I have been reading a book of maps of the battle of Gettysburg. They are very detailed, and it is a battle with which I have significant familiarity. I have gone to Wikipedia to look up some biographical material on some of the generals. This is about that surf.
I suspect most people know little about Joe Wheeler. He was a West Point graduate, attending through Georgia, where he was born, even though he was raised in New England. Consistent with most officers in 1861, his allegiance was to his state (the concept of Federal allegiance being primary is a post-Civil War idea), and he served with the Confederacy. He commanded the cavalry in every significant action in the Western Theater from 1862-65. He surrendered, was paroled, and then went into service with....the United States Army. He was the cavalry commander in Cuba during the Spanish-American War, and was Theodore Roosevelt's commander, he of Rough Riders fame. Wheeler died in 1906. He met Longstreet in New York in the 1880s, and Longstreet said he hoped he would die first, so he would get to see Jubal Early cursing Wheeler out for wearing a blue uniform (Early never technically surrendered, fled to Mexico, and died 'unreconstructed to the last').
E. Porter Alexander was the artillery commander for Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. He served as such the entire war until his surrender and parole at Appomattox. Following this he became a celebrated author and speaker, and was much in demand. In 1902 he gave the Confederate address to West Point.
Read that again- he gave the Confederate address to West Point. West Point recognized that Confederate veterans had served honorably, were Americans and graduates of West Point, and they were received as alumni by the 1880s. The animosities faded for the great bulk of veterans and citizens. In 1913, at the 50th anniversary of the battle of Gettysburg, Pickett's surviving veterans marched across their old route to meet Union veterans of the Second Corps at the stone wall on Cemetery Ridge. In one the most moving images of war I have ever seen, these white-haired men reached out and shook hands across the very wall where they had tried to kill each other so hideously in hand-to-hand fighting 50 years before.
Can you imagine such a scene now? There would be protests from civil rights groups. Federal and Army spokesmen would object to honoring traitors and supporters of slavery. We have fake 're-enactments' of the battle much as a theme park would have shows, but we condemn half the men who actually fought there. We are in a wholesale effacement of monuments to the bravery and honorable service of hundreds of thousands of Americans. Buildings are being renamed. Monuments are being removed. Yale is troubled by being named for a slave-holding man.
We cannot stand the feet of clay of our predecessors. They must stand the test of modern 'values' for them to be honorable men. That several of our Founders were slaveholders is glossed over so we can go over the top in our expressions of contempt for slavery, or whatever else is fashionable. Anything Confederate, even Southern, is evil, prejudiced, etc, etc.
That's very sad and very misguided. Confederate soldiers were Americans, and bled and died just like Northern soldiers. Honoring their service is not the same as honoring their cause. We cannot measure the values of the past against the values of the present.
I doubt our society would welcome men like Alexander or Wheeler today, but I wish they would.
Ted
I suspect most people know little about Joe Wheeler. He was a West Point graduate, attending through Georgia, where he was born, even though he was raised in New England. Consistent with most officers in 1861, his allegiance was to his state (the concept of Federal allegiance being primary is a post-Civil War idea), and he served with the Confederacy. He commanded the cavalry in every significant action in the Western Theater from 1862-65. He surrendered, was paroled, and then went into service with....the United States Army. He was the cavalry commander in Cuba during the Spanish-American War, and was Theodore Roosevelt's commander, he of Rough Riders fame. Wheeler died in 1906. He met Longstreet in New York in the 1880s, and Longstreet said he hoped he would die first, so he would get to see Jubal Early cursing Wheeler out for wearing a blue uniform (Early never technically surrendered, fled to Mexico, and died 'unreconstructed to the last').
E. Porter Alexander was the artillery commander for Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. He served as such the entire war until his surrender and parole at Appomattox. Following this he became a celebrated author and speaker, and was much in demand. In 1902 he gave the Confederate address to West Point.
Read that again- he gave the Confederate address to West Point. West Point recognized that Confederate veterans had served honorably, were Americans and graduates of West Point, and they were received as alumni by the 1880s. The animosities faded for the great bulk of veterans and citizens. In 1913, at the 50th anniversary of the battle of Gettysburg, Pickett's surviving veterans marched across their old route to meet Union veterans of the Second Corps at the stone wall on Cemetery Ridge. In one the most moving images of war I have ever seen, these white-haired men reached out and shook hands across the very wall where they had tried to kill each other so hideously in hand-to-hand fighting 50 years before.
Can you imagine such a scene now? There would be protests from civil rights groups. Federal and Army spokesmen would object to honoring traitors and supporters of slavery. We have fake 're-enactments' of the battle much as a theme park would have shows, but we condemn half the men who actually fought there. We are in a wholesale effacement of monuments to the bravery and honorable service of hundreds of thousands of Americans. Buildings are being renamed. Monuments are being removed. Yale is troubled by being named for a slave-holding man.
We cannot stand the feet of clay of our predecessors. They must stand the test of modern 'values' for them to be honorable men. That several of our Founders were slaveholders is glossed over so we can go over the top in our expressions of contempt for slavery, or whatever else is fashionable. Anything Confederate, even Southern, is evil, prejudiced, etc, etc.
That's very sad and very misguided. Confederate soldiers were Americans, and bled and died just like Northern soldiers. Honoring their service is not the same as honoring their cause. We cannot measure the values of the past against the values of the present.
I doubt our society would welcome men like Alexander or Wheeler today, but I wish they would.
Ted
How do we honor the dead who fought bravely for their country, without endorsing their cause? In his famous Gettysburg Address, Lincoln did not denigrate the Confederates, instead honoring "those who here gave their lives that that nation might live."
ReplyDeleteIn 2007, I traveled to the Gallipoli Peninsula (Gelibolu in Turkish), where there are 31 Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemeteries that hold the dead of the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, India, and Newfoundland, who died here in World War I, many of them in the horrible trench warfare. There is also a French cemetery and several Turkish memorials, including the Turkish Soldier’s Memorial.
A large granite wall had the following quote (in English, not Turkish, despite being on Turkish soil), "Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives...You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours...You, the mothers, who sent their sons from far away countries wipe away your tears: your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well."
Atatürk, 1934
I thought the sign and the whole battlefield cemetery memorial system were really quite magnanimous on the part of the Turks and Mustafa Kemal (known now by the name of Atatürk when was president of the country).
Perhaps more than 44,000 Allied and 86,000 Turkish troops died during the 8 month Gallipoli Campaign (April 25th – December 19th, 1915).
Of course, the flip side of the coin is that it is difficult to honor fallen soldiers without seeming to endorse their cause: recall the controversy caused in 1985 when U.S. President Ronald Reagan joined West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl in a visit to the German cemetery in Bitburg, in order to symbolize the reconciliation of the two countries. At the time, 11,000 Americans were living at a nearby U.S. Airbase, in harmony with their German neighbors. Both Reagan and Kohl were HEAVILY criticized for this visit, for many burial plots at the site were dedicated to members of the Waffen-SS – a military arm of the Third Reich's SS (Schutzstaffel). Waffen-SS, alongside with the entire SS, was judged to be a criminal organisation by the Nuremberg trials.
(cf: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitburg_controversy)
So on the one hand, we have the beautiful idea of reconciliation between those who were former warring parties vs. the other side of "never forget" and a demand that the injustice not be forgotten or excused.
Sigh.
As I have heard someone say of the modern situation between the Israelis and Palestinians, the problem is that "both sides are right."
-D-