WASHINGTON - My fascination with the Civil War began about 20 years ago, when I read “Landscape Turned Red: The Battle of Antietam,” a riveting account by Stephen Sears of the battle in which 23,000 men were killed, wounded or missing at the end of one day, Sept. 17, 1862. It is considered the bloodiest day of the war.
On the anniversary of the battle, I drove to Sharpsburg, Md., to see Antietam National Battlefield, in particular the cornfield where thousands were injured or killed within a few hours.
The National Park Service is steward of the battlefield and contracts with a local farmer to keep the field planted with corn. Suddenly, the settings and scenes in Sears's book made sense. The cornstalks were taller than a man and dense enough to partially hide advancing soldiers who suddenly confronted the enemy face to face, resulting in the two sides bludgeoning each other with rifle butts.
The firepower concentrated on the cornfield from the bordering woods was devastating to each side.
“Dead men were literally piled upon one another and across each other,” a Union officer reported.
My trip that day was the beginning of an almost mystical relationship with Civil War history that has intensified with the years. I am particularly drawn to the fate of civilians who lived in small towns that were occupied by one side and then the other or who were caught up in battles on their streets. I can identify with them, as well as the soldiers, and their war experiences have become a part of my own memory.
That is why I pursue the war.
Civil War author John C. Waugh, in his thoughtful, slender Good Reasons to Study the Civil War,” which he wrote two years ago, has illuminated other motives.
The war took 630,000 American lives, a figure that breaks down to an average of 400 killed each day, or about 17 every hour for four years, Waugh writes.
“Such a loss of Americans in one day in any modern war would set off an outcry of anguish, protest and sorrow that would destroy an administration,” he wrote. Referring to Antietam, he said such a great number of deaths in a day would paralyze government and media today.
“That Americans were fighting and killing other Americans on such a devastating scale is unique to our history,” he wrote, calling the war, “one of the wonders of our past.”
His 20 reasons to study the war also include the extraordinary literature that came out of it. That tragic experience has left us “a beautiful legacy of words.”
Soldiers and their families kept diaries and wrote letters, generals wrote reports and Lincoln spoke elegantly of the national experience in the Gettysburg Address and in his second inaugural address. All of this made the Civil War “one of the most poignantly and personally documented passages in world history. With no planning, simply by reflex action, the Civil War created great literature on a gut level.”
He refers to what is probably one of the most beautiful messages of love ever written, a letter from the doomed Maj. Sullivan Ballou of the 2nd Rhode Island Volunteer Infantry to his wife, Sarah. Ken Burns used the letter as part of his 1990 public television documentary on the war.
“Sarah, my love for you is deathless. It seems to bind me with mighty cables that nothing but Omnipotence could break; and yet my love of Country comes over me like a strong wind and bears me unresistibly on with all those chains, to the battle field.”
Nearing his conclusion, he speaks of not returning home: “If I do not my dear Sarah, never forget how much I love you, and when my last breath escapes me on the battle field, it will whisper your name. ... But, O Sarah! If the dead can come back to this earth and flit unseen around those they loved, I shall always be near you; in the gladdest days and in the darkest nights ... always, always, and if there be a soft breeze upon your cheek, it shall be my breath, as the cool air fans your throbbing temple, it shall be my spirit passing by.”
In support of another motive, Waugh reminds that the war wasn't all that long ago, just a few generations past. There were several million men in uniform from 1861 to 1865. For many Americans, their great-grandfathers or great-great- grandfathers fought, and their great-grandmothers or great-great-grandmothers lived through it.
Family information is readily accessible from numerous genealogical collections available in libraries or on the Web. War records are available at the National Archives. There are city and county records in courthouses around the country and thousands of cemeteries where the end of the story may be found.
Finding those connections ties us directly to the war, but even without such personal roots, we can easily identify with the people who lived in that time, Waugh said.
In researching the war, he said he was struck by the similarity between “our ancestors of Civil War times and us, between their love and our love, their passion and our passion. (They) suffered the same sorrows, thrilled to the same events, thought the same thoughts, loved just as hard, and just as dearly as their great-great-granddaughters and grandsons do today.”
