Tag Archives: american civil war

April 7, 2015 · 17:12

Jubal Early: The Unreconstructed Rebel

Lieutenant General Jubal Early, the Propagandist of the Lost Cause

Friends of Padre Steve’s World

There are some people in history who have a major and sometimes malevolent impact on history who are little known to most people. One of these men is Confederate Lieutenant General Jubal A. Early. You may not have ever heard of him but his influence is still strong today in certain parts of the Republican Party, the Tea Party, the Christian Right and neo-Confederate organizations. Early is a complex, brilliant but malevolent character whose post Civil War activities, and writings influenced how generations of Americans embraced the myth of the Lost Cause as historic truth and why so many people today support an ideology that is little more than a re-baptized Lost Cause in their fight against supposed liberals, progressives, gays, and minority groups. People who they believe threaten their place in society.

This article is part of one of the chapters of my Gettysburg which I will continue to periodically publish here. Have a great night.

Peace

Padre Steve+

Jubal Early was an unusual character. He is described similarly by many to Dick Ewell in his gruffness and eccentrics. Unlike his corps commander, Ewell, who was modest and charitable, Early was “ambitious, critical, and outspoken to the point of insubordination. Under certain circumstances he could be devious and malevolent.” [1] James Longstreet’s aide Moxey Sorrel wrote of him: “Jubal Early….was one of the ablest soldiers in the army. Intellectually he was perhaps the peer of the best for strategic combinations, but he lacked the ability to handle troops effectively in the field….His irritable disposition and biting tongue made him anything but popular.” [2] Despite this, Early had proved himself as a brigade commander and acting division commander and Lee referred to him affectionately as “my bad old man.” [3]

Early was the son of a tobacco planter in Franklin County Virginia. He was born in 1816 who had served in the Virginia legislature and was a Colonel of militia. Growing up he had an aptitude for science and mathematics. He was accepted into West Point in 1833 at the age of seventeen. He was a good student, but had poor marks for conduct and graduated in the eighteenth of fifty cadets in the class of 1837. His fellow students included Joe Hooker, John Sedgwick, Braxton Bragg, and John Pemberton, later, the doomed defender of Vicksburg. Also in the class was Lewis Armistead, with whom the young Early had an altercation that led to Armistead breaking a plate over his head in the mess hall. For the offense Armistead was dismissed from the academy.

He was commissioned into the artillery on graduation in 1837. However, after experiencing life in the active duty army, including service in the in the Seminole War, Early left the army and became a highly successful lawyer and active Whig politician. He served in the Mexican war as a Major with Virginia volunteers. Unlike some of his classmates, and later contemporaries in the Civil War, Early, and his men did not see combat, instead, serving on occupation duty. In Mexico Zachary Taylor made Early the “military governor of Monterrey, a post that he relished and filled with distinction.” [4]

After his service in Mexico, Early returned to Virginia where he returned to his legal practice, serving as a prosecuting attorney. He also entered local politics where he served as a Whig in the Virginia legislature.

During his time in Mexico, Early contracted rheumatic fever, which left him with painful rheumatoid arthritis for the rest of his life. Due to it he “stooped badly and seemed so much older than his years that his soldiers promptly dubbed him “Old Jube” or Old Jubilee.” [5]

Jubal Early was “notoriously a bachelor and at heart a lonely man.” Unlike many Confederate officers he had “no powerful family connections, and by a somewhat bitter tongue and rasping wit” isolated himself from his peers.^{^[6]}

Likewise, in an army dominated by those with deep religious convictions, Early was avowedly irreligious and profane, though he did understand the importance of “the value of religion in keeping his soldiers’ spirits up” and as commander of the Army of the Valley, issued orders for a stricter keeping of the Sabbath. [7] Lee’s adjutant Walter Taylor wrote of him “I feared our friend Early wd not accomplish much because he is such a Godless man. He is a man who utterly sets at defiance all moral laws & such a one heaven cannot favor.” [8] That being said Porter Alexander praised Early and noted that his “greatest quality perhaps was the fearlessness with which he fought against all odds & discouragements.” [9]

Early was a Whig, and a stalwart Unionist who opposed Virginia’s secession, voting against it because he found it “exceedingly difficult to surrender the attachment of a lifetime to that Union which…I have been accustomed to look upon (in the language of Washington) as the palladium of the political safety and prosperity of the country.” [10] Nonetheless, like so many others he volunteered for service after Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers to crush the rebellion.

Robert E. Lee “appreciated Early’s talents as a soldier and displayed personal fondness for his cantankerous and profane Lieutenant …who only Stonewall Jackson received more difficult assignments from Lee.” ^{^[11]} Early was the most influential of Ewell’s division commanders, and his “record in battle prior to Gettysburg was unsurpassed.” ^{^[12]}

After Gettysburg Early remained in command of his division and when Dick Ewell was relieved in 1864 assumed command of the Second Corps. With the corps he conducted operations in the Shenandoah Valley as well as a raid which briefly threatened Washington D.C. in 1864. Early became “a much maligned figure in the Confederacy after his army suffered utter defeat against Philip H. Sheridan’s forces in the Shenandoah Valley during the fall and winter of 1864-65.” [13] The clamor for his relief was so great that Lee relieved Early of command on March 30^th 1865, “and sent him home to await orders.” [14] However Lee handled the matter with gentleness that made ensured Early’s undying devotion. Lee wrote:

“while my own confidence in your ability, zeal, and devotion to the cause in unimpaired…I nevertheless felt that I could not oppose what seems to be the current opinion, without injustice to your reputation and injury to the service.” [15]

After the war Early went into voluntary exile until 1869, unable to reconcile life in the United States following defeat. Travelling from Cuba to Mexico and on to Canada his bitterness grew, and for the embittered General it was about honor. For Early, who had fought so hard against secession, now took the opposing view. For him, “honor resided intact in the defeated cause of Southern independence. It was now distilled, for him, in the issue of states’ rights and white supremacy.” [16]

In his efforts Early sought to “elevate Lee above any other Civil War chieftains, and to promote the idea that the South had not been defeated, only compelled to surrender against overwhelming odds.” [17] Early’s hatred for anything to do with the North was demonstrated when he “refused even to donate funds to a monument to Robert E. Lee in Richmond when he learned that the pedestal would be carved from Maine granite.” [18]

Early’s hatred a blacks grew as he got older, and “became particularly virulent when they were involved in anything connected to the war on the Confederacy.” [19] While serving as Governor, James Kemper, who was so grievously wounded during Pickett’s Charge found Early’s views so dangerous that he begged Early not to attend the unveiling of a monument to Stonewall Jackson in 1875. He wrote to Early, “for the sake of public peace and harmony, I beg, beseech and implore you, for God’s sake stay at home.” [20]

Upon his return from his voluntary exile he was sought after by Lee to help in preparation of a memoir that would explain his decisions during the war. In addition to championing Lee and writing polemics against any former Confederate officer who dared to criticize his chief. As such those writing their own memoirs were usually careful to avoid anything that might provoke Early’s wrath, or submitted their work for his imprimatur before going to publication. He shameless attacked James Longstreet and William Mahone for their post war reconciliation with the hated Yankees, as well as Longstreet’s criticism of Lee.

Early was very intelligent and he knew that the controversy surrounding his defeat in the Valley did not enhance his own reputation, so instead “It was on Lee’s credibility that Early built his postwar career.” [21] Over the course of:

“the last twenty-five years of his life the bitter General sought to get his impressions of the war on record. He took an active role in publishing the Southern Historical Papers….and achieved as a leading arbiter of questions concerning relating to Confederate military history.” [22]

Early was immensely successful in this long term effort. The results of Early’s efforts was the successful propagation of the myth of the Lost Cause and its prominence throughout many of the books, journals and other publications published after the war, even Winston Churchill’s history of the Civil War is filled with Early like lost cause images and language in his works. Referring to Southern honor, that concept that Early held so dear Churchill, echoing Early wrote “The South knew they had lost the war, and would be conquered and flattened. It is one of the enduring glories of the American nation that this made no difference to the Confederate resistance.” [23] The idea that Churchill espoused, that Confederate “honor” was one of the enduring glories of the American nation” is nothing more than myth which promotes everything wrong with the Confederacy.

In February 1894 Lee’s “old bad man” took a fall on the way out of the Lynchburg Post Office. He resisted treatment though he appeared to be in shock and was both mentally and physically unwell. He attempted to continue his business but got worse and he died in Lynchburg on March 2^nd 1894.

Sadly, Early’s ideas live on in the minds of many Americans, who like him have not reconciled with the results of the war and who are susceptible to his message. Early set the example for them:

“Like an Old testament prophet, Jubal supported the message by his own extreme example – his “constancy” and intransigence, his unremitting hatred for Grant (even after Jefferson Davis had forgiven the Illinoisan), his refusal to be pardoned or reconstructed or to regard the North, at least in the abstract, as anything but an evil empire.” [24]

Jubal Early’s words and actions read almost as if they come out of current Republican and Christian Right talking points. Instead of Lincoln and the Black Republicans, the enemy is Obama and the Black, Gay and Liberal Democrats. I find it chilling to read about Early and his transformation for an anti-secession Whig to an unreconstructed Rebel whose nearly pathological hatred for the Union that he had once served reminds me of people I know.

Peace

Padre Steve+

Notes

[1] Ibid. Pfanz Richard S. Ewell p.268

[2] Ibid. Girardi. The Civil War Generals p.206

[3] Ibid. Wert A Glorious Army p.155

[4] Ibid. Osborne Jubal p.28

[5] Ibid. Freeman Lee’s Lieutenants p.83

[6] Ibid. Freeman Lee’s Lieutenants p.33

[7] Ibid. Osborne Jubal p.385

[8] Ibid. Girardi. The Civil War Generals p.207

[9] Alexander, Edward Porter. Fighting for the Confederacy: The Personal Recollections of General Edward Porter Alexander edited by Gary Gallagher University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill 1989 p.397

[10] Ibid. Osborne Jubal p.50

[11] Gallagher, Gary W. Jubal A. Early, the Lost Cause, and Civil War History: A Persistent Legacy; Frank L Klement Lecture, Alternate Views of the Sectional Conflict Marquette University Press Marquette WI 2003 p.11

[12] Ibid. Tagg The Generals of Gettysburg p.256

[13] Ibid. Gallagher Jubal A. Early, the Lost Cause, and Civil War History p.8

[14] Ibid. Freeman Lee’s Lieutenants p.769

[15] Ibid. Gallagher Jubal A. Early, the Lost Cause, and Civil War History p.11

[16] Ibid. Osborne Jubal p.416

[17] Ibid. Pryor Reading the Man p.469

[18] Guelzo Allen C. Fateful Lightening: A New History of the Civil War Era and Reconstruction Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York 2012 p.526

[19] Ibid. Osborne Jubal p.418

[20] Ibid. Osborne Jubal p.418

[21] Ibid. Osborne Jubal p.476

[22] Ibid. Gallagher Jubal A. Early, the Lost Cause, and Civil War History p.15

[23] Ibid. Gallagher Jubal A. Early, the Lost Cause, and Civil War History p.15

[24] Ibid. Osborne Jubal p.476

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Tagged as american civil war, army of northern virginia, battle of gettysburg, christian right, james kemper, james longstreet, jefferson davis, jubal early, mexican war, richard ewell, robert e lee, secession, states rights, tea party, the lost cause, valley campaign of 1864, west point, white supremacy, william mahone

March 22, 2015 · 13:32

The Reconcilled Rebel: James Longstreet

Friends of Padre Steve’s World

I am going to periodically interspersing and publishing short articles about various commanders at Gettysburg on the site. These all come from my student text and the reason is I am going to do this is because I have found that readers are often more drawn to the lives of people than they are events. As I have noted before that people matter, even flawed people, and we can learn from them.

Today’s vignette is about Confederate Lieutenant General James Longstreet who commanded the Confederate First Corps of Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia at Gettysburg, and is considered by many military historians to be the best corps commander on either side during the war. Yet, Longstreet is one of the most controversial figures in the Confederate Army and there are lessons, good and bad to be learned from him. But I think the one thing that can be learned is that for Longstreet the war was never a “holy cause” and he refused to give in to the hatred that consumed so many Confederates during and after the war. Longstreet chose the path of reconciliation when the war was over and in doing so was mailigned by many in the South.

