluding to in her last post.

Is it possible that America can be split again? Perhaps not in our lifetime - let's hope not in our lifetime but it is a challenge to all of us and I hope that future Americans can meet it and succeed.

SCRAWLER, I hope I can someday gain the serenity you feel in living alone, bless you!

JONATHAN, we will, indeed, do another book in the future, and I look forward to it!

Thanks again!

THANK YOU, ELLA, for an engrossing tour through a great book I would otherwise never have heard of, much less read. I think it belongs in the category of books I could read again and find many things I missed the first time around. ...Babi

I'm sorry to see this discussion end. It was one of the best.

Ella, we are never alone as long as we can discuss books etc with others.

"The past is never dead. It's not even past." ~ William Faulkner, "Requiem for a Nun"

The past will never be dead as long as there are those who want to remember it. But it is How we remember the past that is important. The American Civil War has an almost romantic feel to yet, because to us it is our most distant past. We see it through books, paintings, letters, and songs.

But we remember the Vietnam War for different reasons. I was apart of this war and I saw it in the harsh flickering pictures every night on my TV in my own home. There was nothing romantic in watching men die every night in living color.

I also remember World War II for yet different reasons. We didn't have the harshness of "flickering pictures" except for the movies. But the present genration remembers this war as the war that took our fathers and husbands to foreign lands. But unlike the Vietnam War this war ended with a victory.

When I think of the Civil War, I think of it as a cross between World War I and Vietnam War for the south. During the Civil War it split the nation as did Vietnam War. Also, during the Civil War soldiers fought over a small amount of ground going back and forth similar to the fighting during World War I.

Will we have another Civil War? I think as long as we remember WHY we had a Civil War to begin with and solve some of the problems before they come to a boiling point we should be able to remain whole. But remembering WHY we must all remain in the Union, will be difficult at best.

"A few nights before, while reding a Robert Penn Warren essay about the Civil War, I'd come across several lines that spoke to me. "A high proportion of our population was not even in this country when the War was being fought. Not that this disqualifies the grandson from experiencing to the full the imaginative appeal of the Civil War. To experience this appeal may be, in fact, the very ritual of being American."

Is the fact that we are continually searching for "roots" that attracts us to the American Civil War? Is America still a "melting pot"? Sometimes it seems to me that it is a miracle that we are still all together with everthing that has happened. We are truly unique in the make-up of our citizens - we are a nation of many. And perhaps because we have learned to accept the many we will survive without another Civil War!

Thank you all for your contributions to this discussion. It is being archived and is now Read Only.