His other reasons for studying the Civil War are equally as good.
Linda Wheeler can be reached at cwwheel@shentel.net.
The National Park Service is steward of the battlefield and contracts with a local farmer to keep the field planted with corn. Suddenly, the settings and scenes in Sears's book made sense. The cornstalks were taller than a man and dense enough to partially hide advancing soldiers who suddenly confronted the enemy face to face, resulting in the two sides bludgeoning each other with rifle butts.
The firepower concentrated on the cornfield from the bordering woods was devastating to each side.
“Dead men were literally piled upon one another and across each other,” a Union officer reported.
My trip that day was the beginning of an almost mystical relationship with Civil War history that has intensified with the years. I am particularly drawn to the fate of civilians who lived in small towns that were occupied by one side and then the other or who were caught up in battles on their streets. I can identify with them, as well as the soldiers, and their war experiences have become a part of my own memory.
That is why I pursue the war.
Civil War author John C. Waugh, in his thoughtful, slender Good Reasons to Study the Civil War,” which he wrote two years ago, has illuminated other motives.
The war took 630,000 American lives, a figure that breaks down to an average of 400 killed each day, or about 17 every hour for four years, Waugh writes.
“Such a loss of Americans in one day in any modern war would set off an outcry of anguish, protest and sorrow that would destroy an administration,” he wrote. Referring to Antietam, he said such a great number of deaths in a day would paralyze government and media today.
“That Americans were fighting and killing other Americans on such a devastating scale is unique to our history,” he wrote, calling the war, “one of the wonders of our past.”
His 20 reasons to study the war also include the extraordinary literature that came out of it. That tragic experience has left us “a beautiful legacy of words.”
Soldiers and their families kept diaries and wrote letters, generals wrote reports and Lincoln spoke elegantly of the national experience in the Gettysburg Address and in his second inaugural address. All of this made the Civil War “one of the most poignantly and personally documented passages in world history. With no planning, simply by reflex action, the Civil War created great literature on a gut level.”
He refers to what is probably one of the most beautiful messages of love ever written, a letter from the doomed Maj. Sullivan Ballou of the 2nd Rhode Island Volunteer Infantry to his wife, Sarah. Ken Burns used the letter as part of his 1990 public television documentary on the war.
“Sarah, my love for you is deathless. It seems to bind me with mighty cables that nothing but Omnipotence could break; and yet my love of Country comes over me like a strong wind and bears me unresistibly on with all those chains, to the battle field.”
Nearing his conclusion, he speaks of not returning home: “If I do not my dear Sarah, never forget how much I love you, and when my last breath escapes me on the battle field, it will whisper your name. ... But, O Sarah! If the dead can come back to this earth and flit unseen around those they loved, I shall always be near you; in the gladdest days and in the darkest nights ... always, always, and if there be a soft breeze upon your cheek, it shall be my breath, as the cool air fans your throbbing temple, it shall be my spirit passing by.”
In support of another motive, Waugh reminds that the war wasn't all that long ago, just a few generations past. There were several million men in uniform from 1861 to 1865. For many Americans, their great-grandfathers or great-great- grandfathers fought, and their great-grandmothers or great-great-grandmothers lived through it.
Family information is readily accessible from numerous genealogical collections available in libraries or on the Web. War records are available at the National Archives. There are city and county records in courthouses around the country and thousands of cemeteries where the end of the story may be found.
Finding those connections ties us directly to the war, but even without such personal roots, we can easily identify with the people who lived in that time, Waugh said.
In researching the war, he said he was struck by the similarity between “our ancestors of Civil War times and us, between their love and our love, their passion and our passion. (They) suffered the same sorrows, thrilled to the same events, thought the same thoughts, loved just as hard, and just as dearly as their great-great-granddaughters and grandsons do today.”
His other reasons for studying the Civil War are equally as good.
Linda Wheeler can be reached at cwwheel@shentel.net.
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