Peace

Padre Steve+

James Longstreet was a native of the Piedmont area of northeastern Georgia. His father, a planter, hailed from a Dutch family that had originally migrated to the colonies in 1687. The young Longstreet, nicknamed Peter or Pete by his family had determined as a child that he would have a military career. His father assisted in his admission to the Military Academy which he entered in 1838. Longstreet was neither a model cadet nor student. He graduated in 1842 “ranked fifty-fourth in a class of fifty-six” [1] and was commissioned into the infantry.

At West Point the young Georgian’s academic performance was lackluster, and he accumulated a significant amounts of demerits. However, the husky Longstreet was well liked and made many lifelong friends while at the academy. His class was distinguished and produced ten Confederate and seven Union Generals during the war. Longstreet’s best friend was a cadet from Ohio in the class which followed him, Ulysses S. Grant of whom Longstreet said was “of noble, generous heart, a lovable character, a valued friend.” [2] That friendship would endure for the rest of their lives.

Longstreet served in the West and went to Texas after it was annexed into the Union. Subsequently, he served in Mexico, getting his first taste of combat on the Rio Grande, then at Monterrey and later at Chapultepec. At Chapultepec, Longstreet was in command of Company H of the 8^th Infantry Regiment which was leading the assault. He was near the head of the regiment the regiment as they breached the first parapet carrying the regimental colors “which he had grabbed …as they fell from the hands of their wounded bearer” [3] Wounded in the thigh, he handed the colors to his friend George Pickett, whose Company A was advancing behind Longstreet’s company.

After his wound healed Longstreet continued to serve in Texas and later in the New Mexico Territory in campaigns against the Comanche. Serving in various command and staff positions including as a company commander, regimental adjutant, and department Quartermaster he became a well-rounded officer. He was promoted to Major and appointed as a Paymaster. With the promotion he was assigned to duties at Fort Leavenworth in 1858 and then again to New Mexico in 1859.

When Abraham Lincoln was elected in 1860 and Southern states began to secede, Longstreet, who was not a proponent of secession, did not hesitate and offered his services to the Governor of Alabama in February 1861. However, there are many questions about this period due to the conflicting story that Longstreet recorded and what the administrative and pay documents record.

Longstreet resigned his commission on May 9^th 1861, though he had already accepted a commission in the new Confederate Army dated May 1^st 1861 with a date of rank of March 16^th 1861 “eight days before he wrote his letter of resignation from the United States Army.” [4] His biographer Jeffry Wert notes that the acceptance of the Confederate commission while he was still serving as an officer in the United States Army, is “a dark story of a man who crossed the delicate line between honor and dishonor” and that “what he did, however, was not the act of an honorable man and officer.” [5] While there may be extenuating circumstances that we do not know, it does appear that Longstreet crossed a line that few, if any other active officers who left the Army for Confederate service crossed.

After his resignation he travelled to Richmond where he was promoted to Brigadier General on June 17^th and given command of a brigade that fought at Bull Run. He was consider to be one of the best Brigadiers in the army and was promoted to Major General on October 7^th 1861. After this promotion, Longstreet was given command of a division on the Peninsula. He was noted by his aide Moxie Sorrel to be “rather gay in disposition with his chums, fond of a glass, and very skillful at poker.” [6] However, during that time, his family living in Richmond was ravaged by a Scarlett fever outbreak in January 1862 which claimed the lives of three of his children, leaving him a much more serious, and very changed man. “There was no more gaiety, no more poker, and, certainly for the time, no more liquor. Essentially, from that tragic January, he was a soldier and little besides.” [7]

When Lee took over the Army, Longstreet quickly became one of his most trusted subordinates. Following the Seven Days battles Longstreet was promoted to command a wing of the army, with Jackson commanding the other. These were in effect army corps and functioned as such until the Confederate Congress allowed the creation of army corps within the army. The Confederate Congress then promoted each man to the Rank of Lieutenant General. The contrasts between the two men were remarkable. One of Lee’s biographers wrote of the contrast between Jackson and Longstreet and how each man in a sense reflect a part of his military personality:

“In these two latter men Lee seemed to have recognize the Janus face of his own military personality. Longstreet seemed to be steady and dependable, the consummate professional. Jackson, on the other hand, had been by turns brilliant (the Valley) and useless (Mechanicsville and White Oak Swamp). But Jackson was a killer, possessed of the same sorts of aggressive instincts which obsessed Lee.” [8]

During the 1862 campaign Longstreet built a solid reputation as a commander. Douglas Southall Freeman wrote that if there was a word Longstreet’s contemporaries would have used to describe him “they would have agreed on the same soldierly term: dependable. Brilliance there might not be, reliability there undoubtedly was.” [9] He led that corps in the hammer blows that nearly destroyed Pope’s army at Second Manassas, grimly held the line at Antietam, and helped direct the massacre of Burnside’s attacking force at Fredericksburg. His corps was not present at Chancellorsville. As a commander he was noted for his devoted care and concern for the welfare of his soldiers, his reluctance to waste their lives in what he believed to be unwise, foolish, or suicidal attacks and “Under his command, the First Corps was the “bedrock” of the army.” [10]

During their time together Lee and Longstreet developed “a close personal and professional relationship.” [11] Lee would refer to him at times as “the staff in my right hand” and “my old war horse.” After Jackson’s death their relationship grew closer, even when they did not agree, not an uncommon occurrence. Longstreet could be, and was, blunt with Lee and thankfully for the two men, Lee “was a strong enough personality to bear the presence of a contrarian,” [12] Longstreet could indeed be a contrarian. Even so, Longstreet was a trusted subordinate and Longstreet later wrote that the relationship was “one of confidence and esteem, official and personal, which ripened into stronger ties as the mutations of war bore heavier upon us.” [13]

Longstreet’s presence as a gruff but kindhearted Georgian in an army dominated by Virginians who “idolized Lee” brought him to appoint “himself to pronounce on military reality, which was to say that his outlook on war was more practical than romantic.” [14] That outlook and honesty would cause Longstreet great consternation after the war as Jubal Early and other leaders of the Lost Cause branded him a “Judas” for his actions at Gettysburg and criticism of Robert E. Lee. Even at Gettysburg, despite their differences of opinion regarding Lee’s strategy, British Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Freemantle noted “The relations between him and Longstreet are quite touching – they are almost always together.… I believe these two generals to be as little ambitious and as thoroughly unselfish as any men in the world.” [15]

Longstreet was grievously wounded in the throat during the Wilderness campaign but returned to serve through the surrender at Appomattox. In the search for villains in the post war South, Longstreet became a target of those seeking to defend and exalt Robert E. Lee. After the war Longstreet quickly reconciled with the Union, made amends and renewed his friendships with Ulysses Grant and others. When Grant died he remarked that Grant “was the truest and bravest man that had ever lived.” [16]

He also became a Republican and served in various positions in the U.S. Government and converted to Roman Catholicism. The combination of those decisions as well as his criticism of Lee’s generalship have led to decades of debate, argument and recrimination. That being said the soldiers who served under him continued to hold him in high regard at Confederate veteran reunions until his death in 1904. Thomas Goree who served on Longstreet’s First Corps staff wrote him after the war:

With my heart full of gratitude, I often think of you, and your many acts of kindness shown me, and the innumerable marks of esteem and confidence bestowed on me by you during the four long and trying years that we were together. Although we may differ in our political opinions, yet I have always given you credit for honest and sincerity of purpose.” [17]

[1] Ibid. Wert Longstreet p.30

[2] Ibid. Wert Longstreet p.31

[3] Longacre, Edward G. Pickett: Leader of the Charge White Mane Publishing Company, Shippensburg PA 1995 p.26

[4] Ibid. Wert Longstreet p.54

[5] Ibid. Wert Longstreet pp.54-55

[6] Ibid. Wert Longstreet p.91

[7] Ibid. Freeman Lee’s Lieutenant’s p.111

[8] Ibid. Thomas Robert E. Lee p.247

[9] Ibid. Freeman Lee’s Lieutenant’s p.112

[10] Ibid. Wert Longstreet p.405

[11] Ibid. Wert A Glorious Army p.61

[12] Ibid. Korda Clouds of Glory p.527

[13] Ibid. Wert Longstreet p.173

[14] Ibid. Korda Clouds of Glory p.527

[15] Ibid. Freeman Lee’s Lieutenant’s p.552

[16] Ibid. Wert Longstreet p.424

[17] Ibid. Wert Longstreet p.424

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Filed under civil war, Gettysburg, History, leadership, Military

Tagged as american civil war, Chapultepec, george pickett, james longstreet, jubal early, robert e lee, the lost cause, the wilderness campaign, thomas goree, ulysses s grant, war with mexico

March 16, 2015 · 16:00

Gettysburg Biographic Vignette: George Gordon Meade

Friends of Padre Steve’s World

Today’s vignette is about major General George Gordon Meade who assumed command of the Army of the Potomac just three days before it went into action against Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia at Gettysburg. He was flamboyant, nor particularly inspirational, but he was smart, had tremendous tactical acumen and great physical and moral courage. Sadly he is often overlooked or discounted. This is just a bit about Meade, his life and career leading up to Gettysburg.

Peace

Padre Steve+

George Gordon Meade was the son of an American merchant who served as the naval agent for the U.S. government in that country until 1817. Meade was born in Cadiz on December 31^st 1815 and grew up in Pennsylvania and Maryland. His father had been ruined financially in Spain when supporting the Spanish government by loaning it over $375,000 in the Peninsular War against Napoleon. Meade’s father remained in Spain to try to recover his lost fortune he sent his wife and children back to the United States where the family lived on the margins of poverty. The money should have been reimbursed to him under the terms of the Treaty of Florida “which obligated the American government to assume any Spanish obligations to American citizens.” However “the U.S. government discovered loopholes that it allowed it to dodge all responsibility to an increasingly bitter and disappointed Richard Meade.” [1]

Meade’s father returned to the U.S. and the family moved from Philadelphia to Washington D.C. were Richard Meade, “worn down physically and mentally by his struggles” [2] died in 1828 when George was just 12 years old and attending “a boarding-school at Mount Airy, a few miles from Philadelphia, known as the American Classical and Military Lyceum.” [3] It was here that Meade got his first taste of military discipline as the school was modeled after West Point and in addition to their studies the students participated in military drill.

At the Lyceum, Meade was known for being “an amiable boy, full of life, but rather disposed to avoid the rough-and-tumble frolics of youths his age; quick at his lessons, and popular with both teachers and scholars.” [4] The family ran out of money to keep him at the school and he returned to Baltimore where he was enrolled in the Mount Hope School in Baltimore as his mother sought to gain him an appointment at West Point. At Mount Hope he studied Latin, English composition and mathematics. A certificate from the headmaster of the school obtained by his mother discussed Meade’s academic acumen.

“The knowledge he has gained…is far greater than is usually acquired by young men of his age in a single year. He possesses an uncommon quickness of perception and is, therefore, capable of acquiring knowledge with great rapidity….” [5]

Meade entered West Point in 1831 when he was just sixteen years old after being nominated by Andrew Jackson. The financial condition of his family was mostly responsible for this as “West Point was the one place where the young Meade could obtain a free college education.” [6] At West Point Meade did not excel in his studies, though he was not near the bottom of his class and his performance in some subjects such as military engineering gave no indication of how he would excel later in life. He graduated nineteenth of fifty-six in the class of 1835. Unlike many classes which were crowed with men destined for greatness, there were few notables in this class. Other than Meade there was Lincoln’s Postmaster General Montgomery Blair, Brigadier General Herman Haupt, who directed the transportation system of the Union army in the East during the war and John Pemberton, who as a Confederate general would surrender Vicksburg to Grant.

Meade was commissioned as a Brevet Second Lieutenant and assigned to the artillery and resigned his commission after serving his one year obligation and entered civilian life as a topographic engineer. Such was not an unusual occurrence in the tiny army of that era, as “over the previous two years more than a hundred West Point graduates had left the army.” [7] He found his civilian employment with the Bureau of Topographical Engineers and over the next five years took part in surveying the Texas-Louisiana boundary line, an assignment on the Mississippi River Delta, and the Canadian-United States boundary, an area of perpetual dispute from the time of American independence. It was during his time of civilian work with the Bureau that he met and married his wife Margaret Sergeant Wise, the daughter of Congressman John Sergeant, who had been the running mate of Henry Clay in the 1832 presidential election.

