Poetic Feete

I had what was for me an unusual experience last year: I read a few hundred pages of Shelby Foote’s history of the American Civil War and didn’t enjoy what I read. The work is massive, and I had read it one-and-two-thirds times, a few hundred pages a year for at least fifteen years, and I had never had a disappointing experience before, even in my previous encounter with the passage that I reread last year. But I loved my reading in Foote this year, so I'm glad to see that last year was just a temporary aberration. The problem may have lain in my circumstances: rushing to pack and move, concerned about selling the house, etc. It may have had to do with Foote’s attempt to downplay Nathan Bedford Forrest’s massacre at Fort Pillow. I didn’t know as much about Forrest the first time I read Foote’s account, but at this time in my life, I really don’t need to hear any defense of the murder of captured black soldiers by the Ku Klux Klan’s first Grand Wizard. Sure, it was an atrocity, Foote says, but no worse than other atrocities committed during the four-year bloodbath of war. I don’t buy it. That war is too full of stories of strangely humane behavior by the combatants between and after battles. Capturing enemy soldiers, disarming them, and then shooting them was not standard practice (except when the captured were black and the capturers were Confederate), and Forrest's act deserves not the slightest amount of extenuation.

I enjoy reading about the Civil War mostly, I think, because of the surprising events that happen when a supposedly civil, supposedly educated, supposedly noble, supposedly pious country descends into violent conflict. I found a lot of amazing characters and stories in the passage I read this year. Here were Admiral Farragut damning the torpedoes in Mobile Bay, Jubal Early attacking Washington, Lincoln standing above the fortifications to watch the action, and the anonymous soldier telling him to “get down, you fool!” Here were the incredible and tragic stupidity of the botched action at the Petersburg crater, Sherman’s march to the sea, Hood’s decision not to defend Georgia against Sherman’s advance and instead to go on the offensive to his destruction in Tennessee, and the inspiring example of a completed, accepted presidential election held during a civil war.

A note on the Petersburg Crater: I had read that thousands of Union troops marched, ran, or fell into the crater caused by an underground explosion and then that Confederate survivors began to fire at the packed, disoriented “attackers” as if, they said, at a turkey shoot. Thousands! I had imagined a stadium-sized crater! So I was surprised and – should I say? – disappointed when I visited Petersburg and saw a hole just a few feet deep that seemed like it could have held no more than five hundred men. I read in the park’s brochure that erosion and plant growth over the years had made the crater shallower and less ominous, so I supposed that I was seeing only a fraction of the original. But Foote says the crater covered about a quarter of an acre. When I read that a couple of weeks ago, I looked across the street at two houses and, remembering that a typical neighborhood plot contained an eighth of an acre, thought, “Those two yards make up about a quarter of an acre, and that was about the size of the crater I saw.” Online just now, I read that the depression measured about 170' by 60'. Yeah, about the size of two house lots. So maybe what I saw was the whole thing after all. But thousands of men? Could thousands of men stand in two neighborhood yards? Maybe I have grossly underestimated the meaning of the word “crowded” in the accounts of the crater.

I also want to read about the Civil War because it tells me like no other story just how stupid and stubborn and cruel humans can be. I remember decades ago reading Bruce Catton say that he thought about these stories every time he heard some “fathead” talk about the glories of war. In my Foote assignment this year, I read of Gen. Sherman saying, “War is cruelty. You cannot refine it.” And I read of a Union soldier in Georgia, seeing the boys and old men they had just shot down, who said, “There is no God in war. It is merciless, cruel, vindictive, un-Christian, savage, relentless. It is all that devils could wish for.”

After the election, Lincoln delivered an inspiring speech to some well-wishers serenading him on the lawn of the White House. In the middle of his remarks, he said, “Human-nature will not change. In any future great national trial, compared with the men of this, we shall have as weak, and as strong; as silly and as wise; as bad and good. Let us, therefore, study the incidents of this, as philosophy to learn wisdom from, and none of them as wrongs to be revenged.” Is he wrong? Do we not have today weak and strong, silly and wise, bad and good Americans trying to direct our future? In our endeavor, we must, as Lincoln said, learn wisdom from the past, and we must all try to make things right without seeking revenge. With malice toward none, with charity for all, folks. Every American should say these words ten times every morning and before every political utterance on social media.

By the way, Lincoln said his speech was “not very graceful.” You should read the whole thing and see what this wise, eloquent leader considered ungraceful. It will take you less time than it took to read this post. Just look up “Lincoln response to a serenade November 10, 1864.”