Streetwise Professor

Last week was the 161st anniversary of the Battle of Shiloh, and fortuitously saw the delivery of David Powell’s Decisions at Shiloh.

Dave is a prolific author, especially of Western Theater subjects, most notably Chickamauga (the subject of his three volume trilogy, as well as a book on the Tullahoma Campaign that preceded Chickamauga). He is also author of Failure in the Saddle, a devastating critique of Confederate cavalry performance in the Chickamauga campaign: Nathan Bedford Forrest is not spared! Thus, Dave is not shy to criticize and challenge.

It was therefore surprising to me to see him accept uncritically conventional wisdom about the Confederate deployment at Shiloh. In a nutshell, under a plan developed by second-in-command P. G. T. Beauregard’s chief of staff Thomas Jordan, the Confederate Army of Mississippi attacked Grant’s Army of the Tennessee with a formation of three successive lines: Hardee’s corps in front, followed by Bragg’s, followed by Polk’s, all supported by Breckenridge’s Reserve Corps. This allegedly led to command confusion as once contact was made with the enemy, as units from different corps were intermingled, thereby preventing corps commanders from controlling their troops. Eventually, Hardee, Bragg, and Polk agreed on an ad hoc arrangement whereby each would command units in a particular sector, regardless of the corps to which the units belonged.

The alternative, according to Powell and numerous others stretching back decades (e.g., Wiley Sword–yes, his real name–in Shiloh: Bloody April from 1974) was the plan allegedly conceived by Confederate commander Albert Sidney Johnston, whereby the three Confederate corps would be arrayed in separate columns attacking in line, rather than successive lines, with with Polk on the left, Hardee in the center, Bragg on the right, with Breckinridge in reserve.

The basis for this assertion is thin indeed. In a letter to Confederate President Jefferson Davis, Johnston wrote:

Confederate forces, 40,000, ordered forward to offer battle near Pittsburg [Landing]. . . Beauregard, second in command; Polk, left; Hardee, center; Bragg, right wing; Breckenridge reserve.

That’s it. The entire basis for the supposed alternative (and supposedly superior) plan.

So many issues. Most importantly, Powell (and many predecessors) seem to be reading way too much into this. Is it the barest sketch of an operational plan designating a deployment of troops, or is it merely a description of the organization of Johnston’s army?

A fair reading supports the latter interpretation. First, the mention of “Beauregard, second in command” suggests organization, not operation. Second, the use of the word “wing” is clearly ambiguous, especially in the context of early-1862.

Specifically, in this period, the word “wing” was used to describe a multi-division organization: it was essentially a synonym for “corps.” Army corps were not officially recognized by the Confederacy until 18 September, 1862: recall that in August, 1862 at Second Manassas Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia was organized into a Left Wing (under Jackson) and a Right Wing (under Longstreet). In Johnston’s army, the three corps were designated as such only 5 days before Johnston’s letter to Davis, and prior to that were referred to as “Grand Divisions”.

It is therefore not clear whether the reference to “wings” in Johnston’s obviously clipped (for telegraphing) missive to Davis represented an operational plan, or a mere description of the forces at Johnston’s command, and who commanded the basic units of maneuver.

Further, if this was Johnston’s operational plan, why did he abandon it in favor of Beauregard/Jordan’s supposedly inferior one? He was the army commander, after all.

But beyond the very thin evidence that Johnston envisioned an attack by three corps in separate columns rather than in successive lines is the issue of whether such a three column attack was even feasible, given the road net and terrain of the battlefield. I seriously doubt that it was.

The optimal conditions for a three column attack required three parallel roads, one for each corps. But no such roads existed.

The Confederates marched from their camp at Corinth, MS to the battlefield on two parallel roads that converged at a place called “Mickey’s” (or Mitchie’s). From there, only a single road led to the Union cantonment.

Indeed, quite predictably there was a confused traffic jam at the road junction that required some time to sort out, which contributed to the delay in the Confederate attack. Due to the necessity of marching northwards on a single road to get at Grant, the four corps of Johnston’s army were necessarily arrayed one after the other.

So how would they have deployed from this line of march into the (allegedly) preferred (and superior) Polk left; Hardee center; Bragg right formation? Not easily, that’s for sure. They could not magically appear in that formation: they had to get there. But how?–and Powell and his predecessors don’t say.

There was a single road leading towards the Confederate right north of the Mickey’s intersection: the Bark Road. (Johnston wanted to place the weight of his attack on his right to drive Grant away from the Tennessee River and into the bottoms of Snake Creek.). Theoretically, once Hardee’s corps had passed that intersection, Bragg’s could have turned right along the road, marched until it’s left was clear of Hardee’s right, then moved onto line with Hardee. Or eschewing the road, Bragg’s corps could have marched by the flank through the woods south of the Bark Road and then advanced to line up with Hardee.

All of this would have taken time. Hours, given the rawness of the Confederate troops and their commanders, and the nasty terrain. During which time the element of surprise would have almost certainly been lost. (Grant and Sherman would have been most appreciative, given the intense criticism directed at them for being surprised.)

The movement of Polk’s corps/wing to the left would have been even more problematic. There was no road along which it could have moved. A cross country march through the woods cut by ravines and bounded by Winningham Branch and Shiloh Branch would have been confused, time confusing, and noisy.

