RECONCILLIATION

 There was a period from roughly 1877 to the early 1910s that historians call the “reunion era” or sometimes “the Great Reconciliation.” Historians sometimes use “sectional reconciliation” or “the reunion of North and South.”

It carries no title nor official observance, but the effects remain.

Politicians pursued it to end the bitter feelings between the loyal states and the insurrectionist states of our Civil War. A stronger country emerged, so they argued, with this reconciliation.

It featured:

The public acknowledgement of both United States and Confederate state soldiers with joint memorials and reunions.

The naming of federal military bases after soldiers who had waged war against the United States for four long years. One of the most notorious was Fort Bragg, named after an insurrectionist officer generally viewed as a competent administrator but an ineffective field commander. He ordered the killing or maiming of thousands of Americans.

Personally, my family benefited as the government provided identical tombstones for two great-grandfathers, one a U.S. soldier and one a Confederate. They still stand in a lonely cemetery less the fifty feet apart.

The families of close friends didn’t fare as well. The reconciliation put the final nails into the coffin of Reconstruction and enabled the horrible effects of the Jim Crow era.

Last week we celebrated the surrender of the Confederacy. May we all hope for final victory.

THE UNCIVIL WAR

Today marks the symbolic end, 161 years ago, of the Slaveowners’ Revolt that tore our country apart for four long years. It had cost the lives of some 750,000 soldiers on the two sides, roughly two percent of the population. That would equate to six million deaths today. It left cities in ruins and farms in ashes awaiting the return of the armless, the legless, and those suffering from “soldier’s heart” as they called it back then.

Though it officially ended slavery it did not end the vicious cruelty imposed upon those who arrived in our country in chains, a sin still visited upon their descendants.

Now we are engaged in a great, but differently fought, civil war to determine whether the imbedded promises of April 9, 1865 will prevail. How long, we wonder, must the battle for human decency last?

We can hope, but the monetary resources of a great international cabal face us as the murderous artillery faced American soldiers from Missionary Ridge and the cliffs of Omaha Beach. Their power flourishes within from the likes of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg. Even the purchase of a chicken sandwich or hobby tool bolsters their power. What we need more than ever is the will to prevail against monstrous odds.

We could use a man like Ulysses S. Grant again.

DEFEAT FASCISM

 As the news of a great American victory at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania seeped across America 162 years ago today, another, some say even more important, event occurred some 1,000 miles away at Vicksburg, Mississippi. There, after a five-month campaign and a siege of 47 days, General John C. Pemberton surrendered the city and 30,000 rebel troops to a United States Army under the command of General Ulysses S. Grant.

This opened the Mississippi River to traffic and separated the insurrectionist states of Arkansas and Texas from their eastern counterparts.

President Abraham Lincoln observed, "The Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the sea"

The campaign to capture Vicksburg resulted in 48,000 killed, wounded, captured, or missing, counting both sides. The three-day battle at Gettysburg resulted in as many as 51,000. But on July 4, 1863 the dreams of two separate nations, instead of one, had faded.

Freedom isn't free. That makes it even more precious.

DEFEAT FASCISM

 Sometimes I catch myself wondering just what America is all about. It changes over the years. It was once a bountiful land for stone-age tribes who sometimes lived in harmony, sometimes fought, sometimes traded but respected the land and left no great scars upon it.

Sometimes it was about a place where one could practice religion without government guidance or interference or the threat of being burned at the stake for one's beliefs.

Sometimes it was place where land was so plentiful that a family could not harvest its share without the help of slave labor.

Sometimes where men who had never owned a slave were willing to die in a war that meant the end of slavery.

Sometimes it was a place where opportunity was unbounded for some, restricted for others, and prohibited for others.

Sometimes it was a place from which brave men would storm beaches in the face of death to defeat fascism.

Sometimes it was a place where good people struggled to make the opportunities of this great place available for all.