In 1842 Congress passed a measure which limited topographic survey to officers of the Topographic Engineer Corps. For Meade this was a godsend, for with the assistance of Margaret’s brother-in-law Congressman Henry A. Wise of Virginia Meade was reappointed as a Second Lieutenant in the Topographic Engineers on May 19^th 1842. He had lost nearly six years of seniority, but “he had fairly earned his rank of Second Lieutenant of Topographic Engineers.” [8] His first assignments included surveying the Aroostook River in Maine and the design and construction of a lighthouse for Brandywine Shoals, Delaware.

In 1845 with a war with Mexico looming due to the annexation of Texas, Lieutenant Meade reported to the headquarters of General Zachary Taylor in Corpus Christi. Here he conducted surveys of the Nueces River and other inland waterways. Meade accompanied Taylor to the disputed border area around between the Nueces and the Rio Grande where some of the first actions of the war took place in 1846. During the war he served in Mexico “principally with Taylor’s army, where he won a brevet for gallantry at Monterrey.” [9] During his time in Texas and Mexico Meade became disgusted with the political machinations that surrounded the war and in a letter home he wrote “the mighty engine of influence, that curse of our country, which forces party politics into everything.” [10]

Meade was transferred to the army of Winfield Scott where he was no longer the senior Topographic Engineer but the junior. He chafed at his inactivity with Scott and complained about it. Major Turnbull, the senior Topographic Engineer told Scott that Meade was “Meade was unexpectedly with the army and that he had quite enough officers without him.” [11] In light of this Scott sent Meade back, where he returned to building lighthouses missing the bulk of the campaign. That assignment was cut short in 1849 when Meade was ordered to Florida “amid an outbreak of violence by the Seminoles.” [12] In Florida he survey a line of forts and upon completion returned to lighthouse work at Brandywine Shoals and then in Key Largo.

When the Army established the Lighthouse Board, Meade was appointed t the Seventh District where he continued his work in Florida. Among the lighthouses that he built was the Sand Key lighthouse at Key West which stands to this day. Meade was still just a First Lieutenant but he was rising in terms of the work that he was doing and was “promoted to superintendent of the Seventh Lighthouse District” [13] and took over the Fourth District as well when its superintendent was transferred to the West Coast. In this work Meade prospered. The most impressive monument to Meade’s work is the 163 foot tall Barnegat Bay Light in New Jersey. Meade was justifiably proud of his accomplishments and after the war noted that “I have always thought my services in the construction of lighthouses, and subsequently on the Lake Survey were of considerable importance.” [14]

In 1856 Meade was promoted to Captain and given charge over the vast Great Lakes survey. In Meade’s words he work involved:

“the delineation of the shores, and bottom of the lakes, bringing to light the hidden dangers; obtaining the evidence and capacity and depth of water in all the harbors and rivers and consequently the most practical mode of improving them; furnishing the evidence of the wants of navigation in reference to lighthouses, beacons and buoys and the proper sites for same.” [15]

Meade had to lobby Congress for funding and expanded the number of officers and personnel involved until by 1860 he had ten teams, some working on land and some aboard ships with a budget which he expanded from $25,000 to $75,000 in three years. It was a remarkable job, but then Meade had matured as an officer and as a leader.

Meade was still involved with this mission when Fort Sumter was attacked. To the consternation of local leaders in Detroit, he and his officers refused to be part of a mass meeting where the locals were insisting the Federal officers publically renew their oaths. This decision was part of Meade’s innate conservatism. Meade felt that doing so without the order of the War Department was not within his prevue.

Meade was not a firebrand, conservative and logical thought that the best course would for both sides to step back and catch their breath. He was “dismayed at the arrogance of the fire-eaters, to whom Southern secession seemed like a simple riot which would be suppressed by the mere appearance of Federal troops.” [16] The decision angered Senator Zach Chandler who had organized the event and Chandler would remain an opponent of Meade throughout the war.

He had never been a political officer and was determined to avoid becoming one, he wrote “as a soldier, holding a commission, it has always been my judgement that duty required that I should disregard all political questions, and obey orders.” [17] Thus he avoided some of the more overtly political displays in Michigan but wrote:

“I have ever held it to be my duty…to uphold and maintain the Constitution and resist the disruption of this Government. With this opinion I hold the other side responsible for this existing condition of affairs.” [18]

He was viewed with suspicion by Radical Republicans as “another politically unreliable McClellan Democrat” and William Lloyd Garrison’s The Liberator noted that his look “reveals a character that never yet efficiently and consistently served a liberal cause.” [19]

He immediately volunteered for field duty, but it his request was not answered due to resistance in the Corps of Topographic Engineers. It was not until after the debacle at Bull Run when he would be appointed a Brigadier General of Volunteers, even as he was preparing to resign his commission to take command of a Michigan Regiment.

Meade was appointed to command a brigade of the Pennsylvania Reserves and saw much action at the head of his brigade on the Peninsula, serving alongside his friend John Reynolds who commanded another brigade in the division. Meade exhibited a coolness under fire that earned the respect of his soldiers and officers. His fearless nature had “resulted in his being wounded twice by bullets almost simultaneously at the Battle of Glendale on the Peninsula” [20] and incurring other wounds and close calls at South Mountain, Antietam and Fredericksburg. In September 1862 he was promoted to command the division and after Fredericksburg he was promoted to command Fifth Corps. His promotions “from brigade commander in the Pennsylvania Reserve Division to corps command had been earned on battlefields.” [21] Serving in almost all of the army’s campaigns in the East Meade “gained increasing distinction as a highly competent and skillful officer. At Fredericksburg his division was the only unit to achieve any kind of success in a battle that otherwise was known as the worst fiasco in the history of the Army of the Potomac.” [22]

Like many of the commanders at Gettysburg Meade’s personality, temperament and character were complex, leading to people who met him or served with him to different conclusions. He possessed little flair for the dramatic or the theatrical. He was quietly religious and modest and “he usually kept aloof and made no effort to make himself popular” especially with reporters and “they exacted a toll for this treatment, and as a result Meade’s reputation suffered from a poor press.” [23]

He did not fit the stereotype of a commanding general of an army, he possessed none of McClellan’s style, Hooker’s dash or Reynold’s handsomeness. Some of his critics in the ranks referred to him as “a damned old goggle-eyed snapping turtle” while others called him “Old Four Eye” based on the glasses that he wore.[24] Meade handled such comments well for he had few delusions about himself, he remarked to an officer “I know they call me a damned old snapping turtle.” [25] As for his physical appearance a reporter noted that Meade “is colorless, being of a ghostly pale,” and “his nose of the antique bend.” [26] Another noted that he looked more like “a learned pundit than a soldier” [27] while his attire did not help, an aide noted “as for clothes, General Meade was nowhere.” Another officer remarked, “it would be rather hard to make him look well dressed.” [28]

Meade was sharp minded and quick tempered, “irritable and touchy in camp, possessed of a famous temper and imperfect means of controlling it.” [29] His temper was rooted in his sense of perfectionism and truthfulness. Theodore Lyman wrote that “I never saw a man in my life who was so characterized by straightforward truthfulness as he is.” [30] But Meade’s often volcanic temper and abject truthfulness were that of a logical man who could not abide “stupidity, negligence or laziness.” [31] Lyman observed “I don’t know any thin old gentleman, with a hooked nose and cold blue eye, who, when he is wrathy, exercises less of Christian charity than my well-beloved Chief!” [32]

Unlike some leaders whose temper led them to make unwise decisions with the lives of their troops, “in matters involving the safety of the army or the lives of thousands of men he exercised self-control and showed great moral courage in his decisions.” [33] At the same time he was a man who if after an angry outburst was full of regret, and as introspective as he was had “a cordial desire, if he had been wrong to make amends.” [34]

He was a man who in the war did not lose his humanity either towards the soldiers that he commanded or the victims of war. He was moved to acts of compassion when he saw suffering women and children whose lives had been upended by war. During the campaign of 1864 Meade:

“happened upon a poorly dressed woman fringed by several crying children – a family which the cavalry had robbed – he pulled out a five-dollar bill and also saw that food was provided for the day’s neediest. “The soft-hearted General…though of his own small children,” Colonel Lyman reflected. “He is a tender hearted man.” [35]

It was this complex man, a modest, conservative perfectionist, prone to volcanic eruptions of temper, but possessing of a strong sense of honesty even in regard to himself, who in the early morning hours of June 28^th 1863 would have the fate of the Union thrust upon his shoulders.

Notes

[1] Huntington, Tom Searching for George Gordon Meade: The Forgotten Victor of Gettysburg Stackpole Books, Mechanicsburg PA 2013 p.12

[2] Ibid. Huntington Searching for George Gordon Meade p.12

[3] Meade, George edited by George Gordon Meade The Life and Letters of George Gordon Meade, Major General United States Army Volume I Big Byte Books Amazon Kindle Edition 2014 originally published 1913 location 185 of 7307

[4] Ibid. Huntington Searching for George Gordon Meade p.12

[5] Cleaves, Freeman Meade of Gettysburg University of Oklahoma Press, Norman and London 1960 p.10

[6] Sears, Stephen W. Gettysburg. Houghton Mifflin Co. Boston and New York 2003 p.85

[7] Ibid. Huntington Searching for George Gordon Meade p.13

[8] Ibid. Cleaves Meade of Gettysburg p.18

[9] Pfanz Harry W. Gettysburg: The First Day University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill and London 2001 p.43

[10] Ibid. Huntington Searching for George Gordon Meade p.29

[11] Ibid. Cleaves Meade of Gettysburg p.43

[12] Ibid. Huntington Searching for George Gordon Meade p.31

[13] Ibid. Cleaves Meade of Gettysburg p.49

[14] Ibid. Huntington Searching for George Gordon Meade p.32

[15] Ibid. Cleaves Meade of Gettysburg p.50

[16] Ibid. Catton The Army of the Potomac: Glory Roadp.257

[17] Ibid. Huntington Searching for George Gordon Meade p.39

[18] Ibid. Cleaves Meade of Gettysburg p.52

[19] Ibid. Guelzo Gettysburg: The Last Invasion p.88

[20] Tagg, Larry The Generals of Gettysburg: The Leaders of America’s Greatest Battle Da Capo Press Cambridge MA 1998 Amazon Kindle Edition p.2

[21] Ibid. Wert A Glorious Army p.267

[22] Ibid. Coddington The Gettysburg Campaign pp.213-214

[23] Ibid. Coddington The Gettysburg Campaign p.213

[24] Ibid. Guelzo Gettysburg: The Last Invasion p.87

[25] Ibid. Foote The Civil War, A Narrative. Volume Two p.454

[26] Wert, Jeffry D. The Sword of Lincoln: The Army of the Potomac Simon and Schuster, New York and London 2005 p.268

[27] Ibid. Foote The Civil War, A Narrative. Volume Two p.454

[28] Ibid. Wert The Sword of Lincoln p.268

[29] Ibid. Catton The Army of the Potomac: Glory Roadp.257

[30] Ibid. Coddington The Gettysburg Campaign p.211

[31] Ibid. Coddington The Gettysburg Campaign p.211

[32] Ibid Sears. Gettysburg. Pp.125-126

[33] Ibid. Coddington The Gettysburg Campaign p.211

[34] Ibid. Coddington The Gettysburg Campaign p.212

[35] Ibid. Cleaves Meade of Gettysburg p.247

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Tagged as abraham lincoln, american civil war, Barnegat Bay Light, battle of gettysburg, Brandywine Shoals lighthouse, george meade, john reynolds, joseph hooker, Lighthouse Board, Sand Key lighthouse, war with mexico, winfield scott, zach chandler, zachary taylor

February 19, 2015 · 19:19

Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: Racism, Slavery and Religion

Today my friends another installment of my chapter in my Gettysburg text dealing with religion, racism and ideology as causes of the American Civil War. While many people, especially modern Southern White politicians like to repeat the mantra that we live in a “post-racial” society where racism no longer exists. I discussed that ridiculous assertion yesterday in my intro to the series so I won’t bother to repeat it now.

What I will do is discuss how religion has been used and in still being used by “true believers” of many religions to justify all sorts of evil in the name of their God. The latest and most newsworthy of such people are the practitioners of terror in the name of Allah, the Islamic State and Boko Haram in central and west Africa. These groups have brought back the concepts of what we would call public lynching of their enemies, burning them alive, beheading them, enslaving them, and engaging in ethnic and religious cleansing. They are ruthless and are a throwback to times that most of us had hoped had passed into recess of history.