Given the limitations of the road net and the nasty terrain, a set piece deployment as envisioned by the critics of the Beauregard/Jordan plan was wildly impractical, and wildly unlikely. The advance of the subsequent lines into open spaces uncovered when Hardee attacked from his lead position astride the Corinth road was probably the best, and certainly the fastest, way to bring Bragg’s and Polk’s units into contact with the scrambling Federal defenders.

Yes, it led to a jumbling of units, and the devolution of the battle into a series of attacks by brigades operating largely independently of one another, and under no central command. But this would have almost certainly occurred even under the hypothetical alternative plan (even assuming that it was feasible). Ultimately the battle by brigades was dictated by the exigencies of terrain and the rather haphazard deployment of the Union brigades, which was driven by where they were camped and their extemporized response to surprise.

And note well that the planners of even well-organized Civil War assaults exercised little control once battle was joined. Think of Jackson at Chancellorsville or Longstreet at Chickamauga. In the latter case, Bushrod Johnson’s division attacked straight ahead, Hindman veered to the left, and Law wheeled to the right, each in response to immediate threats posed by the Union forces. Naturally units oriented towards the threat, not according to some pre-ordained plan, and the planner could do nothing about it.

One must also consider the specific corps commanders who were supposedly going to exercise control.

Polk? Ha! Look at Chickamauga, where he was formally in command of two army corps, but did not orchestrate the ordered attack on time, and when it did occur, exercised virtually no control over it.

Hardee, later reputed to be the best Confederate corps commander in the west? At Peachtree Creek and Atlanta in 1864 he launched attacks with far more experienced troops. In each case, these attacks splintered into independent actions by individual brigades, again due to the exigencies of terrain (wooded, cut by ravines–like at Shilho) and an unknown and irregular deployment of the Union troops (again like at Shiloh). There is little indication that Hardee exercised any command once his troops stepped off in either of these battles.

Bragg? Another guffaw. At Shiloh itself his tactics were clumsy, consisting mainly of ordering uncoordinated piecemeal assaults on the Hornet’s Nest.

Raw troops. Inexperienced commanders at every level. Rough terrain. A primitive road net. A determined foe. These are what ultimately dictated the course of the battle. It probably would have played out in much the same way in the end regardless of the formation in which the Confederates started.

In sum, I think that the controversy over the Confederate battle plan at Shiloh is a red herring. The evidence that Johnston seriously considered an alternative is wafer-thin: and if he did consider it, he obviously was not strongly committed to it, else he would not have deferred to Beauregard. More importantly, the feasibility of the plan is highly doubtful, given the reality that the Confederates had to approach the Union camps over a single road and there were no easy ways to deploy from a column of corps on that road into a line of corps abreast. And perhaps most importantly, the friction of battle and the reality of no-plan-survives-contact-with-the-enemy meant that regardless of how they were lined up to begin with, the Confederate brigades would have almost certainly operated largely independently as dictated by the terrain and the deployment of Union troops.

The outcome at Shiloh was not dictated by the Confederate battle plan. In fact, that plan arguably had little or no influence on how events played out on 6 April 1862. It was a matter of roads and terrain, and given those constraints it is likely that putting the Confederate troops as they were worked as well or better than any alternative would have.

The XVth Corps of the Army of the Tennessee was one of the most storied and successful combat formations of its size in the Civil War. (Not to mention two ancestors served in it.) It is therefore gratifying to see it receive a book-length treatment in Eric Michael Burke’s Soldiers By Experience: The Forging of Sherman’s Fifteenth Army Corps 1862-1863.

I can give the book a qualified endorsement. It is really a tale of two books, one very good, the other not so much.

The narrative history portion of the book is excellent. In particular, the extended treatments of three largely neglected campaigns/battles–Chickasaw Bayou, Arkansas Post, and the efforts of Grant to get at Vicksburg from the north via the twisting streams of the Mississippi Delta–are very well done and fill a gap in Civil War historiography.

I was particularly interested to read the role that Morgan L. Smith and two Zouave units–the American Zouaves (recruited in Illinois but incorporated into Federal service as the 8th Missouri Volunteer Infantry) and the 11th Indiana Volunteer Infantry–played in developing innovative tactics that eventually spread throughout what became the XV Corps. I’ve read a huge amount of Civil War history since I was 8, and never came across this fact. A nice riposte to the Confederate general Daniel Gladden’s remark that all it took to make a Zouave was 6 yards of red flannel and an Irishman.

The analytic part of the book is not up to the standard set by the narrative part. The basic thesis is banal: military units have a culture that is shaped by their experience. Well of course.

The more specific thesis, that as a result of the bad experiences at Chickasaw and Arkansas Post the XVth Corps was neuralgic about attacking fortifications, is borderline slanderous (because it insinuates cowardice), and repeated endlessly.

The XVth Corps’ neuralgia was hardly unique. Every unit, North and South, had an intense aversion to attacking earthworks–once they had experienced it. If the XVth Corps was unique in any way, it was that it had such unfortunate experiences earlier than any other large unit, and therefore learned of the futility of such assaults earlier than any other large unit.

