Remembering the Civil War

On this Memorial Day weekend, we might well think especially of the war that gave rise to Decoration Day, in time so renamed.

Nancy Pearl has made the observation that every generation of Americans since the end of the civil war has re-written that war in fictional form to reflect its own "dreams, desires, fears, and beliefs."

The nineteenth century was not over yet when Crane wrote RED BADGE OF COURAGE.

Forty years after Crane, Mitchell's GONE WITH THE WIND gave us a crystallization of nostalgia for the antebllum society of Tara and the O'Hara clan.

Twenty years after that, MacKinley Kantor wrote ANDERSONVILLE, a novelization of the horrors of life in that prisoner-of-war camp.

Identifying more recent books is easy. Deciding which of the more recent ones deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as those is more difficult. COLD MOUNTAIN by Charles Frazier, can make a strong claim. Pearl mentions others.

On a trip through Virginia a few years ago, I noticed that the sports teams of Appomattox High School call themselves "The Generals." I bet when they lose, the sportswriters of the towns of the rival team can't help but begin with a lede like this: The Appomattox Generals surrendered again Wednesday to the Jubreau Devil's crushing linesmen...."

Juneteenth

It was on this day in June 1865 that the slaves of Texas were informed of their freedom.

I'll save myself the task of exposition and simply refer you to the relevant page of wikipedia.

Specifically, the day commemorates "Order No. 3" issued by a Union general, Gordon Granger, in Galveston on this day. Those of us who take a too-simple view of the civil war, who think of it as having ended in Appomattox two months before, should keep this holiday in mind as a corrective to that simplicity.

The best date for a real end to the war is actually four days AFTER Gen. Granger's famous announcement. The last Confederate General to surrender was Stand Watie, in the Oklahoma Territory, on June 23d.

But even June 23 may be too early for some persnickety folk, who will remind you that the last shots fired in the struggle of secessionists were fired that November, in the waters off the Aleutian islands, by the CSS Shenandoah, under the command of Capt. James Waddell.