For long periods, it was a land of opportunity and progress for many, a light that attracted people from all over the world who sought its promises.

Sometimes it took great steps forward to extend its promises for all.

Every once in a while, it seems to take a step backwards.

EPIPHANY OF THE DAY

DUTY

 In high school I was taught that the most famous general of the American army in our Civil War, the army that fought to end slavery, owned slaves. I was taught that the most famous general in the insurrectionist army, the army that fought to preserve slavery, never owned slaves.

That was partly true and partly false.

General Ulysses S. Grant was given a slave by his father-in-law. He freed him before the Civil War.

Robert E. Lee actually did own slaves. Most famously though, he managed over 200 that his wife inherited from her father. His “management” included the whipping of recalcitrant humans under his care.

One can research all of this further if one chooses. My state doesn’t allow it to be taught.

For today, let us consider a comment I read once. Lee confided to someone that slaves would encounter no problems if they simply did their duty.

Their duty.

Now what exactly was the duty of a person who was worked, for minimal sustenance, often less, from when “it was light enough to see until it was too dark to see?”

What was the duty of a person who was not allowed to learn to read or write for fear by the owner that the slave might “become like one of us?”

What was the duty of the person whose children were torn away, sold to strangers, and carried to a faraway place by the omnipotent owner?

I would say that the duty of that person would be to take every opportunity, despite every danger, and despite the myth of “The Lost Cause” to run as far away from that evil owner as possible.

Duty.

Bullshit.

Grand Visions

Some sights stay with you forever, just as real as the moment they happened. For me, one was the first time I saw Brenda. I know. I know. I’ve described many times how she sashayed by and grabbed my heart as she passed, never letting it go.

Another was the time I was enjoying a brief dalliance with the “sport” of scuba diving. My friend Doug Sisco and I booked a trip to the Cayman Islands where, on one dive, we traversed a short, winding cave to exit directly over the “Great Cayman Wall,” staring down into tree miles of darkening blue water, suspended above it like cosmic interlopers. Oh my.

Oh, and speaking of blue ocean water, I can’t forget the sight of the South China Sea from the airplane window as I left another place. I only mention it because I dreamed last night that they sent me back, the first reoccurrence of that dream in a long time. I think that’s a compensating dream after an aggravating day, my mind saying, “It could be worse.”

There was, going back a bit further, my first glimpse of Old Main, soaring above the “Mother of Mothers” as viewed from my family’s car on old Highway 71 coming into Fayetteville.

I can’t forbear mentioning one other sight that never fails to stir my blood. It was back in the 1980s I think. My old friend, running buddy, and legal mentor Argumento deMinimus, the Harvard-Bred lawyer was spending two weeks of Army Reserve training at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. Brenda and I flew up to visit ere he left. At some point, someone said, “Hey kids, let’s go to the Gettysburg Battlefield.”

Off we went. Arriving there, we found ourselves a little disoriented by the traffic and disorder. It’s a big place, the battlefield park. It is immaculately preserved, due largely to the initial efforts of one of the battles’ self-aggrandizing jerks, Union General Daniel Edgar Sickles. Sickles nearly blew the victory and then spent the rest of his life trying to destroy the career of General George Meade who whipped Robert E. Lee to a standstill at the three-day battle and was never forgiven for the insult, either by Abraham Lincoln or the writers of history.

Anyway, we decided to advantage ourselves of the first available parking place and then become oriented. This we started to do, wandering through a small entryway and heading up a slight incline toward the visitor center. As we walked, a small white building appeared on our right. “Hey,” I said, “that looks familiar.” Nobody listened. They just walked on up the hill. “Hey,” I said, “isn’t that General Meade’s Head … ?”

I didn’t finish, for I reached the top of the ridge where the other two already stood, transfixed. I froze as well. There we stood, at what they call “The high-water mark of the Confederacy," where from a line of battle a mile away, three divisions of Confederate troops had marched inexorably to doom against a Union force of men and cannons arrayed along the ridge where we stood.