The XVth Corps assaults occurred in December, 1862 (Chickasaw) and January, 1863 (Arkansas Post). Prior to that time, the only other major assault against field fortifications occurred when the Confederates attacked Corinth, Mississippi in October, 1862. Even then, the Corinth defenses were not as formidable or as heavily manned as those at Chickasaw Bluffs or Arkansas Post. (There were of course earlier attacks on troops stationed behind pre-existing defenses, like the Stone Wall at Fredericksburg or the Sunken Road at Antietam.)

Virtually every time other formations attacked earthworks subsequent to December 1862-January 1863 (a) the attacks were bloodily repulsed, and (b) like the XVth Corps, the attackers shuddered at the the thought of ever doing it again. The XVth Corps was therefore no exception possessing some distinctive culture involving a unique aversion to attacking earthworks: it was the rule, and the corps essentially pioneered the rule through its experiences in the winter of 1862-3.

In other words: they were no dummies, and learned quickly because they had to.

I note that bad experiences were not even necessary. Yes, the XVth Corps was reluctant to attack the formidable defenses of Vicksburg in May, 1863. But so were the XIIIth and XVIIth Corps, which had not had to attack earthworks prior to 19 and 22 May, 1863. As veterans they could quickly understand the likely outcome of rushing prepared defenses manned by veteran troops.

Crucially, after the grim experiences of the winter of 1862-3 the XVth Corps drew upon the Zouave tactics of the 8th Missouri and 11th Indiana to develop an open order, skirmishing-style tactical system that was well-adapted to the realities of the rifled musket, field fortifications, and combat in wooded terrain. Not all who would be bloodied in attacking trenches in the Civil War figured that out. Hell, 1914 armies (especially the French, but the Germans too) hadn’t figured that out.

I have to say too that as a book based on Burke’s PhD thesis, its academic style is sometimes rather grating: it comes off as somewhat pompous and stilted. And I say that as an academic.

In sum, if you are interested in the Civil War at a relatively deep level, I can recommend the book. It provides excellent coverage of some overlooked campaigns, and goes into considerable tactical detail. But if you do read it, discount the (academic) thesis and focus on the historical narrative.

The war in Ukraine has pointed out the fact that modern combatants consume massive amounts of munitions. This can only be a surprise to those with short memories, or the ignorant. Hell, Saddam had it figured out. He cached massive stores of shells. His problem was he didn’t have time to use them because the US went through his army like crap through a goose. Twice. But he left behind enough to keep American EODs working OT for months to blow it up . . . and to supply the explosives for numerous IEDs deployed by his “dead-enders” against the American forces occupying Iraq.

Awakened from their post-Cold War reveries by the shock of Russia’s invasion and Chinese truculence, American, European, and Asian politicians have recognized the desperate need to increase their munitions stocks, and to expand their surge capacity to produce in the event of war. That’s good: better late than never. But rather than make everything willy-nilly, to respond to this awareness it is imperative to prioritize munition types–and the weapons used to fire them. This requires an appraisal of strategic priorities and likelihoods.

Ukraine needs primarily artillery shells, 155mm mainly, and lots of them. That’s because it is engaged in a war of attrition on a relatively static front against an enemy that employs artillery en masse. But such ammunition should not be an American priority because such the United States will not fight such a war, short of a major strategic blunder.

The inability of Russia to defeat Ukraine means that the likelihood of a land conflict against that country is low. And regardless, if it does break out, the Europeans should be the one to fight it, and therefore should be looking to their own munition supplies.

China is the United States’ main likely adversary in a major war. But it is highly unlikely that the US would be facing off against China in a major ground war. It would be beyond idiocy for the US to charge into China. It would also be idiocy for the US to deploy major ground forces to Taiwan in the event of an invasion, and risk getting trapped like, say, the British on Crete in 1941.

The most likely theater of a major ground war involving the US would be Korea. However, South Korea has proved to be the least free riding of any American ally, and has built up a credible military and a military industrial base to back it up. (Poland is also pretty much a non-free rider. Funny how countries on a front line take security threats more seriously, isn’t it?) I think South Korea can–and should–take care of itself, especially on the ground, with the US chipping in with air and sea support

Since a strategically sensible US would be unlikely to engage in a shell eating contest a la Ukraine, what should its munitions strategy focus on?

Again, China is the main potential adversary, the one that poses the greatest threat to the US, and the one which has the greatest capability. In the event war breaks out with China, what should US strategy be? That strategy should dictate procurement priorities.

I’ve never been all that fussed by China’s Anti-Access/Area Denial (“AA/AD”) strategy, precisely because it would be strategically insane–and unnecessary–for the US to attempt to contest the area that China wishes to deny access to, namely the South China Sea. In the event of war, the proper US strategy would be to flip the board and implement an AA/AD strategy against China. Specifically, to deny it access to the region beyond its AA/AD zone. That is, don’t try to get in–keep them from getting out. Turn the fortress they believe they’ve constructed into a prison.

