Shiloh National Battlefield

AKA Shiloh National Military Park.

Back when I worked for the National Park Service jokes about "cannonball parks" were common. Cannonball parks tend to attract two kinds of visitors: military history nerds and dog walkers. I have no clue what type of underground network exists among dog owners to alert them to the charms of walking Fido in a cannonball park but every cannonball park I've been to had more dog walkers than "real" visitors. Even Shiloh, which isn't exactly on the edge of a housing development like Kennesaw Mountain, had a dude walking two dogs in the rain. And there are almost always a zillion monuments to various dead troops. Thus, I'll confess doing site visits to places like Wilson's Creek didn't thrill me even though Wilson's Creek is refreshingly monument-free.  

Military history has never been a strong interest of mine and, let's be honest, a battlefield is a remarkably depressing place. You get to walk around a site that witnessed incredible carnage and then learn that despite thousands of people dying or being horribly wounded the battle didn't resolve much. Shiloh gets designated as the first major battle in the Civil War but all it seems to have accomplished is hundreds of bodies wound up in mass graves. The battle was in April 1862. The war didn't end for another three years. 

But I digress. Shiloh is the first cannonball park I've visited that really flaunts its cannonballs. Giant stacks of fake ones. They're prominent site markers for where various officers had their headquarters. The one shown commemorates the battlefield headquarters of brigadier general Thomas Sweeny, an Irish immigrant and Union officer. 

There's a sizable collection of other monuments, too. most dating from the 1920s. The one for Tennessee shows up on postcards, magnets, and other park memorabilia. It is, as such things go, not a bad looking monument. The scale is reasonable and the design isn't weird. It pays tribute to fallen soldiers with an obviously dead guy still gripping the stars and bars. It also makes sense that it would be a prominent memorial; the battlefield is in Tennessee and Mississippi so of course Tennessee is going to want something nice. Mississippi also has a decent monument, nothing too over the top but definitely memorializing their troops. (Photo is from a site that provides tips on planning visits to national parks.) 

Shiloh was interesting. I was glad we took the time to check it out. I did not know that it was the very first Civil War battlefield to be proclaimed a national battlefield. That happened early enough that Civil War veterans, both Union and CSA, were able to actively push for the commemoration and to attend ceremonies at the battlefield. As usual, the Park has a decent visitor center with nicely designed exhibits with historic artifacts and bits of trivia to flesh out the basic narrative (two day battle that CSA officers thought they were winning after the first day but then Union reinforcements arrived and Grant, Sherman, et al. pushed the CSA troops into retreating). The visitor center video describing the battle was good as it used the perspectives of ordinary troops on both sides. Decent casting for the re-enactments, too, which was a bonus. 

As far as I could tell, based on my admittedly thin knowledge of the war and the various officers involved on both sides, the most consequential effect of the battle was the death of General Albert Sidney Johnston. Johnston bled out from what he thought was a minor wound to the back of his leg. It took several hours for the blood loss to hit. By the time it sank in that he was seriously wounded, he'd lost too much blood and could not be saved. One of the most effective officers the CSA had, Johnston's death was a major blow to the Confederacy. Jefferson Davis notably said "[W]hen Sidney Johnston fell, it was the turning-point of our fate; for we had no other hand to take up his work in the West." Given that both armies had an over-abundance of incompetent, lazy, or generally useless officers I'm not sure that's true. 

One of my co-workers in Omaha actually worked at Shiloh when the author Tony Horowitz visited as part of researching the book that became Confederates in the Attic. He always claimed Horowitz quoted him in the book, but if he did it wasn't obvious when I read it. The co-worker's favorite fantasy was to somehow get back to Shiloh as Superintendent. I have no idea if the dude succeeded. It always struck me as a weird ambition, but who knows? Maybe he was originally from that part of Mississippi or Tennessee so it wasn't so much the park attracting him as it was him just wanting to get back home. I've mentioned before the penchant of some superintendents to snag their dream retirement location as a duty station for their final high three with the agency. 

You lost. Get over it.

It's been more than 150 years since Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia lost the Battle of Appomattox Court House and ended the Civil War, but it appears there are still Southerners who haven't figured that out. The state of South Carolina, for example, persists in flying the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia on the state capitol grounds. Why?

The whole obsession with the battle flag has always puzzled me. Even before I learned that Bedford Forrest and the Ku Klux Klan revived it as a symbol meant to strike fear in the hearts of former slaves during Reconstruction, I couldn't figure out why anyone would want to brag about being on the losing side of history when it came to an issue like chattel slavery. What kind of mental gymnastics does it take to convince yourself that your great great grandfather died fighting for some noble cause when that noble cause was to preserve human bondage?