But history has a way of never dying, especially for those who don’t stop believing in their cause. In resp0nse to the acts of ISIL and Boko Haram I have heard numerous American Christian politicians, pundits and preachers claim that Christians have never acted in such a way. I could go through the litany of crimes committed by Christians, Churches and the actions of nations whose state supported churches provided the theological justification for genocide, pogroms, ethnic cleansing, crusades, imperialism, slavery and a host of other crimes against humanity. Instead I am just going to focus on the theological justification of those who defended the institution of slavery, as well as their abolitionists opponents in this posting, because they are really not that too far removed from the actions of ISIL and the words of many supposedly Christian politicians, pundits and preachers in this country today.

This section begins with the Compromise of 1850, an act which included the Fugitive Slave Act which gave Southern Slaveholders the right to go into any state or territory to reclaim their human property and provided them with a extra-judicial system to support them. From this it transitions to the theological arguments and proclamations of those supporters of slavery and their opponents. The section ends with a note about a case that Virginia was pushing through the Courts in 1860, just prior to the Civil War, it was a case that they hoped would destroy any remaining legal obstacles to expanding slavery into Free States and territories against the wishes of the citizens of those states. I find it interesting that for people then as well as today the concept of “States Rights” only applies to them and their attempts to deny freedom to others.

Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: Religion, Ideology and the Civil War Part 2

Tomorrow I will post the third section of this chapter which begins with Bleeding Kansas, John Brown, the link between church and state in the Confederacy, the election of Lincoln, Emancipation, and the pervasive and poisonous myth of the Lost Cause in the United States.

Racism, as well as other forms of hatred backed by religion is still alive and it is not just in the Middle East and Africa. It is still here, and it is still happening now. It may be a bit more subtle and certainly not as violent as it was in the ante-bellum days, or Post-Reconstruction, but it is here. Like in the Middle East it bides its time until extremists can invent an excuse to resort to violence and terrorism.

Peace

Padre Steve+

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Tagged as american christianity, american civil war, boko haram, civil rights, compromise of 1850, dred scott decision, genocide, isil, islam, lynching, racism, Religion, slavery, states rights, The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, true believers

February 18, 2015 · 23:17

Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: Racism Still Exists

Friends of Padre Steve’s World

In a week and a half I shall be off to Gettysburg again with a new band of students, bracing the very cold and possibly even nasty winter weather to experience and learn about the people, whose courage, sacrifice and service helped change this country for the better.

That is not to say that we have arrived in any sense of the word. Today I was confronted on a social media site about a quote that I posted from the late Associate Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall which said:

“None of us got where we are solely by pulling up our bootstraps. We got there because somebody – a parent, a teacher, an Ivy League crony, or a few nuns, bent down and helped us pick up our boots…”

When I posted it I wasn’t thinking of anything more than that all of us owe something to someone else for what we have achieved.

The person who confronted me on this, a retired Navy Chaplain chastised me because of “institutionalized affirmative action programs.” When I defended Marshall’s comments I got a a comment that “those days are long gone….”

When I read that with or new puppy Izzy snuggled beside me I thought, “what the fuck?” I really didn’t know how to respond. I was astounded to hear those words coming from a person who served a full career in the military. Heck the Admiral I work for, who is one of under twenty African Americans serving at that rank today was told by a white Commanding Officer that he would never command anything because he was black. He entered the military a year after I did during the early part of the Reagan build up. I enlisted in 1981 and was commissioned in 1983, he was commissioned in late 1982.

So please keep telling me that institutional and personal racism does’t exist. It does and it is still a part of life, no matter what Ben Carson, Alan West or Starr Parker say. Those people are no different than Stephen, the character played by Samuel L. Jackson in Django Unchained. They benefit from being the black henchmen of those that oppress other blacks. In Harriet Beecher Stowe’s era they were called Uncle Tom. The sad thing is that such people never understand that the system that they defend and advocate still hates them. I’ll go back to that in another two articles this weekend, which will be entitled They Still Hate You and another We the Good White God Fearing Citizens of Rock Ridge Again both will have a film reference and if you don’t know those films you should.

Sadly it seems they one people that really believe that are white American conservative Christians. But I digress….

The heart of why over 600,000 Americans died in the Civil War, and the country was devastated by a total war, the effects of which still linger today was rooted in racism, the institution of slavery, the belief that Blacks were less that human and that States, backed by legislative “compromises” and Supreme Court decisions could and should be able to maintain and even expand an evil social and economic system that treated Blacks as less than human, enslaved them and treated them not as human beings but as the property of slave owners.

That my friends is not just a fact, it is history and it is uncomfortable as hell because my family owned slaves and fought for the Confederacy, something that I am neither proud of or ashamed to admit. It is history. It is reality, and it is shameful. I will not simply resort to the lie that my ancestors who owned slaves and fought to keep that right were simply products of their time. They and thousands of others like them knew better, and they not only intellectually assented to the system, but the profited from it and fought for it.

What I am saying, and this will not be comfortable to those who want to believe that racism, or other forms of social discrimination exist and are being re-legislated into law in certain state legislatures in actions to roll back voting rights, civil rights and economic liberty.

No they will not, especially to those who hold those beliefs and back them with their religion. Just because an elected official, or a law enforcement officer who happens to be Black expresses an opinion that racism still exists and that the laws on the books designed to ensure equal rights are enforced does not mean that they are racist. It seems to me that the racism label today is used by the very proponents of racism, racism that seeks to assign blacks, women, other people of color, and gays to less than full social, political and racial equity. But then I could be wrong, maybe in the words of Supertramp’s Logical Song I’m just a radical, liberal, fanatical, criminal…. but then maybe all the world is asleep…. and my questions run too deep….

That my friends is just one of the reasons that I believe that history matters and that such evils, and yes they are evil, need to be confronted today. The history must be told and it cannot be varnished with the lacquer of the myth of the Lost Cause, or any sort of neo-Confederate romanticism, the politicians, pundits and preachers who do so be damned to the pit of the hell that they so adamantly assign those that do not agree with them.

So tonight I am reposting a link to the first of three previously published articles, which are one full chapter of my Civil War and Gettysburg text. They are uncomfortable as hell to read, because I know for a fact that from my own research, and family history that they are just that. The accounts, the words of the defenders of slavery and the racist ideology behind it and today behind much of the preachers, politicians and pundits of the Tea Party must be confronted. Not just because it is part of their ideology, but because it is an integral part of the ideology of the Islamic State, Boko Haram and all evil that go with them. Ideology, religion and racism matters, not just in the past but today.

So tonight I give you

Mine Eyes Have Seen The Glory: Religion, Ideology & the Civil War Part 1

I’ll repost part two tomorrow and part three Friday with a few more editorial comments because as you an see I am really spun up about this.

Have a great night.

Peace

Padre Steve+

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Tagged as american civil war, boko haram, django unchained, gettysburg, ideology, islamic state of iraq and the levant, justice thurgood marshall, mine eyes have seen the glory, race, racsim, Religion, religion and ideology, samuel l jackson

January 16, 2015 · 12:42

Beginnings of Women’s Equality and the Civil War

Seneca Falls Convention

Friends of Padre Steve’s World

This is a newly written section of my introductory chapter for my Civil War and Gettysburg text. In that introductory chapter I dealt with many of the tactical, technological, doctrinal and military sociological changes which occurred in the Civil War. In later revisions I added a section on emancipation and the role of African American soldiers during the war. However, I realized when doing my research that in the years leading to the war and during the war that the modern women’s movement really began, in large part due to the role of women in Abolitionist circles. Thus as a coda to the section on emancipation and African American soldiers I added this small section.

Have a blessed weekend,

Peace

Padre Steve+

Garrison and the leaders of the abolitionist movement came into contact with two southern women who had converted to the abolitionist cause; South Carolina cotton heiresses, Sarah and Angelina Grimke. The two women were passionate as well as eloquent and became popular lecturers on the abolitionist speaking circuit. These women brought Garrison into contact with the early leaders of the new women’s rights movement. The leaders of the movement, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Abby Kelley, and Lydia Maria Child were outspoken in their belief that “a campaign to emancipate slaves could not avert its eyes from the need to emancipate American women from social conventions and legal restraints that prevented them, like the slave, from owning property and voting, and kept them altogether subservient to the interests of white males.” [1]

Women in the United States were bound by English common law, and “marriage very nearly meant the legal annihilation of a woman…once a woman was married all property and property rights were transferred to her husband, and she was permitted to own nothing in her own name. Married women could not make contracts, could not sue, could not buy or sell, except over their husband’s signatures.” [2] A married woman’s position was as close to being a slave as could be, and only the plight of black female slaves was worse, for they were simply chattel. The few free black women mainly stayed unmarried “in order to maintain what few property rights they were entitled to.” [3] As they also did over blacks, white men ruled over women in all spheres of life.

Stanton was among the most vocal of women’s rights advocates. She believed that a woman’s place in the home “reflected her subordinate position in society and confined her to domestic duties that served to “destroy her confidence in her own powers, lessen her self respect, and to make her willing to lead a dependent and abject life.” [4] She noted that women were “more fully identified with the slave than man possibly can be… For while the man is born to do whatever he can, for the woman and the negro the is no such privilege.” [5] Since nearly all of the most “outspoken feminists had been schooled in abolitionist movement” they were “suspect in the South, where society was conservative, patriarchal, and insistence that ladies live in a kind of earthly limbo.” [6] Since the South was turning away from anything closely connected with the abolitionist moment, many there also rejected any form of women’s rights.

But even with the abolition movement there was opposition the women’s rights. In May of 1840 Garrison’s American Anti-Slavery Society split when leading evangelicals led by the Tappan brothers withdrew from it. But that neither stopped Garrison from working with them, nor Frederick Douglass from embracing them. From this rather inauspicious beginning, the women’s rights movement began to infiltrate society, especially in the field of education. In 1848 at Seneca New York there was a convention which launched the modern women’s rights movement. Led by Stanton and Elizabeth Mott the delegates published a “Declaration of Sentiments, modeled on the Declaration of Independence, proclaimed “that all men and women are created equal” and deserved their “inalienable rights” include the right to elective franchise.” [7] The declaration was bold and its denunciation of the place of women in society to be considered revolutionary in character. Part read:

“He has never permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to elective franchise. He has compelled her to submit to laws, in the formation of which she had no voice. He has withheld from her rights which are given to the most ignorant and degraded men – both natives and foreigners… He has made her, if married, in the eye of the law, civilly dead. He has taken from her all right to property, even to the wages that she earns…. After depriving her of all her rights as a married woman, if single, and the owner of property, he has taxed her to support a government which recognizes her only when her property can be made profitable to it. He has monopolized nearly all the profitable employments, and from those she is permitted to follow she receives but a scanty remuneration. He closes against her all the avenues to wealth and distinction which he considers honorable to himself. As a teacher of theology, medicine of the law, she is not known… He has created a false public sentiment by giving the world a different code of morals for men and women, by which moral delinquencies which exclude women from society, are not only tolerated, but deemed of little account in man. He has usurped the prerogative of Jehovah alone, claiming his right to assign for her a sphere of action, when that belongs to her conscience and to her God. He has endeavored, in every way that he could, to destroy her confidence in her own powers, lessen her self-respect, and to make her willing to lead an abject and dependent life.” [8]

The declaration also stated, in words which inflamed many men that :“the history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object of an absolute tyranny over her.” [9]

While the movement made modest progress regarding property rights in some states, they made little progress in terms of elective franchise and better wages and working conditions. During the ante-bellum period, women who lobbied for such rights were met with open opposition and scorn. The press “frequently denounced and ridiculed the “strong-minded women…” [10] Despite such attitudes women did make some significant advancements, particularly in lay aspects of the church, such as Bible societies, moral reform organizations, as well as the abolition and temperance movements, which had gained prominence during the Second Great Awakening.