This is a strategy akin to classic British sea power strategies, dating back to the 18th century, which relied on blockades against Continental enemies, first France, then Germany. In the wars against the French culminating in the Napoleonic Wars, the blockades were often “close.” In WWI, the blockade was “far.”*

A “far” blockade would work for the US against China because China faces some of the same vulnerabilities as Wilhelmine Germany, namely, a dependence on raw material imports, most notably an inability to feed itself, and sea lines of communication that are very vulnerable to being severed by myriad means.

China is acutely aware of its dependence on food imports, especially animal feed inputs. The “iron rice bowl” is a thing of the past: as China has developed, so has its consumption of mean protein, and its people’s expectation of it. Xi has prioritized making China self-sufficient in food–a sure tell that he realizes the vulnerability. But this will take a long time under the most ideal circumstances, and is unlikely to occur in any event, especially given how China has ravaged its soil and waters in the past decades, and the disaster that generally results when autocrats attempt to force increased agricultural production.

Imposing and maintaining a blockade of China will require primarily submarines, aircraft, and surface vessels armed with long range precision munitions. And also mines. Lots of mines. Mines are a relatively cheap, low casualty risk, highly leveraged way of blockade and area denial. A large fraction of Japanese merchant shipping was sunk by mines laid by subs and aircraft in WWII. The mining of Haiphong in Vietnam was probably more decisive than the Operation Linebacker bombing campaign. Mining the waters around Chinese ports would have a devastating impact.

PGMs will also be vital in deterring any attempt by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy’s (a name that cracks me up) to break out of a US (and Japan, and Australia, etc.) cordon sanitaire around the South China Sea–or destroying it if it tries. They will also be the primary means by which the United States can strike long-range Chinese weapons that pose a threat to the ships of the US and its allies, and the land bases (on Guam, in Japan and in the Philippines) on which they will rely.

The networking of sensors and platforms, and the deployment of offensive weapons on virtually every US Navy platform, will serve to make a US judo move of denying access to an access denier very effective–if it is backed with adequate means. This will require lots of long range, precision munitions to work–so ramping up their production, stocks, and production capacity of such weapons should be the priority.

But although networking platforms and the employment of precision weapons greatly leverages US capabilities to implement this strategy, the fundamental fact is that the US has too few platforms. The USN is now at a mere 297 hulls, and the current Biden budget proposal will shrink that to 291. The Navy has not submitted a shipbuilding proposal, and the brass are pushing to decommission 11 ships. Navy construction capacity is woefully inadequate. The capacity to build the fleet’s backbone–Burke class destroyers–is limited to 2 per year. The DDG(X) is still a pipe dream. The first Constellation class frigate has just been laid down. Most importantly, production of Virginia class submarines (the most potent threat to China, as their absolute freak out over the AUKUS nuke sub deal shows) is limited to two per year, and US submarine construction capacity will be challenged by the necessity of also building new Columbia class SSBNs to replace the aging Ohios.

So it is not just ammunition–it is platforms to fire it from. And on that score the United States is at best treading water, and may actually be slipping under.

Yes. Ukraine is a wake-up call–although one that should have been unnecessary. But just because the Ukrainians are suffering a WWI-esque shell shortage does not mean that the United States should prioritize artillery ammunition to fight a major land war. Adapting capability to likely adversaries and strategies dictates a focus on long range sea- and air-launched anti-ship and land attack weapons, and crucially the means to employ them. Which means more hulls and more airframes.

These take a long time to build. The time is now to start producing the weapons, and to expanding the capacity to produce the things that can deploy them. Right now we are unduly dependent on hoping the Lord looks kindly on our praise (if we would even give it today), because there just isn’t enough of the right kind of ammunition to pass to fight the most likely and most dangerous conflicts.

*This strategy cuts against the US grain. It frequently takes a long time to implement and take effect. In WWI it took 4 years for the British blockade to bring German to the brink of starvation. In the Civil War, the blockade was also extremely important, but also took years to affect the military situation. The strangulation of Japan by US submarines and mines was also decisive, but took a good two years to have a real impact.

In WWII Churchill wanted to employ the classic British strategy against Germany. This drove the Americans (not to mention Stalin) nuts: they wanted to charge onto the Continent ASAP. Strategic patience is not an American virtue. But it will be a necessity if the US does get involved in a shooting war with China. In such a war, time would be on the US’s side, precisely because what has made China powerful has also made it vulnerable.

The US Military Academy has begun removing 13 memorials to graduates who served in the Confederate Army. This has elicited many reactions like this from Jeff Jacoby:

Way, way, ??? overdue. Robert E. Lee, a traitor and white supremacist who contributed to the deaths of tens of thousands of loyal Americans, never should have been honored at West Point or any US military venue.https://t.co/mHb8yk66Lx

— Jeff Jacoby (@Jeff_Jacoby) December 27, 2022

(H/T Jeff Carter).

History, and historical figures, are almost always more complicated than the Jeff Jacobys of the world can accept. That is especially true of Lee, and of many Confederates generally.

Jacoby essentially is a pitch-perfect mimic of the Radical Republican position circa 1865. Radical Republicanism was a minority view at the time, even within the North, let alone the nation as a whole. One of the deep mysteries of American history is how Lincoln would have dealt with the Radicals. They were all for vengeance–including prosecuting Lee and Jefferson Davis for treason. Lincoln was not. I have to conclude that Lincoln’s death was a national tragedy not least because of his more humane and healing approach to the defeated South.

