Battle of Ball's Bluff

OK- by Civil War standards it was a skirmish - but it was the nearest battlefield to our farm when I was a kid. And it has a certain salience for Sententiae.

Slavery, the Civil War, and our need for myths

I tell my classes, when I am in the mood to, that almost all they know about the Civil War is wrong, including their idea of a Rebel Yell. Yet we all need our comfortable little myths. The Old South has more than its fair share (Gone with the Wind and "Birth of a Nation" just for starters).

Here is an attempt, probably unsuccessful, on the part of the Washington Post to demythify some of it.

"Heritage not hatred" is the latest motto of the unreconstructed. I know better.

Reenacting the Civil War

It just ain't what it used to be.

My brother the Confederate Nut claims to know these guys from some reenactment or another.

but he's a stickler for details.

Thomas Starr King - gone and probably forgotten

Every state in the union gets to put up two statues of memorable people from that state that it wants to commemorate in the Statuary Hall of the United States Capital building. As Carmen and I once discovered to our great delight, Florida has a statue to the man who invented air conditioning (as well it might).

California has just dethroned one of its favored sons, Thomas Starr King, in favor of Ronald Reagan. I don't mind honoring Reagan, but for a moment lets look at the guy who gets bumped, via the New York Times:

He was a Unitarian preacher, and an amazing one at that; spellbinding, said people who heard him. He spoke up for slaves, for the poor, for union members and the Chinese. Most memorably, he spoke up for the Union, roaming the state on exhausting lecture tours, campaigning for Abraham Lincoln and a Republican State Legislature, imploring California not to join the Confederacy. He succeeded, but he did not live to see the Union victory. He died of diphtheria in 1864, age 39.

“He saved California to the Union,” this paper wrote, quoting Gen. Winfield Scott.

Today the conservative movement would probably drum him out of the Republican Party, which would be a shame, not least because he is an example of social and political activism based on deep religious faith. At a time when the Civil War armies lost many more men to disease than to combat his death at such a young age was not unusual. Every life has something to tell us if we listen.

Well, at least he still has two mountain peaks named after him.

I just had to add that last line from the general.

Gettysburg in oil and canvas

When I was about 9 my family went to visit the Gettysburg Battlefield. Back in those days the crush of tourism and capitalism had not yet fully worked its magic. I still remember how awed I was by the gigantic circular painting of the battle called the Cyclorama. You have seen photos of it, perhaps without knowing it, in almost every book on the battle containing pictures. I wanted to be an artist to recreate every nuance of such a work. I wanted to be that artist. Actually it was a team of 20 artists but I thought one person had done it all.

In this Washington Post article the new fully restored Cyclorama is described. The journalist writing the piece can makes no attempt to hide his disdain.

Yet I remember it as something remarkable. Almost like standing in the middle of the battle.

But then I had never seen a computer, 3-D graphics, or anything more sophisticated than small, fuzzy black and white TVs that were less realistic by far than the painting.

progress.

Flying Facists Freight Fowl with Food

I read this little oddity in The Battle for Spain, by Anthony Beevor*.

The Nationalist army faced the problem of how to supply a besieged outpost. "Nationalist pilots devised an original method of dropping fragile supplies. They attached them to live turkeys which descended flapping their wings, thus serving as parachutes which could also be eaten by the defenders."


*an excellent book on the Spanish Civil War