Educationally women made great progress. By 1850 the United States was the only country where “girls went to elementary school and achieved literacy in virtually the same proportion as boys.” [11] Likewise a few women entered higher education, particularly at women’s seminaries, which were for all practical purposes boarding schools which produced teachers and writers, as well as the Oberlin College which was founded by Christian abolitionists and welcomed students of both genders as well as of any racial minority. During the three decades prior to the war women made some specific gains, but more important “was the development to their talents for organization, cooperation, leadership, and self expression. It was a time of beginnings and not fulfillment, a time when most women realized and accepted the fact that they lived in a man’s world, a time when a few dedicated but belligerent visionaries were frustrated in their attempt to remake the social order “overnight.” [12]

However, the war would help bring about many more opportunities for women. In 1850 a follow on conference to the Seneca conference, the National Women’s Rights Convention denied the right of anyone to dictate what women could do with their lives:

“The right of any portion of the species to decide for another portion, of any individual to decide for another Individual what is not their “proper sphere”; that the proper sphere for all human beings is the largest and highest to which they are able to attain; what this is, can not be ascertained without complete Liberty of choice; women therefore, ought to choose for herself what sphere she will fill, what education she will seek, and what employment she will follow, and will not be bound to accept, in submission, the rights, the education, and the place which man thinks proper to allow her.” [13]

Of course when war broke out the logical end of this train of though was should women be allowed to serve in the military. Quite a few women on both sides of the conflict chaffed about not being allowed to fight for their countries. However, despite official prohibitions that kept women from serving in any capacity but nursing, a good number of women found their way to war, taking male identities in order to gain the economic privileges, and in the case of war, the glory reserved to men. In our modern parlance they would be called transvestites, but their “transvestitism was a private rebellion against public conventions. By taking a male social identity, they secured for themselves male power and independence, as well as full status as citizens of their nation. In essence the Civil War was an opportunity for hundreds of women to escape the confines of their sex.” [14]

During the war hundreds of women went to war, taking on the identity of men. They enlisted under male names and pretended to be men. Unless they were discovered to be women, or unless they confessed to their wartime service either during or after the war, most of their records are lost. At least five women, two Federal and three Confederate took part at Gettysburg. All three Confederates were either killed or wounded, or captured, including two women who took part in Pickett’s Charge.

Wartime records are sketchy but as a minimum it is believed that “between 250 and 400 women disguised as men found their way into either the Federal or Confederate armies.” [15] Women known to have served had a “combined casualty rate of 44 percent” including the fact that “eleven percent of women soldiers died in the military.” [16]

Other women would serve as spies or nurses and some of those discovered remained protected by fellow soldiers. Many received promotions and even served as NCOs or junior officers. With women now serving in combat or combat support roles in the U.S. Military since Operation Desert Storm in 1991, the stigma and scandal that these cross-dressing women soldiers of the Civil War has faded and as scholars and the public both “continue probing cultural notions of gender and identity, the reemerging evidence that women historically and successfully engaged in combat has met with less intellectual resistance and has taken on new cultural significance.” [17] As the United States military services examine the issues surrounding further moves to integrate the combat arms we also should attempt to more closely examine the service of the brave and often forgotten women who served on both sides of the Civil War.

Notes

[1] Ibid. Guelzo Fateful Lightening pp.49-50

[2] Ibid. Guelzo Fateful Lightening p.391

[3] Ibid. Guelzo Fateful Lightening p.391

[4] Ibid. Goldfield America Aflame p.74

[5] Ibid. Guelzo Fateful Lightening p.50

[6] Massey, Mary Elizabeth, Women in the Civil War University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln NE 1966 p. 19

[7] Ibid. McPherson Battle Cry of Freedom p.36

[8] Blanton, DeAnne and Cook, Lauren M. They Fought Like Demons: Women Soldiers in the Civil War Vintage a books, a Division of Random House New York 2002 pp.3-4

[9] Ibid. Guelzo Fateful Lightening p.392

[10] Ibid. Massey Women in the Civil War pp.21-22

[11] Ibid. McPherson The Battle Cry of Freedom p.36

[12] Ibid. Massey Women in the Civil War p.23

[13] Ibid. Guelzo Fateful Lightening p.392.

[14] Ibid. Blanton and Cook They Fought Like Demons p.5

[15] ibid. Guelzo Fateful Lightening p.394

[16] Ibid. Blanton and Cook They Fought Like Demons pp.206-207

[17] Ibid. Blanton and Cook They Fought Like Demons p.204

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Tagged as Abby Kelley, abolition movement, American Anti-Slavery Society, american civil war, battle of gettysburg, Christian abolitionists, civil war women soldiers, Declaration of Sentiments, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Elizabeth Mott, evangelicals, frederick douglass, Lydia Maria Child, National Women’s Rights Convention, Oberlin College, pickett's charge, Sarah and Angelina Grimke, second great awakening, seneca convention, william lloyd garrison, women in the military, women's rights movement

January 1, 2015 · 23:06

My New Year’s Resolution: The Passionate Pursuit of Truth

“If someone is able to show me that what I think or do is not right, I will happily change, for I seek the truth, by which no one was ever truly harmed. It is the person who continues in his self-deception and ignorance who is harmed.” – Marcus Aurelius

Friend’s of Padre Steve’s World. Before I say anything else tonight I just want to thank you for taking the time out of your schedule to read, comment and even share what I write. That matters to me and a good number of you have followed my writings for years. So I truly thank you from the bottom of my heart, and if you like what you see please comment and share with others.

As I get older I realize how valuable time is. There are few commodities that truly cannot be replaced or conserved, time is one that is always fleeting. As Dr. Suess said:

“How did it get so late so soon? It’s night before it’s afternoon. December is here before it’s June. My goodness how the time has flewn. How did it get so late so soon?”

That being said I am not a fan of New Year’s resolutions, in fact I generally don’t make any because frankly I think that most are a waste of time. However, I do not think that the pursuit of truth is a waste, and as Benjamin Disraeli noted so wisely; “Time is precious, but truth is more precious than time.”

To that end I am going to endeavor this year to commit myself to continue to seek truth and to speak truth. Truth matters to me. In my life I have seen so many lies, especially by political and religious leaders that I trusted that I now devote myself to the pursuit of truth. As Captain Jean Luc Picard told the young Cadet Wesley Crusher in Star Trek the Next Generation episode The First Duty: “the first duty of every Starfleet officer is to the truth, whether it’s scientific truth, historical truth or personnel truth…”

So, I will continue to write, especially about historical subjects that have an impact today: civil rights and social justice, faith, military issues, PTSD and military health issues, the Middle East conflicts and a number of other topics. Of course I will write about baseball, which is often my refuge when things are too much for me and music. I may do more regarding music as I was asked to do an article for a journal about liturgical music, stress and resiliency.

I will continue to be as transparent as I can about my own struggles withPTSD and faith in the hopes that my journey will help others who struggle like me. In fact this was a major reason that I started this site back in February of 2009.

Expect more writing about the Battle of Gettysburg and the Civil War. I have a feeling that that is going going to become a life work, even after I retire from the Navy. The American Civil War is so pertinent to who and what we are as a nation and the more I study it, the people, the issues and the ideologies involved I see many parallels with today; some of which are positively frightening. So expect a lot more about these subjects. In fact the Civil War is one in which debunked myths still hold sway over many, especially among the defenders of the Lost Cause who predominate the Christian Right.

While lies are dangerous the myths can be more so, and the proliferation of lies, half-truths and myth have shriveled the brain cells of those who enjoy the comfort of opinion without the benefit of thought. President John F. Kennedy spoke of this in 1962, and his words are timely, especially when hoards of preachers, pundits and politicians, the Trinity of Evil, do this with abandon:

“The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie–deliberate, contrived and dishonest–but the myth–persistent, persuasive and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the cliches of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.”

To do this I have to constantly challenge my own thoughts. Even in my work on my Gettysburg and Civil War text I uncover information that points out mistakes in previous editions of my work, and I am not so arrogant that I cannot admit making a mistake or changing my conclusions on a subject. I am actually doing that now on a chapter revision to that work.

As far as other goals, I want to get a publisher for the Gettysburg text, who knows, what I have already written might be two or three books. If you know someone who can help, let me know. I also plan on beginning work on a doctorate to take with me into retirement.

So until tomorrow.

Peace

Padre Steve+

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Filed under History, philosophy, Political Commentary

Tagged as american civil war, battle of gettysburg, benjamin disraeli, dr suess, faith, historic myth, john f kennedy, lies, Marcus Aurelius, the truth

December 11, 2014 · 23:52

Mine Eyes Have Seen The Glory: Religion, Ideology & the Civil War Part 1

Friends of Padre Steve’s World

This is part one of a very long chapter in my Gettysburg Staff Ride Text. The chapter is different because instead of simply studying the battle my students also get some very detailed history about the ideological components of war that helped make the American Civil War not only a definitive event in our history; but a war of utmost brutality in which religion drove people and leaders on both sides to advocate not just defeating their opponent, but exterminating them.

But the study of this religious and ideological war is timeless, for it helps us to understand the ideology of current rivals and opponents, some of whom we are in engaged in battle and others who we spar with by other means, nations, tribes and peoples whose world view, and response to the United States and the West, is dictated by their religion.

Yet for those more interested in current American political and social issues the period is very instructive, for the religious, ideological and political arguments used by Evangelical Christians in the ante-bellum period, as well as many of the attitudes displayed by Christians in the North and the South are still on display in our current political and social debates.

I will be posting the next two parts over the next two days.

Peace

Padre Steve+

“At length on 12th April, the tension could no longer bear the strain. Contrary to instructions, in the morning twilight, and when none could see clearly what the historic day portended, the Confederates in Charleston bombarded Fort Sumter, and the thunder of their guns announced that the argument of a generation should be decided by the ordeal of war. A war, not between two antagonistic political parties, but a struggle to the death between two societies, each championing a different civilization…” 1

War cannot be separated from Ideology, Politics or Religion One can never separate war and the means by which it is fought from its political ends. According to Clausewitz war is an extension or continuation of politics. Of course Clausewitz understood the term politics or policy in the light of the concept of a “World View” or to use the German term Weltungschauung. The term is not limited to doctrine or party politics, but it encompasses the world view of a people or culture. The world view is oft used by the political, media and religious leadership of countries and can be quite instrumental in the decision by a people to go to war; who they war against, their reasons for going to war, the means by which they fight the war, and the end state that they envision. This concept includes racial, religious, cultural, economic and social dimensions of a world view.

One of the problems that modern Americans and Western Europeans have is that we tend to look at the world, particularly in terms of politics and policy, be it foreign or domestic, through a prism from which we cannot see the forest for the trees. We look at individual components of issues such as economic factors, military capabilities, existing political systems, diplomatic considerations and the way societies get information in isolation from each other. We dissect them, we analyze them, and we do a very good job in examining and evaluating each individual component; but we often do this without understanding the world view and ideological factors that link how a particular people, nation or party understand these components of policy.

Likewise policy makers tend to take any information they receive and interpret it through their own world view. This is true even if they have no idea what their world-view is or how they came to it. Most often a world view is absorbed over years. Barbara Tuchman wrote that “When information is relayed to policy-makers, they respond in terms of what is already inside their heads and consequently make policy less to fit the facts than to fit the notions and intentions formed out of the mental baggage that has accumulated in their minds since childhood.” 2

Policy makers often fail to see just how interconnected the most primal elements of the human experience are to the world view of others as well as their own.

Because of this many policy makers, be they military or civilian do not understand how critical the understanding of world view to designing effective polices. Likewise many fail to see how the world view of others influences their application of economic, political, diplomatic and military power as well as the use and dissemination of information in their nation or culture. This is true no matter which religion or sect is involved, even if a people or nation is decidedly secular, and at least outwardly non-religious.

Perhaps this is because we do not want to admit that our Western culture itself is very much a product of primal religious beliefs which informed politics, philosophy, ethics, law, economics, views of race, and even the arts for nearly two millennia. Perhaps it is because we are justifiably appalled and maybe even embarrassed at the excesses and brutality of our ancestors in using religion to incite the faithful to war; to use race and religion justification to subjugate or exterminate peoples that they found to be less than human; or to punish and conquer heretics.

The United States Military made a belated attempt to address ideology, culture and religion in terms of counter-insurgency doctrine when it published the U.S. Army/Marine Counterinsurgency Manual. The discussion of these issues is limited to two pages that specifically deal with various extreme Moslem groups that use that religion as a pillar of their ideology, strategy and operations. But the analysis in the counterinsurgency manual of is limited because its focus is very general and focused at a tactical level.

Likewise the analysis of world view, ideology and religion in the counterinsurgency manual is done in a manner of “us versus them” and though it encourages leaders to attempt to understand the cultural differences there is little in it to help leaders to understand who to do this. Commendably the manual discusses how terrorist and insurgent groups use ideology, frequently based on religion to create a narrative. The narrative often involves a significant amount of myth presented as history, such as how Al Qaida and ISIL using the Caliphate as a religious and political ideal to strive to achieve, because for many Moslems “produces a positive image of the golden age of Islamic civilization.” 3 However, we frequently cannot see how Americans have used, and in some cases continue to the Puritan understanding of a city set on a hill which undergirded Manifest Destiny, the extermination of Native Americans, the War with Mexico, the romanticism of the ante-bellum South and later the Lost Cause.