The objective of evaluations of historical figures should be to understand their actions and subjective motivations in the context of their time. When you do that with Lee and other Confederates, the charge of treason in particular is not obviously true, as it apparently is to Jacoby et al. Indeed, it is pretty clearly untrue.

Treason is all about duty to one’s nation and government. And the whole reason the Civil War occurred is that there was deep division on what that duty was, to whom it was owed, and what the government and nation owed in return.

Now I am not saying that the Civil War was not ultimately about slavery–it was. The point is that slavery was the issue that made competing views of American government irreconcilable. But those views of government existed independently of slavery, pre-dated the emergence of slavery as the issue in American politics, and had principled adherents on both sides.

Look at the debates over the ratification of the Constitution, and in particular the Federalists vs. Anti-Federalists, who morphed into Federalists and. Republicans. From the very Founding there were deeply conflicting views about government and nation. Accusations of treason cannot be evaluated without an honest acceptance of that fact.

The Anti-Federalist, Republican/Jeffersonian, Southern view was that the United States were sovereign states in a voluntary compact. From that perspective, someone like Lee had a duty to his state, and when his state seceded to whom he owed allegiance was a real dilemma. But it was a principled, and logical, position to conclude that (a) his obligation was first and foremost to his state, and (b) when that state exited the voluntary compact with other states, one was duty bound to follow the state. To do otherwise is what would have been treason.

Of course, if you take the nationalist perspective, what Lee did was treason. But the nationalist perspective became the default in the United States only because those who held it prevailed in the war. The treason charge is therefore essentially winner’s justice which denies the legitimacy of views widely held at the time of secession. Subjectively, Lee did not believe he was committing treason. Quite the reverse.

Although the North fought to assert the nationalist position, it was not universally held even in the North. Many Northern Democrats were very sympathetic to the Southern view of the nature of the United States.

Ironically, even many of those West Point graduates who remained loyal to the United States did not embrace wholeheartedly the nationalist vision, and especially not the Radical Republican version thereof. The Radicals hated the leadership of the Army of the Potomac in particular because they deemed its West Point-trained officer corps as being far too sympathetic with Southern (Democratic, actually) Constitutional and political views: the officers of the Army of the Potomac repaid the hatred with interest.

When Old Army officers parted ways in 1861, it was with sorrow, and generally without political acrimony. A Hancock, say, may have regretted his friend Armistead’s choice, but he did not become a traitor in Hancock’s eyes.

It is also ironic that both sides invoked the Declaration of Independence to justify their choices–just different parts. Lincoln in particular focused on the “all men are created equal” part. The South on the right of any people to dissolve the bonds of government when it had become tyrannical part. Both considered themselves the true heirs to the Founding and its principles, and the other to be, well, a traitor to them.

Meaning that under one of the competing theories of American government, Lee was not a traitor in 1861, and as an adherent to that theory Lee clearly did not believe he was committing treason in 1861. In 1865, that theory had been vanquished, not completely, but pretty effectively.

Treason is a crime, and a crime requires mens rea–intent. Lee lacked such intent.

Similar considerations pertain to Jacoby’s other charges, especially contributing to the deaths of tens of thousands of “loyal Americans”–interesting modifier there, by the way, and again one which assumes the rightness of one view of the nature of the United States: presumably the deaths of around 250,000 (disloyal) Southern soldiers and large numbers of Southern civilians is at best a matter of indifference to Jacoby. To a principled adherent of the contrary view it was the North that was responsible for the death and destruction of the war by denying by force the right to secede from a voluntary compact.

As for the memorialization of Confederates at West Point, that was part and parcel with the post-Reconstruction effort to create a nation in which states were clearly subordinated to the national government. Like all such efforts, it was a bargain. In essence, the bargain was that the North would recognize the valor and sincerity of its Confederate foes, and the South would acknowledge the triumph of the nationalist view of the USA.

In the few years remaining to him after Appomattox, Lee openly accepted the second half of that bargain. It took some years for the deal to be finalized and represented in deeds, whether it be memorials at West Point or the return of Confederate battle flags (under TR) fully 40 years after the war.

Viewed with all that historical context, the triumphalism and certainty of Jacoby and others is more than a little unseemly. Yes, Lee and other Confederates are forever tainted by the fact that slavery was the issue that brought the conflict of Constitutional views to the point of secession and war. But accusations of treason and responsibility for the deaths of so many Americans reflect a failure to accept the historical reality that there was, in fact, profound disagreement on the nature of the United States and its government. Indeed–that’s exactly why the war was fought. Further, the iconoclasts are reneging on a deal that was made to cement their view of the Constitutional issue that permitted the nation to move forward as a more unified country.

As I’ve written before in posts on Confederate memorial controversies, it is better to let the memorials stay and understand why they are at places like West Point in the first place, rather than to remove them. Especially removing them in a spirit of political animus and triumphalism like that epitomized by the likes of Jeff Jacoby.

PS. This episode of Uncancelled History (hosted by Douglas Murray) on Lee is worth watching. I think it is a fairly balanced and properly contextualized presentation of Lee and the choices.

Allen C. Guelzo, author of a recent biography on Lee, leans towards the he’s-a-traitor view.