Actually, I know the answer to that one: states' rights. Every time the subject of the war come up, someone waving a battle flag will start blathering on about states' rights while conveniently forgetting that the right the Confederates wanted to preserve was the right to keep slaves. The states that wrote declarations of secession all were explicit in naming the right to keep slaves as their motivation. So did the individual state constitutions. As I wrote in a post back in February, there was absolutely no doubt back in the 1860s as to what motivated the secessionists to secede.

Nonetheless, every time the subject of removing the flag comes up from public places where it's still proudly displayed, people persist in ignoring its actual history. Is it really that difficult to admit that past generations, people's parents or grandparents, were racist assholes but we're now living in more enlightened times? There's always a lot of blathering about a "glorious cause" and Southern pride. What the heck is there to be proud of in committing an act of treason because you want to keep people in chains? And then to insist on wrapping yourself in a flag that was the preferred symbol of the Ku Klux Klan? You might as well be walking around wearing a tee-shirt proclaiming "I'm racist as hell."

In short, it's long past time for South Carolina to jettison some of its more unsavory baggage. Whether they will, though, is doubtful. If anything, it's probable the nation-wide pressure on the state to remove the flag will just cause enough of the legislators to dig in their heels to prevent it from coming down. The war may have ended in April 1865, but some people still don't want to admit they lost.  

And you think politics are ugly now?

I just finished reading a fascinating book, The Presidents' War: Six American Presidents and the Civil War that Divided Them. The author, Chris DeRose, provides brief descriptions of the administrations of the presidents and administrations that fell between Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln and then discusses how the five living ex-presidents responded to the Civil War. You think politics can be nasty now? Or that "journalists," especially the ones on Faux News, have a tendency to lie?  Read some history, my friends, because compared to the 1850s and 1860s we are living in a remarkably civilized time.

Granted, no one in South Carolina has decided (yet) that it would be a good idea to have the state militia open fire on Fort Jackson, although I'm sure there are some idiots on the far right who think that it would be a good idea. The lack of open warfare does have to make the present day look a lot better than Lincoln's time regardless of whatever vitriol gets spilled on the air or in Congress. But, holy wah, they were nasty back then.

Among other things, no matter what Bill Clinton or George W. Bush might privately think about the current occupant of the White House, they're polite in public. All the ex-presidents are nice to each other. They don't openly criticize the decisions their successors make or allow themselves to get sucked into second guessing existing policy. Their minions and/or acolytes might get nasty, but the ex-presidents themselves? Never. In contrast, Lincoln had to deal with five living former presidents who weren't nearly as restrained. Four of them were pro-slavery and either openly secessionist or close to it. John Tyler, in fact, was a delegate to the Virginia state convention that voted for secession. He bears the dubious distinction of being the only U.S. president to have died as an enemy of the country he once led.

Andrew Jackson was the 8th President of the United States; Abraham Lincoln was the 16th. Their administrations fell a mere 24 years apart but were separated by a string of one-term office holders, two of whom rose to the position from the vice presidency following the death of a president. These are the guys who cause high school students' eyes to glaze over and who most of us can never remember: Martin Van Buren (who I remember primarily because in at least one of Gore Vidal's historical novels his characters speculate that Van Buren is Aaron Burr's illegitimate son; I have no clue if Vidal based that bit of fiction on any actual 19th century gossip), William Harrison (notable for, if I recall correctly, insisting on marching in the rain on inauguration day, getting sick as a result of his stubbornness, and dying barely a month later), John Tyler, James K. Polk (whose name only comes up as the answer to trivia questions about presidents with 4-letter names; there have been five. Polk is the one no one can ever remember)(Taft, Ford, Bush the Elder and Bush the Younger are the other four), Zachary Taylor (rumored to have been poisoned; he was actually exhumed a couple years ago and tested for arsenic); Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, and James Buchanan.

Of the five living ex-presidents at the time Lincoln took office, only Van Buren came close to supporting the administration. Van Buren, who had been Andrew Jackson's vice president, was nominally a Democrat but appears to have tried the hardest to keep his mouth shut. He was active in organizing support for the Union troops and made a point of staying out of politics. Unfortunately for Lincoln, Van Buren died in 1862. As for the others? The vitriol flowed freely. Pierce referred publicly to Lincoln as an ape, an ignoramus, a tyrant who was shredding the Constitution and should be removed from office by any means necessary. Pierce even carried on an active correspondence with Jefferson Davis during the war -- prior to the war, Pierce had promoted Davis as a presidential candidate (and what an interesting alternate history novel that would make: Jefferson and Varina Davis in the White House instead of Abraham and Mary Lincoln). Pierce actually came close to being indicted for treason when Union forces captured the Confederate capital in Richmond and the Pierce-Davis correspondence was found.