Policy makers and military leaders must realize that if they want to understand how culture and religious ideology drive others to conquer, subjugate and terrorize in the name of God, they first have to understand how our ancestors did the same thing. It is only when they do that that they can understand that this behavior and use of ideology for such ends is much more universal and easier to understand.

If one wants to see how the use of this compulsion to conquer in the name of God in American by a national leader one needs to go no farther than to examine the process whereby President McKinley, himself a veteran of the Civil War, decided to annex the Philippine in 1898 following the defeat of the Spanish. That war against the Filipinos that we had helped liberate from Spanish rule saw some of the most bloodthirsty tactics employed in fighting the Filipino insurgents, who merely wanted independence. It was a stain on our national honor which of which Mark Twain wrote: “There must be two Americas: one that sets the captive free, and one that takes a once-captive’s new freedom away from him, and picks a quarrel with him with nothing to found it on; then kills him to get his land. . .

A Doubtlessly sincere McKinley sought counsel from God about whether he should annex the the Philippines or not.

“He went down on his knees, according to his own account, and “prayed to Almighty God for light and guidance.” He was accordingly guided to conclude “that there was nothing left to do for us but to take them all, and to educate the Filipinos. And uplift and civilize and Christianize them, by God’s grace to do the very best we could by them, as our fellowmen for whom Christ died.” 4

On the positive side the counterinsurgency manual does mention how “Ideology provides a prism, including a vocabulary and analytical categories, through which followers perceive their situation.” 5 But again it does so at a micro-level and the lessons of it are not applied at the higher levels of strategic thinking and policy.

Thus when faced with cultures for which religion provides the adhesive which binds each of these elements, such as the Islamic State or ISIL we attempt to deal with each element separately, as if they have no connection to each other. But that is where we err, for even if the religious cause or belief has little grounding in fact, science or logic, and may be the result of a cultures attempting to seize upon mythology to build a new reality, it is, in the words of Reggie Jackson the “straw that stirs the drink” and to ignore or minimize it is to doom our efforts to combat its proponents.

Perhaps that is because we do not like to look at ourselves and our own history in the mirror. Perhaps it is because we are uncomfortable with the fact that the face that we see in the mirror is face too similar to those we oppose who are perfectly willing to commit genocide in the name of their God, than we want to admit. Whether this is because we are now predominantly secularist in the way that we do life, or because we are embarrassed by the religiously motivated actions of our forefathers, the result is strikingly and tragically similar.

Clausewitz was a product of classic German Liberalism. He understood the effects of the moral and spiritual concerns inherent in policy, and it flows from his pen, as where he wrote “that the aim of policy is to unify and reconcile all aspects of internal administration as well as of spiritual values, and whatever else the moral philosopher may care to add.” 6 Clausewitz understood that when the motivation behind politics becomes more extreme and powerful; when the politics becomes more than a simple disagreement about isolated policy issues; when the ideology that lays behind the politics, especially ideology rooted in religion evokes primal hatred between peoples, war can come close to reaching the abstract concept of absolute or total war.

Clausewitz wrote:

“The more powerful and inspiring the motives for war, the more they affect the belligerent nations and the fiercer the tensions that precede the outbreak, the closer will war approach its abstract concept, the more important will be the destruction of the enemy, the more closely will the military and the political objects of war coincide, and the more military and less political will war appear to be….” 7

The American Civil War was the first modern war based on the advancement of technology and the changing character of war. But it was also a modern war which reached back to the most primal urges of the people involved, including the primal expressions of religious justification for their actions that both sides accepted as normal.

The American Civil War was caused by the clash of radically different ideologies, ideologies which championed two very different views of civilization, government, economics and the rights of people. However, these different world views were based based upon a common religious understanding:

“whatever their differences over such matters as slavery and political preaching, both sides read their Bibles in remarkably similar ways Ministers had long seen the American republic as a new Israel, and Confederate preachers viewed the southern nation in roughly the same light. The relentless, often careless application of biblical typologies to national problems, the ransacking of scripture for parallels between ancient and modern events produced a nationalistic theology at once bizarre, inspiring and dangerous. Favorite scripture passages offered meaning and hope to a people in the darkest hours and, at the same time, justified remorseless bloodshed.” 8

This understanding manifested itself in each side’s appeal to their Puritan ancestor’s concept of a “city set on a hill,” a mantle that each side claimed to be the legitimate heir. Though they seem radically different, they are actually two sides of the same religious-ideological coin.

The American Civil War was a religious and ideological war. “Like the total wars of the twentieth century, it was preceded by years of violent propaganda, which long before the war had obliterated all sense of moderation, and had awakened in the contending parties the primitive spirit of tribal fanaticism.” 9 It was preceded by the fracturing of political parties and alliances which had worked for compromise in the previous decades to preserve the Union even at the cost of maintaining slavery.

Far from being irrational as some have posited, the actions and behavior of politicians in both the North and the South was completely rational based on their conflicting ideologies and views of their opponents. The “South’s fears of territorial and economic strangulation and the North’s fears of a “slave power” conspiracy are anything but irrational, and only someone who refuses to think through the evidence available to Americans in the 1850s would find either of them at all illogical.” 10

Understanding How Religiously Based Ideology influences Policy, Politics and War Samuel Huntington wrote:

“Blood, language, religion, way of life were what the Greeks had in common and what distinguished them from the Persians and other non-Greeks. Of all the objective elements which define civilizations, however, the most important is usually religion, as the Athenians emphasized. To a very large degree, the major civilizations in human history have been closely identified with the world’s great religions; and who share ethnicity and language but differ in religion may slaughter each other…” 11

The very realistic fears of both sides brought about clash of extremes in politics which defied efforts at compromise and was already resulting in violent and bloody conflicts between ideologues in Kansas, Missouri and Kentucky years before the firing on Fort Sumter. For both sides their views became a moral cause that in the minds of many became an article of their religious faith, and “Religious faith itself became a key part of the war’s unfolding story for countless Americans….” 12 British theorist and military historian J.F.C. Fuller wrote of the religious undergirding of the war:

“As a moral issue, the dispute acquired a religious significance, state rights becoming wrapped up in a politico-mysticism, which defying definition, could be argued for ever without any hope of a final conclusion being reached.” 13

That is why it impossible to simply examine the military campaigns and battles of the Civil War in isolation from the politics, polices, the competing philosophies and the underlying theology which were the worldview that undergirded the arguments of both sides. Those competing philosophies and world views, undergirded by a pervasive nationalistic understanding of religion not only helped to cause on the war but made the war a total war.

Some might wonder where this fits in a text that is about a specific campaign and battle in a war, but for those entrusted with planning national defense and conducting military campaign the understanding of why wars are fought, in particular the ideological causes of war matter in ways that military planners, commanders and even elected political leadership often overlook. Colin Gray notes: “Wars are not free floating events, sufficient unto themselves as objects for study and understanding. Instead, they are entirely the product of their contexts.” 14

Studying the context of the American Civil War is very important in understanding not just it, but also civil wars in other nations which are currently raging. The study of these contexts brings an American or Western historical perspective to those wars, not so much in trying to place a western template over non-western conflicts; but a human perspective from our own past from which we can gain insight into how the people, even people who share a common language, religion and history, can war against each other in the most brutal of fashions. Again I refer to Colin Gray who noted “Policy and strategy will be influenced by the cultural preferences bequeathed by a community’s interpretation of its history as well as by its geopolitical-geostrategic context.” 15

For American and other Western political and military policy makers this is particularly important in Iraq where so many Americans have fought, and in the related civil war in Syria which has brought about the emergence of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

Likewise in our Western tradition we can see how radical ideology, based on race was central to Hitler’s conduct of war, especially in the East during the Second World War. Hitler’s ideology permeated German military campaigns and administration of the areas conquered by his armies. No branch of the German military, police or civil administration in occupied Poland or Russia was exempt guiltless in the crimes committed by the Nazi regime. It is a chilling warning of the consequences awaiting any nation that allows it to become caught up in hate-filled political, racial or even religious ideologies which dehumanizes opponents and of the tragedy that awaits them and the world. In Germany the internal and external checks that govern the moral behavior of the nation and individuals failed. Caught up in the Nazi system, the Germans, especially the police and military abandoned the norms of international law, morality and decency, banally committing crimes which still reverberate today and which are seen in the ethnic cleansing actions in the former Yugoslavia and other European nations.

Thus the study of the American Civil War, from the cultural, economic, social and religious differences which divided the nation helps us in understanding war. But even more importantly we have to understand the ideological clash between Abolitionists in the North, and Southern proponents of slavery. Both the ideologies of the Abolitionists who believed that African Americans were created by God and had the same rights as whites, as well as the Southern arguments that blacks were inferior and slavery was a positive good, were buttressed by profoundly religious arguments related directly to a divergence in values. It was in this “conflict of values, rather than a conflict of interests or a conflict of cultures, lay at the root of the sectional schism.” 16

Understanding this component of our own nation’s history helps us to understand how those same factors influence the politics, policies, the primal passions and hatreds of people in other parts of the world. Thus they are helpful for us to understand when we as a nation involve ourselves in the affairs of other peoples whose conflicts are rooted in religiously motivated ideology and differences in values, such as in the current Sunni-Shia conflict raging in various guises throughout the Middle East where culture, ideology and economic motivations of the groups involved cannot be separated. We may want to neatly separate economic, strategic, military and geopolitical factors from religious or ideological factors assuming that each exists in some sort of hermetically sealed environment. But to think this is a fallacy of the greatest magnitude. As we have learned too late in the century in our Middle East muddling, it is impossible to separate geopolitical, strategic, military and economic issues from ideological issues rooted in distinctly religious world views, world views that dictate a nation, people or culture’s understanding of the world.

David M. Potter summed up this understanding of the connection between the ideological, cultural and economic aspects and how the issue of slavery connected all three realms in the American Civil War:

“These three explanations – cultural, economic and ideological – have long been the standard formulas for explaining the sectional conflict. Each has been defended as though it were necessarily incompatible with the other two. But culture, economic interest, and values may all reflect the same fundamental forces at work in a society, in which case each will appear as an aspect of the other. Diversity of culture may produce both diversity of interests and diversity of values. Further, the differences between a slaveholding and a nonslaveholding society would be reflected in all three aspects. Slavery represented an inescapable ethical question which precipitated a sharp conflict of values.” 17

The Impact of Slavery on the Growing Divide between North and South

The political ends of the Civil War came out of the growing cultural, economic, ideological and religious differences between the North and South that had been widening since the 1830s. However, slavery was the one issue which helped produce this conflict in values and it was “basic to the cultural divergence of the North and South, because it was inextricably fused into the key elements of southern life – the staple crop of the plantation system, the social and political ascendency of the planter class, the authoritarian system of social control.” 18 Without slavery and the southern commitment to an economy based on slave labor, the southern economy would have most likely undergone a similar transformation as what happened in the North; thus the economic divergence between North and South would “been less clear cut, and would have not met in such head-on collision.” 19 But slavery was much more than an economic policy for Southerners; it was a key component of their religious, racial and philosophic world view.