Today is the 158th anniversary of the Battle of Franklin, one of the most brutal in the entire Civil War–which is saying something. It is hard to overstate the intensity of the fighting between two veteran armies, which resulted in an extended exchange of fire at point-blank range over earthworks lasting well into the night. The only thing comparable is the Bloody Angle at Spottsylvania on 12 May 1864.

Here’s my post from the sesquicentenary of the battle.

25 November 1863 was the high point of my distaff side’s Civil War service.* Three of my ancestral relatives fought on that day at the Battle of Missionary Ridge at Chattanooga, Tennessee.

My grandmother’s grandfather George Immel fought in the 92nd Ohio Volunteer Infantry. This regiment was part of Turchin’s Brigade, Baird’s Division, XIV Army Corps (commanded by John M. Palmer), Army of the Cumberland. It was one of the regiments that made what at the time seemed to be the insane attack up the precipitous ridge, but which resulted in the routing of the Rebels: when seeing the Cumberlanders commencing their scaling of the ridge without orders, Ulysses S. Grant bit down on his omnipresent cigar and muttered that someone would pay if the attack became a bloody shambles, as he expected. But it didn’t end that way. To the amazement of all, the Confederates fled before the charging Unionists.

Immel had enlisted at 18 years of age over the vehement protests of his parents: they could not understand why he would do so because they had emigrated from Hesse precisely to protect their sons from military conscription. He said I am a free American now and enlisted of his own free will. He served through the war, supposedly (according to family lore) serving at one point as General Ivan Basilovich Turchin’s courier, though I have not been able to document that. (Turchin–his name anglicized to John Basil Turchin–is one of the war’s remarkable characters, as was his wife. Since his wife traveled with the general, if George was Turchin’s courier he would have known her.)

The war memories he passed down were of the Battle of Chickamauga, of which he related that his main memory was of the continuous roar of gunfire for two days. Turchin’s brigade distinguished itself in the battle, repelling several Confederate assaults, and at the end of the day mounting a wild charge that opened the way for the rest of the beleaguered XIV Corps to escape.

This is a Don Troiani print of Cleburne’s Confederate division fighting at Chickamauga. In the print, Cleburne is passing out ammunition to shoot at my GGGF, because Cleburne’s division was attacking the 92nd’s position:

The other memory passed down is that of Sherman’s march through the Carolinas, when he picked up lots of booty, including a Confederate sword, but it got too damn heavy to carry so he disposed of it. Meaning that the only thing that he brought back from the war was a case of rheumatism which plagued him the rest of his life.

My grandmother remembered him well. He was a stern Teutonic figure (you can take the boy out of Germany but can’t take the Germany out of the boy, apparently) who whipped his grandchildren every Christmas eve to punish them for their sins of the prior year. He married a woman of English heritage, and according to my grandmother they fought constantly. Her grandmother said: “Well, the Germans and the English always fight.” They did more than fight apparently, because they had 8 children: or maybe that was the result of the fighting, if you know what I mean.

Ironically, the attack that the Army of the Cumberland mounted up Missionary Ridge was initially planned as a limited operation to relieve pressure on Union forces fighting about a mile up the ridge which included my grandfather’s uncles, members of the 46th Ohio Volunteer Infantry. The 46th was in Corse’s Brigade, Ewing’s Division, XV Corps, operating under the command of William T. Sherman (who is, by the way, a distant relative via a shared ancestor who settled in Connecticut in 1635–my GGGM’s name was Lois Sherman, and her father was Eli Sherman).

On the 24th, Grant assigned Sherman the limited objective of establishing a position at the north end of Missionary Ridge and digging in. Due to a misunderstanding of the ground (that was not directly visible from where Grant and Sherman stood when concocting the plan), Sherman’s forces dug in on a hill (Billy Goat Hill) that was separated from the north end of Missionary by a wide swale. The next morning, Grant revised Sherman’s orders and commanded an attack up the ridge. Sherman assigned Corse’s brigade for the task.

The ridge was so narrow that the entire brigade could not deploy in line, but assaulted in column of regiments against . . . the same Patrick Cleburne who had attacked George Immel two months prior. Cleburne beat back Corse’s attack, and the attack of other brigades that Sherman sent against him.

Walking over the terrain you can see that it was a futile effort. But everyone thought that the Army of the Cumberland’s charge would be futile too.

My grandfather never knew his uncles. One, Eli Hatfield (named after his maternal grandfather), was apparently something of a sad sack. He was captured at Shiloh, spent a few months in a Rebel prison camp (Cahaba in Alabama) before being paroled. He complained that prison had ruined his health, and his file contains several doctor’s notes claiming he was unfit for service. This worked for about a year, but eventually his appeals were unavailing and he was ordered to rejoin the regiment shortly before the Battle of Chattanooga. After the battle, he was assigned as a teamster (something that company commanders sometimes did to get rid of screwups), and was fined $20 for losing his accoutrements (cartridge box and belt).