All the ex-presidents wrote long letters, which usually included a phrase saying that although they didn't intend the actual letter for publication, the recipients were free to share their sentiments with others. They described Lincoln publicly in terms that today not even the talking heads on Faux News would consider using in dissing President Obama. Lincoln was a subhuman mongrel, a shambling ape. A few of them nourished fantasies of returning to the White House themselves; after all, they'd served only one term. . . and a couple of them (Tyler, Fillmore) hadn't even been elected to the office to begin with. The fact their party's convention had passed them over after seeing how they did the first time around didn't faze them. They were still convinced they knew the pulse of the country and could do a better job than Lincoln. It does show how delusional politicians can get: Pierce, Buchanan, and Fillmore were being reviled as Copperheads, they were openly mocked in the popular press, but because they still attracted a crowd of fellow Copperheads when they spoke, they thought they represented mainstream thought (and, wow, does that ever sound familiar, kind of like a Sarah Palin or Ted Nugent public appearance).

Copperheads were the Civil War equivalent of today's Tea Party, a radical faction within the Democratic Party. Copperheads wanted to end the Civil War on almost any terms, including restoring slavery throughout the entire United States. Their position was that whatever it took to get the secessionist states back in the Union was okay with them. It didn't seem to register with them that once thousands of Union troops had died in battle, most of the Union states weren't feeling particularly conciliatory. Pierce was so tone-deaf (or oblivious to reality) that he gave an anti-Lincoln, pro-Southern speech the day after the Union army managed to defeat the Confederates at Gettysburg. The crowd present at the speech cheered him; the rest of the country was disgusted and horrified. Secure within their own little bubble, the Copperheads were convinced that they would win the 1864 presidential election handily, especially when General George McClellan (one of the most useless military men in the history of warfare) was their candidate. They were, needless to say, stunned when Lincoln was re-elected by a large majority.

John Tyler probably caused the fewest headaches for Lincoln. Tyler had retired to a Virginia plantation, Sherwood Forest, when he left the presidency. Initially snubbed by his neighbors who perceived him as having been too pro-free state while he was president, by the time the war broke out he had repaired his reputation within the state. He was elected as a delegate to the state convention that voted for secession and then as a representative to the Congress of the Confederate States of America. If he had still been living when the war ended, he might have been tried for treason along with Jefferson Davis and other members of the CSA government. He was extremely critical of Lincoln, but as an open member of the Confederacy, his opinions probably didn't carry much weight in the North.

A small digression: Tyler's home, Sherwood Forest, is the only presidential home that's still owned by a member of the president's family. His grandson Harrison lives there. Yep. Tyler's grandson. Tyler was married twice and had 15 children; he was 63 when Harrison's father Lyon was born. Lyon in turn was married twice and had children late in life; he was 75 when Harrison was born.

Several things struck me while reading this book. One was that no matter how badly most of the politicians mentioned in this book screwed up, they were never willing to admit they'd blown it, e.g., that getting rid of the Missouri Compromise was a bad idea. There were exceptions: Stephen Douglas publicly castigated himself for having pushed for state sovereignty (i.e., letting new states decide for themselves whether to be free or slave), and Lincoln was notable for being willing to change his mind and admit errors. Almost no one else, however, seemed capable of saying they'd blown it. If anything, the worse things got, the less willing they were to admit they'd had a hand in creating the situation.

I did feel a few twinges of pity for a couple of the ex-presidents. Pierce, for example, was close friends with the author Nathaniel Hawthorne. They'd been good friends since their college days; Hawthorne dedicated one of his last books to Pierce; and Hawthorne was actually visiting with Pierce when he died. Nonetheless, Pierce was by then so universally disliked that the people arranging Hawthorne's funeral cut Pierce out. In the normal course of events, Pierce would have been at least a pall bearer if not one of the eulogists. Not this time. I don't know if Pierce was told not to attend at all (DeRose doesn't make that clear), but given that Pierce is described as distraught over the exclusion, it's possible he was indeed told to stay away.

In addition to shedding light on some of the political maneuvering going on in the years preceding the war, the book also makes it totally clear that the one and only reason the southern states seceded was slavery. It wasn't states' rights in a general sense because the only right the southerners were interested in was the right to own slaves. DeRose provides direct quotes from the various secession declarations, and in every one where a state did a specific statement of secession, that state gives the right to own slaves as its reason. This is a historical fact that needs to be pointed out on a regular basis along with the fact that it was the south that started the war. It was not a glorious cause; it was a war to perpetuate slavery. And it was not a "war of northern aggression" when it began with a southern state attacking a federal facility.

The Presidents' War is a recent publication. I actually found it on the New Books shelf at the library -- which prompted a "holy wah, it's actual history" reaction, because that space is usually filled with the most recent Janet Evanovich or Nora Roberts releases. It's quite readable, and it does probably provide enough biographical information on each of the key players that any burning desire a person may have had to learn more about Millard Fillmore or James Buchanan will probably be satisfied. It's also nicely concise for a history that covers several decades; DeRose did a good job of figuring out what was important without loading the book up with material that's been well-covered elsewhere. I'd recommend it to anyone with an interest in antebellum and Civil War history.