I tell you it was really something. It makes chills run up my spine just to recall it. I have no truck with either the Confederacy or the cause for which it stood. I must admit, however, to recalling, at that very moment, the immortal words of William Faulkner, penned in his last novel, Intruder in the Dust. Remember what he wrote?

“For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it’s still not yet two o’clock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with his long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand probably and his sword in the other looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to give the word and it’s all in the balance, it hasn’t happened yet, it hasn’t even begun yet, it not only hasn’t begun yet but there is still time for it not to begin against that position and those circumstances which made more men than Garnett and Kemper and Armistead and Wilcox look grave yet it’s going to begin, we all know that, we have come too far with too much at stake and that moment doesn’t need even a fourteen-year-old boy to think This time. Maybe this time with all this much to lose than all this much to gain: Pennsylvania, Maryland, the world, the golden dome of Washington itself to crown with desperate and unbelievable victory the desperate gamble, the cast made two years ago.”

Neither a charge, nor Pickett's...
His widow promulgated that myth.
It was an assault, an insane one,
by nearly 15,000 brave, but
misguided, men and stopped
by other brave men in epic battle.

The Cruelest Mistress

This year has made me think a lot about death. For example: one of the more interesting, though lesser known, figures in the Civil War, I think, was Major General Israel B. Richardson of the United States army. Evidently, he was quite a character. Called “Fighting Dick” by his fellow officers, he was known to be one of the most profane yet aggressive men in the Army of the Potomac. There was talk that he would surely be promoted to higher command. From accounts, he was a solder’s general and respected by this troops.

Most know the facts of the Battle of Antietam, how Robert E. Lee led a largely unsupplied army into Maryland, falsely assuming the populace would embrace and succor it. We know how members of the Union army discovered a copy of Lee’s battle plans and how the northern army outnumbered the southern. We know how General McClellan refused to believe facts and mishandled a battle full of mistakes and unsecured opportunities, allowing Lee to escape back to Virginia. It turned into a horrible fiasco, Lee’s army being saved only by decisive and courageous actions by its generals and the incompetence of some Union generals like Ambrose E. Burnside.

Oh and one other thing. There was this division commanded by Major General Israel Richards. It was about to cut the Confederate army in half, near what is known as “Bloody Lane.” We’ve all seen the horrific photograph of the bodies laid like chord wood along a picket fence along that infamous lane. It was there that it almost happened. Had the division succeeded, Lee’s army may have been divided and destroyed.

It was not to be. On that day, September 17^th, 1862, a bullet from the Confederate corps of Richardson’s close friend James Longstreet ended Richardson’s career and the aggressive charge that might have changed the course of history. Confused and slowed by the loss of its leader, the Union men faltered and the Confederates drove them back.

They took Richardson from the field, reportedly after saying, “Tell General McClellan I have been doing a Colonel’s work all day, and I’m now too badly hurt to do a General’s.” He lived until November 3, 1862. On October 4, 1862, President Lincoln visited Richardson in the house where he lay. According to a member of Richardson’s staff who was injured and present in the room, the president told Richardson that if he recovered, he would be selected as General McClellan’s successor.

That’s how history turns, a bullet here, a shell fragment there, a step in the wrong direction and the tape of history plays a different track. They say that General Douglas MacArthur, later in different wars, would knowingly walk into danger, seeming to understand that he was protected from the vicissitudes of normal mortals.

September 17^th, 1862 proved to be the bloodiest day in American history. The Battle of Antietam would constitute, though, enough of a “non-loss” that Abraham Lincoln used it as a support for issuing the Emancipation Proclamation. History sometimes turns that way, despite the efforts of the likes of Israel B. Richardson, men once destined for greatness and now largely forgotten by history, their good “interred with their bones.”

America could use citizens like Israel B. Richardson again.

Bone spurs could not
have stopped his man.