Far less comically, on 27 May 1864 Eli was shot at the Battle of Dallas (Georgia). The bullet struck him in the left arm right below the shoulder joint. Minie balls were large, low velocity projectiles that shattered bone, and hence Eli’s arm was pulverized. The wound was too close to the shoulder for amputation, so all of the bone between the shoulder and the elbow was resected. My great grandmother told my grandfather about his “Uncle Eli with the dead arm from the war,” and how when he would sit down at a table he would grab his (useless) left hand with his right, and then put his left forearm on the table. He lived until around the turn of the century.

(The details about his wound are from a report that the surgeon who operated on him filed, and which is retained in his service record at the National Archives. The letter is a full page in length. I’ve often wondered about how tiresome and dreary a task it would have been to write such letters, especially considering the exhaustion that the surgeon surely suffered in the midst of a long and bloody campaign.)

The other uncle, John Hatfield, returned to Athens County, Ohio after serving the remainder of the war. He fought at Shiloh, Vicksburg, Chattanooga, the Atlanta Campaign (including the Battle of Resaca, The Battle of Dallas, the assault at Kennesaw Mountain, the Battle of Atlanta, the Battle of Ezra Church, and the Battle of Jonesboro), the March to the Sea (including the Battle of Griswoldsville, the largest of the campaign), and the March Through the Carolinas, never receiving a scratch. Unlike his brother’s, his service record is dull: just appearances on the regular muster rolls, with nary an absence noted. He eventually made it to the exalted rank of corporal.

Farming or coal mining in Ohio (his father was a coal miner, as his younger brothers became) apparently didn’t appeal to him, so not long after the war he set off for Kansas. His sister never saw him again.

To round out the story, after seizing the top of the ridge, along with the rest of Baird’s division the 92nd pivoted left, moved north, and drove Cleburne’s division from the ridge where it had held off the 46th. So as darkness fell on an overcast and gloomy 25 November 1863, unbeknownst to them, my ancestors were looking at one another across the field of one of the Union’s most spectacular triumphs of the Civil War.**

*Well, that means that the acme of my entire family’s Civil War service occurred 159 years ago today, because all of my father’s ancestors arrived after the Civil War, the earliest in 1867.

**The Hatfield and Immel families intersected about 62 years after a few of their members were looking at each other through the smoke and haze on Missionary Ridge: my grandparents married on 2 January 1925.

Today is the 160th anniversary of the Battle of Antietam (Sharpsburg to the Confederates). As is widely known, it was the bloodiest single day in American history.

What is remarkable is that although the casualties on 17 September 1862 were the largest in American history, the armies were relatively small. Both had experienced substantial wastage in the Second Manassas Campaign, in the march into Maryland, and in the Battle of South Mountain. By the time the Army of the Potomac and the Army of Northern Virginia reached Sharpsburg on 16 September, the Federals numbered only about 65,000 and the Confederates somewhat south of 40,000 (with 37,500 being a common estimate).

Meaning that relatively small armies absorbed the massive casualties. (By contrast, at Gettysburg Lee’s army was around 75,000 strong, and Meade’s probably 10,000 more).

Confederate casualties are usually given as 10,300, which amounts to a percentage loss of 27.5 percent. When accounting for the fact that about 20,000 Union troops (of the V and VI Corps) were only slightly engaged, the Federal percentage loss is similar. The bulk of the fighting was done by the I, II, IX, and XII Corps, which amounted to around 46,000 men (not much more than Lee, and certainly not a large enough margin to overcome the defender’s usual advantage) that suffered 11864 casualties, or about 26 percent.

Interestingly, though high, these percentages do not match Stones River or Chickamauga, although those were admittedly 2 day battles.

Like many Civil War battles, Antietam is the subject of considerable controversy. Should Lee have invaded in the first place? Once he invaded, and learned that McClellan was hot on his heels, should he have fought the battle where he did, or withdrawn to Virginia? How was McClellan’s generalship? And of course there are many subsidiary controversies.

On the first, it’s a close call. Given what he knew at the beginning of September, there were defensible reasons for Lee to take the offensive to Maryland: exploiting the initiative and the momentum from Manassas, the apparent chaos in Union ranks after the Manassas debacle, the possibility of recruiting in Maryland (which of course came a cropper but Lee could not have known that in advance), giving northern Virginia a chance to recover from Yankee occupation (and depredations), influencing the fall of 1862 congressional election. Against all that was the exhausted state of the Army of Northern Virginia, which had been fighting and marching intensely since the end of May. The march into Maryland only exacerbated that exhaustion and the slow bleeding of his ranks–something that Lee should have been able to predict. He did not, perhaps because a form of what the Japanese called “victory disease” had given him the perception that his men were superhuman.

Once in Maryland, the decision to fight on the banks of Antietam Creek is far less defensible, especially once Lee had learned of McClellan’s unexpected speed in reconstituting shattered Union formations and moving west to confront Lee. Lee courted catastrophe by fighting with his back against the Potomac, with a tired and diminished force. He escaped disaster by only the thinnest of margins.

Which brings us to McClellan, who is largely responsible for Lee’s escape. The Union general is always a lightning rod, and he has intense partisans for and against at Antietam in particular. My view is that his conduct of the campaign up until early on the 17th of September was quite creditable, and somewhat atypical. He did move with relative alacrity: whether the “Lost Order” and its disclosure of Lee’s distributions was the cause of McClellan’s unaccustomed aggressiveness will never be resolved. His assembling a fighting force from the hodgepodge of defeated and demoralized units from two armies (his Army of the Potomac and Pope’s Army of Virginia) is quite remarkable.

