History, memory and Gettysburg
What are we to do in explaining/discussing the Civil War's decisive battle?
On the fourth of July, I opened the New York Times to read a guest essay by Simon Barnicle, a lawyer and officer in the Army Reserve. He had recently visited Gettysburg and found himself very upset about what he saw.
“Gettysburg is hallowed ground - a powerful tribute to the democratic experiment and those who died to preserve it,” he wrote. “Yet the site and the surrounding area are littered with Confederate propaganda.”
Yes, the word jumped out at me, too. “Propaganda.”
Having lived in the South for over 30 years now, I’ve seen plenty of Confederate flags, even now. Growing up in New Hampshire, about as far away from the Civil War as you can get, the way the Civil War was taught to us was this: While slavery was certainly a key element, maybe even THE element, it wasn’t like young white men from Massachusetts were fighting to free some African-American kid he would never meet; it was to preserve the Union, since some hot-tempered Southern states had gone ahead and decided to secede.
Similarly, we weren’t taught that the Confederates were fighting to make sure they they kept African-Americans in perpetual captivity. In their minds, true or false, we were taught that they were trying to preserve a way of life, one that happened to include slavery as part of their economic reality. It wasn’t ever about trying to keep a people down. Naive, maybe, but that’s how we understood it.
Consequently, I never thought ill of Robert E. Lee and when I made it a point to visit Appomattox Courthouse some years ago, I stood in the room where he surrendered and tried to imagine for a moment how awful that had to be for him. An exceptional West Point cadet, a highly respected and honorable man who wrongheadedly but wholeheartedly wound up fighting against his own country.
I never thought him a traitor. Maybe I should have. But I never thought I’d see a day when statues of him would be taken down.
Barnicle’s piece stuck in my mind because he’s raising a good question. How DO we teach/remember/discuss Gettysburg. I saved the essay on my phone, kept reading it, attached it at the end of this. And since I couldn’t make up my mind, I decided I’d watch the 1993 film “Gettysburg” again (I have the DVD) to see what I thought about the whole event now.
It’s a long film of a very long war, over four hours. Wonderfully acted, historically accurate from what I’ve read, the film brings the bitter reality of the war that so divided us into our world in an unflinching, unsentimental way. Given the acidity of our current political climate, a time when, as a nation, we may be about as separate as North and South in 1860, the film seems even-handed to me, depicting not only what happened but perhaps what it still means today.
The haunting moment that made me pause and rewind and watch again, actually write down the actual speech, came early in the film where Union Colonel John Buford, one of the first units to reach Gettysburg, recognizes that claiming the higher ground, the raised portions of the Gettysburg hillside, will be a key advantage in what was shaping to be one hell of a battle.
Strategically speaking, that made sense. Your foes would have to fight uphill, you could have the advantage of seeing them before they see you, you even have gravity on your side. And Buford was indeed correct and by acting quickly, he enabled the Union troops to gain a topographical edge once the three-day battle began.
But that wasn’t what wowed me. What did was Buford’s eerily prophetic speech, which evidently was adapted from Tallahassee’s own Michael Shaara’s Pulitzer-Prize winning historical novel “The Killer Angels.” He is surveying a wide-open Gettysburg field and imagines what will happen tomorrow.
And in stunning fashion, he lays out EXACTLY what WILL happen to the Confederates a couple days later, including the horrors of Pickett’s charge on Day Three, where the South lost some 6,555 men or the entire population of Arizona, in less than an hour of battle.
Elliott (as Buford) scans what will tomorrow become a bloody battlefield, a faraway look in his eye, as he says to an aide: “You know what’s going to happen here in the morning? The whole damn Reb army’s going to be here. They’ll move through this town, occupy these hills on the other side and our people will get here and Lee will have the high ground and there’ll be devil to pay. The high ground. (Union General George) Meade will come in slowly, cautiously, new to command. They’ll be on his back from Washington. Wires hot with messages. ‘Attack!” “Attack!” So (he) will set up a ring around these hills. And when Lee’s army is all nice and entrenched behind fat rocks on the high ground, Meade will finally attack if he can coordinate the army. Straight up the hillside, out in the open in that gorgeous field of fire. We will charge valiantly and be butchered valiantly. Afterwards, men in tall hats and gold watch fobs will thump their chests and say ‘What a brave charge it was.”
Which brings us back to Barnicle’s article. Can traitors make a brave charge? Just like the word “propaganda” jumps out at you, the phrase “brave charge” in Buford’s speech - he was imagining it was Union troops being mowed down, a nightmare for him - makes you pause and reflect. Whether or not the real Buford actually said those words, who knows? History does record that he did say “there’ll be devil to pay.” But the rest? Either way, some fine writing by writer/director Ron Maxwell, adapting Shaara’s book.
But here’s the point. Watching the brutal depictions of the ferocious battle scenes in the film “Gettysburg,” you certainly aren’t inclined to call the Confederates “cowards.” As wrongheaded, traitorous, unsettling and unjust their actions on July 1-3, 1863, seem to us now, in 2024, the soldiers themselves didn’t see it that way at the time. And there seems to be no question that they fought as relentlessly as the Union soldiers, maybe even harder, considering the Union’s built-in tactical advantage in weapons, supplies and manpower.
Yet Barnicle sees it differently.
“The park is notably lacking in historical context and moral valence,” he writes. “Why was the war fought? What did Gettysburg mean for the United States? Was slavery good or bad? The answers to these questions may seem so obvious that they don’t require explanation, but the décor at the park and in the town of Gettysburg suggests otherwise...The quantity of Confederate imagery at Gettysburg is a testament to the enduring power of Lost Cause ideology — the revisionist, pseudohistorical thesis dreamed up by defeated Southerners who maintained that the Civil War was not primarily about slavery and that the antebellum South was unfairly maligned by opportunistic Northerners.”
His phrase “the enduring power of Lost Cause ideology” is an effective and apparently, one that carries over into other areas, ones that are poisoning us now. When a former President can convince nearly half the country that he was short-changed in an election, even though he was clearly defeated in the popular vote by more than the entire voting block of either New Jersey or Virginia (pick one), there are people who are willing to cling to that, to swear by that. Should that former President fail in November’s election, you can be certain that his yard signs and banners will be displayed in perpetuity, like those Confederate flags.
Now, if residents of the South understood that to some people, displaying a Confederate flag in 2024 would be as offensive and insulting to some as if they flew a swastika, perhaps they’d take those flags down. But we aren’t there yet.
Some 159 years, 3 months and 16 days later, or 58,181 days after Lee surrendered his sword at Appomattox, we still aren’t there yet.
Sam Elliott, as Colonel John Buford, offers a stunning vision in the film “Gettysburg.”
Here is a link to Barnicle’s essay from the New York Times (cut and paste)
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/04/opinion/gettysburg-confederate-flag-history.html
Great read!!!
This is certainly thought-provoking., challenging me to reconsider my understanding of Gettysburg. I loved my visit to Gettysburg and have read some books sbout it, ranging from historical non fiction to romances. I remember thinking it was honorable to acknowledge the sacrifices of both sides.