The issue of slavery even divided the ante-Bellum United States on what the words freedom and liberty meant, the dispute can be seen in the writings of many before the war, with each side emphasizing their particular understanding of these concepts. Many Southerners, including poor whites saw slavery as the guarantee of their economic freedom. John C. Calhoun said to the Senate in 1848 that “With us, the two great divisions of society are not the rich and poor, but white and black; and all of the former, the poor as well as the rich, belong to the upper class, and are respected and treated as equals.” 20

But it was Abraham Lincoln who cut to the heart of the matter when he noted that “We all declare for liberty” but:

“in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself and the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men and the product of other men’s labor.” 21

The growing economic disparity between the Slave and Free states became more about the expansion of slavery in federal territories as disunion and war approached; for a number of often competing reasons. These differences were amplified by the issue of slavery led to the substitution of stereotypes of each other and had the “effect of changing men’s attitudes toward the disagreements which are always certain to arise in politics: ordinary, resolvable disputes were converted into questions of principle, involving rigid, unnegotiable dogma.” 22 The editor of the Charleston Mercury noted in 1858 that “on the subject of slavery…the North and the South…are not only two peoples, but they are rival, hostile peoples.” 23

This was driven both by the South’s insistence on both maintaining slavery where it was already legal and expanding it into new territories which was set against the vocal abolitionist movement. They were also fighting an even more powerful enemy, Northern industrialists who were not so idealistic, and much more concerned with “economic policy designed to secure Northern domination of Western lands than the initial step in a broad plan to end slavery.” 24 This completion between the regions not only affected politics, it affected religion and culture In the South it produced a growing culture of victimhood which is manifest in the words of Robert Toombs who authored Georgia’s declaration of causes for secession:

“For twenty years past, the Abolitionists and their allies in the Northern states, have been engaged in constant efforts to subvert our institutions, and to excite insurrection and servile war among us…” whose “avowed purpose is to subject our society, subject us, not only to the loss of our property but the destruction of ourselves, our wives and our children, and the dissolution of our homes, our altars, and our firesides.” 25

As the differences grew and tensions rose the South became ever more closed off from the North. “More than other Americans, Southerners developed a sectional identity outside the national mainstream. The Southern life style tended to contradict the national norm in ways that life styles of other sections did not.” 26

The complex relationship of Southern society where the “Southern bodies social, economic, intellectual, and political were decidedly commingled” 27 and politics of the South came more to embrace the need for slavery and its importance, even to poor whites in the South who it did not benefit and actually harmed economically: “the system of subordination reached out still further to require a certain kind of society, one in which certain questions were not publically discussed. It must give blacks no hope of cultivating dissention among the whites. It must commit non slaveholders to the unquestioning support of racial subordination….In short, the South became increasingly a closed society, distrustful of isms from outside and unsympathetic to dissenters. Such were the pervasive consequences of giving top priority to the maintenance of a system of racial subordination.” 28

Southern planters declared war on all critics of their “particular institution” beginning in the 1820s. As Northern abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison and his newspaper The Liberator grew in its distribution and began to appear in the South various elected officials throughout the South “suppressed antislavery books, newspapers, lectures, and sermons and strove generally to deny critics of bondage access to any public forum.” 29

In response to the proliferation of abolitionist literature in the South, John C. Calhoun proposed that Congress pass a law to prosecute “any postmaster who would “knowingly receive or put into the mail any pamphlet, newspaper, handbill, or any printed, written, or pictorial representation touching the subject of slavery.” 30 Calhoun was not alone as other members of Congress as well as state legislatures worked to restrict the import of what they considered subversive and dangerous literature.

Beginning in 1836 the House of Representatives passed a “gag rule” for its members which “banned all petitions, memorials, resolutions, propositions, or papers related in any way or to any extent whatever to the subject of slavery.” 31 This was challenged by former President John Quincy Adams in 1842 as well as by others so that in 1844 the House voted to rescind it. However Southern politicians “began to spout demands that the federal government and the Northern states issue assurances that the abolitionists would never be allowed to tamper with what John Calhoun had described as the South’s “peculiar domestic institution.” 32 The issue of slavery more than any other “transformed political action from a process of accommodation to a mode of combat.” 33

Around the same time as the gag rule was played out in Congress the Supreme Court had ruled that the Federal government alone “had jurisdiction where escaped slaves were concerned” which resulted in several states enacting “personal liberty laws” to “forbid their own elected officials from those pursuing fugitives.” Southern politicians at the federal and state levels reacted strongly to these moves which they believed to be an assault on their institutions and their rights to their human property. Virginia legislators protested that these laws were a “disgusting and revolting exhibition of faithless and unconstitutional legislation.” 34

The issue of slavery shaped political debate and “structured and polarized many random, unoriented points of conflict on which sectional interest diverged.” 35 As the divide grew leaders and people in both the North and the South began to react to the most distorted images of each other imaginable- “the North to an image of a southern world of lascivious and sadistic slave drivers; the South to the image of a northern world of cunning Yankee traders and radical abolitionists plotting slave insurrections.” 36

The Slaveholder Ideology Personified: Edmund Ruffin

Among the people most enraged by Northern opposition to slavery was Edmund Ruffin. Ruffin was a very successful farm paper editor, plantation owner and ardent old line secessionist from Virginia. In 1860 the then 67 year old Ruffin helped change the world forever when, according to popular legend he pulled the lanyard which fired the first shot at Fort Sumter. While he was there and probably was given the honor of firing the first shot from his battery; other guns from other emplacements may have fired first. 37

Ruffin was a radical ideologue, he had been passionately arguing for secession and Southern independence for fifteen years. Ruffin “perceived the planter civilization of the South in peril; the source of the peril was “Yankee” and union with “Yankees.” Thus he preached revolution, Ruffin was a rebel with a cause, a secular prophet…” 38 He was a type of man who understood reality far better than some of the more moderate oligarchs that populated the Southern political and social elite. While in the years leading up to the war these men, including John Calhoun attempted to secure the continued existence and spread of slavery within the Union through the Congress and the courts, as early as 1850, Ruffin recognized that in order for slavery to survive the slaveholding South would have to secede from the Union. Ruffin and other radical secessionists believed that there could be no compromise with the north. In 1850 he and James Hammond attempted to use a meeting in Nashville to “secure Cooperative State Secession” and wrote to Hammond, against those who sought to use the meeting to preserve the Union, “If the Convention does not open the way to dissolution…I hope it shall never meet.” 39 He believed that in order to maintain the institution of slavery the slave holding states that those states had to be independent from the North.

Ruffin’s views were not unique to him, the formed the basis of how most slave owners and supporters felt about slavery’s economic benefits, Ruffin wrote:

“Still, even this worst and least profitable kind of slavery (the subjection of equals and men of the same race with their masters) served as the foundation and the essential first cause of all the civilization and refinement, and improvement of arts and learning, that distinguished the oldest nations. Except where the special Providence and care of God may have interposed to guard a particular family and its descendants, there was nothing but the existence of slavery to prevent any race or society in a state of nature from sinking into the rudest barbarism. And no people could ever have been raised from that low condition without the aid and operation of slavery, either by some individuals of the community being enslaved, by conquest and subjugation, in some form, to a foreign and more enlightened people.”40

Slavery and National Expansion: The Compromise of 1850

The Ante-Bellum South was an agrarian society which depended on the free labor provided by slaves and in a socio-political sense it was an oligarchy that offered no freedom to slaves, openly discriminated against free blacks and provided little hope of social or economic advancement for poor and middle class whites, but it was maintained because in many cases the Southern Yeoman farmer “feared the fall from independent producer to dependent proletarian, a status he equated with enslavement.” 41 But northerners often driven by religious understandings of human rights founded in the concept of a higher law over a period of a few decades abolished slavery in the years after the United States had gained independence.

However, the South had tied its economy and society to the institution of slavery, and was not content to see it remain just in the original states of the Old South.

The expansion of slavery was essential to its continued maintenance in the states where it was already legal. “Because of the need to maintain a balance in the Senate, check unruly slaves, and cultivate fertile soils, many planters and small plantation owners- particularly those living in the southern districts of the cotton states- asserted that their survival depended on new territory.” 42 In those decades “a huge involuntary migration took place. Between 800,000 and 1 million slaves were moved westward….” 43

The need for slaves caused prices to soar. In some older states like Virginia where fewer slaves were required the exportation of slaves became a major industry:

“male slaves were marched in coffles of forty or fifty, handcuffed to each other in pairs, with a long chain through the handcuffs passing down the column to keep it together, closely guarded by mounted slave traders followed by an equal number of female slaves and their children. Most of them were taken to Wheeling, Virginia, the “busiest slave port” in the United States, and from there they were transported by steamboat to New Orleans, Natchez, and Memphis.” 44

In the years the before the war, the North embraced the Industrial Revolution leading to advances which gave it a marked economic advantage over the South in which through its “commitment to the use of slave labor inhibited economic diversification and industrialization and strengthened the tyranny of King Cotton.” 45 The population of the North also expanded at a clip that far outpaced the South as European immigrants swelled the population.

The divide was not helped by the various compromises worked out between northern and southern legislators. After the Missouri Compromise Thomas Jefferson wrote:

“but this momentous question, like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union. It is hushed indeed for the moment, but this is a reprieve only, not a final sentence. A geographical line, coinciding with a marked principle, moral and political, once conceived and held up to the angry passions of men, will never be obliterated; and every new irritation will mark it deeper and deeper.” 46

The trigger for the increase in tensions was the war with Mexico in which the United States annexed nearly half of Mexico.

The new territories were viewed by those who advocated the expansion of slavery as fresh and fertile ground for its spread. Ulysses S Grant, who served in the war, noted the effects of the war with Mexico in his memoirs:

“In taking military possession of Texas after annexation, the army of occupation, under General [Zachary] Taylor, was directed to occupy the disputed territory. The army did not stop at the Nueces and offer to negotiate for a settlement of the boundary question, but went beyond, apparently in order to force Mexico to initiate war….To us it was an empire and of incalculable value; but it might have been obtained by other means. The Southern rebellion was largely the outgrowth of the Mexican war.”47

Robert Toombs of Georgia was an advocate for the expansion of slavery into the lands conquered during the war. Toombs warned his colleagues in Congress “in the presence of the living God, that if you by your legislation you seek to drive us from the territories of California and New Mexico, purchased by the common blood and treasure of the whole people…thereby attempting to fix a national degradation upon half the states of this Confederacy, I am for disunion.” 48

The tensions in the aftermath of the war with Mexico escalated over the issue of slavery in the newly conquered territories brought heated calls by some southerners for secession and disunion. To preserve the Union, Henry Clay and Daniel Webster, supported by the new President Millard Fillmore were able to pass the compromise of 1850 solved a number of issues related to the admission of California to the Union and boundary disputes involving Texas and the new territories. But among the bills that were contained in it was the Fugitive Slave Law, or The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. The act was the devise of Henry Clay which was meant to sweeten the deal for southerners. The law would “give slaveholders broader powers to stop the flow of runaway slaves northward to the free states, and offered a final resolution denying that Congress had any authority to regulate the interstate slave trade.” 49 which for all practical purposes nationalized the institution of slavery, even in Free states by forcing all citizens to assist law enforcement in apprehending fugitive slaves and voided state laws in Massachusetts, Vermont, Ohio, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island which barred state officials from aiding in the capture, arrest or imprisonment of fugitive slaves. “Congress’s law had nationalized slavery. No black person was safe on American soil. The old division of free state/slave state had vanished….” 50

That law required all Federal law enforcement officials, even in non-slave states to arrest fugitive slaves and anyone who assisted them, and threatened law enforcement officials with punishment if they failed to enforce the law. The law stipulated that should “any marshal or deputy marshal refuse to receive such warrant, or other process, when tendered, or to use all proper means diligently to execute the same, he shall, on conviction thereof, be fined in the sum of one thousand dollars.” 51

Likewise the act compelled citizens in Free states to “aid and assist in the prompt and efficient execution of this law, whenever their services may be required….” 52 Penalties were harsh and financial incentives for compliance attractive.

“Anyone caught providing food and shelter to an escaped slave, assuming northern whites could discern who was a runaway, would be subject to a fine of one thousand dollars and six months in prison. The law also suspended habeas corpus and the right to trial by jury for captured blacks. Judges received a hundred dollars for every slave returned to his or her owner, providing a monetary incentive for jurists to rule in favor of slave catchers.” 53

The law gave no protection for even black freedmen. No proof or evidence other than the sworn statement of the owner that a black was or had been his property was required to return any black to slavery. Frederick Douglass said:

“By an act of the American Congress…slavery has been nationalized in its most horrible and revolting form. By that act, Mason & Dixon’s line has been obliterated;…and the power to hold, hunt, and sell men, women, and children remains no longer a mere state institution, but is now an institution of the whole United States.” 54

On his deathbed Henry Clay praised the act, which he wrote “The new fugitive slave law, I believe, kept the South in the Union in ‘fifty and ‘fifty-one. Not only does it deny fugitives trial by jury and the right to testify; it also imposes a fine and imprisonment upon any citizen found guilty of preventing a fugitive’s arrest…” Likewise Clay depreciated the opposition noting “Yes, since the passage of the compromise, the abolitionists and free coloreds of the North have howled in protest and viciously assailed me, and twice in Boston there has been a failure to execute the law, which shocks and astounds me…. But such people belong to the lunatic fringe. The vast majority of Americans, North and South, support our handiwork, the great compromise that pulled the nation back from the brink.” 55

To be continued tomorrow….

Notes

1 Fuller, J.F.C. The Conduct of War 1789-1961 Da Capo Press, New York 1992. Originally published by Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick N.J p.98

2 Tuchman, Barbara W. Practicing History Alfred A. Knopf, New Your 1981 p.289

3 ___________ U.S. Army/ Marine Counterinsurgency Field Manual FM 3-24 MCWP 3-33.5 15 December 2006 with and forward by General David A Petreus and General James Amos, Konecky and Konecky, Old Saybrook CT 2007 p.26

4 Ibid. Tuchman Practicing History p.289

5 Ibid. U.S. Army/ Marine Counterinsurgency Field Manual p.27

6 Clausewitz, Carl von On War Indexed edition, edited and translated by Michael Howard and Peter Paret, Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ 1976 p.606

7 Ibid. Clausewitz On War pp.87-88

8 Rable, George C. God’s Almost Chosen Peoples: A Religious History of the American Civil War University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill 2010 p.4

9 Ibid. Fuller The Conduct of War 1789-1961 p.99

10 Guelzo Allen C. Fateful Lightening: A New History of the Civil War Era and Reconstruction Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York 2012 p.95

11 Huntington, Samuel P. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order Touchstone Books, New York 1997 p.42

12 Ibid. Rable God’s Almost Chosen Peoples p.5

14 Gray, Colin S. Fighting Talk: Forty Maxims on War, Peace, and Strategy Potomac Books, Dulles VA 2009 p.3

15 Ibid. Gray Fighting Talk p.25

16 Potter, David M. The Impending Crisis: America before the Civil War 1848-1861 completed and edited by Don E. Fehrenbacher Harper Collins Publishers, New York 1976 p.41

17 Ibid. Potter The Impending Crisis p.41

18 Ibid. Potter The Impending Crisis p.42

19 Ibid. Potter The Impending Crisis p.42

20 McPherson, James M. Drawn With the Sword: Reflections on the American Civil War Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York 1996 p.50

21 Levine, Bruce Half Slave and Half Free: The Roots of the Civil War Revised Edition, Hill and Wang, a division of Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, New York 1992 and 1995 p.122

22 Ibid. Potter The Impending Crisis p.43

23 Ibid. McPherson Drawn With the Sword p.16

24 Egnal, Marc Clash of Extremes: The Economic Origins of the Civil War Hill and Wang a division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux New York 2009 p.6

25 Dew, Charles B. Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War University Press of Virginia, Charlottesville and London 2001 p.12

26 Thomas, Emory The Confederate Nation 1861-1865 Harper Perennial, New York and London 1979 p.5

27 Ibid. Thomas The Confederate Nation p.5

28 Ibid. Potter The Impending Crisis pp.457-458

29 Ibid. Levine Half Slave and Half Free p.166

30 Ibid. Guelzo Fateful Lightening pp.50-51

31 Ibid. Levine Half Slave and Half Free pp.169-170

32 Ibid. Guelzo Fateful Lightening pp.51-52

33 Ibid. Potter The Impending Crisis p.43

34 Ibid. Levine Half Slave and Half Free pp.169-170

35 Ibid. Potter The Impending Crisis p.43

36 Ibid. Potter The Impending Crisis p.43

37 Catton, Bruce The Coming Fury Phoenix Press, London 1961 pp.314-315

38 Ibid. Thomas The Confederate Nation p.1

39 Freehling, William W. The Road to Disunion Volume One: Secessionists at Bay Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York 1990 p.481

40 Ruffin, Edmund The Political Economy of Slavery in McKitrick, Eric L. ed. Slavery Defended: The Views of the Old South. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall/Spectrum Books, 1963.Retrieved from http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/primary-resources/lincolns-political-economy/ 24 March 2014

41 Ibid. McPherson Drawn With the Sword p.50

42 Ibid. Egnal Clash of Extremes pp.125-126

43 Korda, Michael. Clouds of Glory: The Life and Legend of Robert E. Lee Harper Collins Publishers, New York 2014 p.203

44 Ibid. Korda Clouds of Glory: The Life and Legend of Robert E. Lee p.203

45 Ibid. Potter The Impending Crisis p.42

46 Jefferson, Thomas Letter to John Holmes dated April 22nd 1824 retrieved from http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/jefferson/159.html 24 March 2014

47 U.S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant New York 1885 pp.243-245

48 Ibid. Guelzo Fateful Lightening pp.62-63

49 Ibid. Guelzo Fateful Lightening p.68

50 Goldfield, David America Aflame: How the Civil War Created a Nation Bloomsbury Press, New York, London New Delhi and Sidney 2011 p.71

51 ______________Fugitive Slave of Act 1850 retrieved from the Avalon Project, Yale School of Law http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/fugitive.asp 11 December 2014

52 Ibid. Fugitive Slave Act of 1850

53 Ibid. Goldfield America Aflame p.71

54 Ibid. Goldfield America Aflame p.72

55 Ibid. Oates The Approaching Fury p.94

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Tagged as abolition movement, abolitionism, abraham lincoln, american civil war, barbara tuchman, carl von clausewitz, city set on a hill, colin gray, compromise of 1850, cultural war, edmund ruffin, fort sumter, frederick douglass, free labor movement, free states, henry clay, ideological war, ideology, industrial revolution, isil, islamic state of iraq and the levant, j f c fuller, john brown, john c calhoun, john hammond, john quincy adams, manifest destiny, mark twain, millard fillmore, philippine war 1899-1902, plantation system, puritans, robert toombs, samuel huntington, slave states, slave trade, slavery, slavery gag rule, supreme court, The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, the lost cause, the particular institution, U.S. Army/Marine Counterinsurgency Manual, ulysses s grant, war with mexico, weltungschauung, william lloyd garrison, william mckinley, worldview

November 29, 2014 · 23:25

Interpreting a Life

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I have been working on an update to my Gettysburg text dealing with Pickett’s Charge, in particular focusing a lot of attention on the life of the man whose name is forever linked to that calamitous attack, Major General George Pickett. Like what I have written recently about the tragic heroes of Little Round Top, Colonel Joshua Chamberlain, Colonel Strong Vincent and Brigadier General Gouverneur Warren I am finding a character who is different than much of the myth surrounding him. Though not the intellectual equal of the three men mentioned above he too is a tragic figure in his own way. I expect to be publishing that update to that chapter tomorrow.

Like so much of what I do the pursuit of a fair treatment of this man leads me to find more and more information that like everything else that I write about must be questioned and examined in light of circumstance, the motivation of the chroniclers, as well as what we now know about psychology and sociology. When we do this we are able to see beyond the romanticized portrait of Pickett seen in the movie Gettysburg where he is played by Stephen Lang, and see a much more complex individual, a man of many contradictions and much personal tragedy, even before Gettysburg.

I will mention one thing that gave me an insight into Pickett was the fact that he was a chronic rule breaker at West Point, almost always on the edge of being expelled for behavior demerits. He was also a man who had no problem in bucking the system, especially in school and at West Point. One might find that trait inconstant for a man who became a career Army officer, but I can relate to it in many ways. While I identify more with men like Warren and Chamberlain in terms of their intellectual interests and often contradictory personalities, I find in Pickett’s antics at West Point a kindred spirit who didn’t have a problem breaking rules and pushing a system that he thought was dehumanizing and arbitrary. I have been that way through much of my military career when it comes to breaking or bending rules when it appeared that they made no sense. Many people who know me are often perplexed that someone who has served as a commissioned officer for over thirty years can be such a rebel.

I think that is part of the attraction of looking at the lives of leaders and not isolating their actions at any one particular event. We are all products of our entire life experience, our family background and often owe our place in life not just to our own achievements but to the actions of others who work to give us the opportunity to succeed, sometimes in spite of ourselves. We also have the benefit of friends who remain friends in spite of circumstances; for George Pickett one of these lifelong friends was another misfit, Ulysses S. Grant. Pickett also gained enemies, often people who did not appreciate his lightness or humor, and those like Robert E. Lee who could not abide his honesty after the battle of Gettysburg and for what can be deciphered from the available records held it against him until he died.

Pickett was also a men who felt betrayed by some leaders, especially Lee. The disaster that afflicted his division during the great charge took something from him. He was a true believer in the “cause” but saw his division and later his own reputation destroyed by the man who became the heart and soul of the lost cause, Robert E. Lee.

History is never easy to put together especially when we examine the often contradictory lives of the individuals involved, their sometimes unusual motivations, strange personalities and their quirky behaviors. Much as it is with ourselves. We often learn too that we don’t make our way alone, we all have the help of others in getting us where we go and quite often the faithful companionship of friends. These are all part of examining history and life and things that matter…at least to me.

So anyway my friends, until tomorrow I am yours.

Peace

Padre Steve+

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Tagged as american civil war, battle of gettysburg, george pickett, gouverneur warren, grief, History, joshua chamberlain, military life, pickett's charge, robert e lee, stephen lang, strong vincent, ulysses s grant, west point

November 12, 2014 · 23:08

The First Duty is to Truth: Midweek Musings

“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.” Oscar Wilde

Friends of Padre Steve’s World, I have been busily working this past week oThe n a major revision to a chapter of my Gettysburg text about Colonel Strong Vincent and Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain. Part of that appeared here last week. However, as I continued to do more research I realized that what I wrote was not nearly enough, not in terms of words, but in terms of truth. There is much more to the story, especially concerning the relationship of Joshua Chamberlain and his wife Fannie.

There are times when one seeks truth that the timeless truths of the subject matter have to be taken to heart. Truth does matter to me, even when it is uncomfortable, not just for others but for me as well. As I have written before, that in this I am reminded of a quote from Star Trek the Next Generation. It is from an episode called “The First Duty.” In it the seasoned Captain Jean Luc Picard confronts his young protege Wesley Crusher after a disastrous accident that leaves a Star Fleet Academy cadet dead. Picard tells the young Crusher that “the first duty of every Starfleet officer is to the truth, whether it’s scientific truth, historical truth or personnel truth…

Truth is difficult, especially when one builds their belief on myths, be they of their own or others making. For me the study of the Battle of Gettysburg for my work has become a quest for truth. Not so much about the truth of specific incidents on the battlefield but of the great truths that go beyond the battlefield, the enduring truths about human nature, about relationships and about war and peace. In a sense the story of the battle of Gettysburg and those men who fought on it, has become a palette from which I am drawing truths about the human condition as well as my own terribly flawed condition, and in the process busting myths, my own included.

Barbara Tuchman once wrote: “The reality of a question is inevitably more complicated than we would like to suppose.” That is truth, it is truth with battles, politics, and in fact all of life, but many would rather rest content in myth. Thus as Rene Descartes wrote: “If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.”

I doubt a lot. I question a lot more and sometimes that leads to facing things that are uncomfortable. Thus, I will be putting up the redone version of that last article in the next day or two, as well as others where my study is leading me to deeper truths.

My big task now is editing and reorganizing the nearly 450 pages of text that I have written into the past year into a form that I can market to a publisher. I do have a couple of final chapters to write from scratch but hopefully by early spring I will ready to have it complete enough to submit for publication.

In the mean time I will continue to write about other subjects, including some military, some political, some social and some about current events, music, and life in general. There are couple of articles I want to write about some naval battles that have fascinated me for decades as well as more on the inhumanity of the Holocaust, the past and current struggles for civil rights in America and many other subjects.

That being said, you as my readers will get my new insights on Gettysburg, both new and revised articles which reflect that search for truth. I do hope that you find them as something more than simply accounts of the battle, but on the deeper truths of the nature and character of humanity, the nature and character of the conflict that we call war, with all its attendant maladies, but more importantly as a mirror for ourselves. My study of Joshua Chamberlain has resulted in having to face uncomfortable but strangely liberating truths about me and the way I live my life.

This is part of my journey, a journey into truth that goes beyond the mere reporting of facts, facts which often are as subject to interpretation, disputation and change as more “facts” are discovered. The truth is that we have to be able to accept new discoveries once they are determined to be true, or at least at the point that they can be posited as reasonable and worthy of acceptance, no matter how badly they challenge our deep held beliefs, even those about ourselves. Sadly the lies we believe and persist in telling, and the myths that we believe without question, are much more dangerous than any new truth that offends us.

I have to agree with Marcus Aurelius who wrote:

Those truths can be scientific, they can be historical or literary, and quite often the truth can also be quite personal.

As John F Kennedy said at Yale in 1962: “The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie–deliberate, contrived and dishonest–but the myth–persistent, persuasive and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the cliches of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.”

So until tomorrow,

Peace

Padre Steve+

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Tagged as american civil war, barbara tuchman, battle of gettysburg, captain jean luc picard, historical truth, History, joshua chamberlain, Marcus Aurelius, Myth, oscar wilde, president john f kennedy, rene descartes, star trek next generation, strong vincent, the truth

Tag Archives: american civil war

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Interpreting a Life

The First Duty is to Truth: Midweek Musings

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