His plan on the morning of the 17th was understandable, and somewhat conventional in that (like Lee on 2 July 1863 at Gettysburg) he ordered an en echelon attack, with the left attacking first, then the center, then the right. (Civil War commanders seemed to favor the echelon attack, despite its repeated failure.) In the event, however, this gave Lee the opportunity to shift troops from one sector of his front to those under direct threat: the near destruction of Sedgwick’s division by units that Lee frantically shifted from his center and right is the best example of this. A simultaneous attack would have increased the odds of success.

Moreover, McClellan’s hands-off approach to the battle contrasts poorly with Lee’s decisive hands-on generalship. For most of the day, McClellan was a spectator watching from the Pry House while his units fought essentially three separate and uncoordinated battles on the left, center, and right. In contrast, Lee imposed his will and personally pushed divisions to where they were desperately needed when they were needed.

McClellan’s distant approach is even less defensible given that he was working with subordinates and units with whom he was unfamiliar in their current roles, or whom he had considerable cause not to delegate control to. On the left, Hooker was new in command to the I Corps, which had been under the Army of Virginia and which McClellan had never seen in action. Also on the left, the XII Corps was another ex-Army of Virginia unit under a commander (Mansfield) that had never led any unit, let alone a corps, in the field. In the center, the II Corps was commanded by “Bull” Sumner, of whom it was said bullets would bounce off his hard head. McClellan knew Sumner to be brave, but totally unsuited for autonomy on the battlefield. Burnside was an old friend of McClellan (though they would be estranged after Antietam), but he too had never commanded a large formation in a major battle anywhere, let alone under McClellan’s eye. What’s more, none of these Corps commanders had worked with each other before.

So McClellan had ample reason to realize that the Army of the Potomac and its corps commanders needed close supervision and could not just be turned loose to execute a plan while he watched from afar. Yet watch from afar he did.

Moreover, whereas Lee used every man–and used many men at multiple points on the battlefield–two of McClellan’s major units–V and VI Corps, ironically commanded by McClellan’s “pets” Porter and Franklin–remained largely idle the entire day. Based on numbers compiled by Antietam historian (and battle veteran) Ezra Carmen, only about 30 percent of those units saw action, and even those did not engage in intense fights: those engaged suffered less than 10 percent casualties.

Even though Lee’s center was virtually naked in the afternoon, I am skeptical that a push by Porter’s Corps would have resulted in a disaster for Lee’s army: space/time factors meant that any such attack would have lost force in or shortly beyond Sharpsburg itself even if it had pushed Lee off the Sharpsburg ridge. But “putt[ing] in all your men” (as Lincoln told Hooker when he assumed command of the Army of the Potomac, no doubt with the memory of Antietam in mind) would have greatly increased McClellan’s odds of achieving a more decisive victory than he did–especially if he had put them in all at once.

By the time the sun set on America’s bloodiest day, the outcome on the field was a stalemate. But it was arguably the most decisive and important drawn battle in history. For Lee was forced to withdraw across the Potomac, and that gave Lincoln enough of a claim to victory to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, which changed not just the trajectory of the Civil War, but of American history.

I’ve written before that I have visited Antietam dozens of times, and that it is my favorite battlefield. I can’t be there today except in memory. If you have been there, or even if you haven’t, it is worth spending a moment to remember the carnage in the pastoral countryside of western Maryland, and the weighty history birthed by the death of so many.

To round out the picture of Logan’s antagonism to service academies, it is worth noting that although he was a pre-War Democrat from a part of Illinois (“Little Egypt,” in the far south of the state) that was widely deemed to be sympathetic to the South, post-War Logan was an ardent pro-Reconstruction Republican and one of the most widely renowned practitioners of “bloody shirt” politics. He hated the South with a passion, and this also contributed to his West Point/Annapolis animus.

Logan’s book The Volunteer Soldier in America has a very strong populist, republican (small “r”) tone. Many of his arguments against the academies echo those of Jeffersonians and Jacksonians before him, perhaps not surprisingly given Logan’s upbringing in a staunch Jacksonian area of the country. Logan believed the academies to be anti-republican, aristocratic, and oligarchic in nature, and believed their graduates to be anti-republican and aristocratic in turn. Thus, they were a threat to self-government, whereas a military firmly rooted in the people, through a militia system, would not be.

Logan linked this aristocratic predilection to the South, which he viewed as being aristocratic and anti-republican due to slavery. He believed slavery was incompatible with popular rule, and inevitably led to the dominance of an aristocratic class. He argued that if secession had succeeded, the South would have become a monarchy, not a republic.

This was in turn linked to his view of the pernicious effects of the political nature of academy appointments: anti-republican elements in the country (especially in the South) corrupted the academies, and hence the military, with their appointment of like minded cadets and midshipmen.

Logan also expressed what could be called an early version of capture theory. He argued that the military establishment had captured the government, and as a result was able to extract lavish benefits from it. No doubt this astounded those serving in the 1870s-1880s military, who commonly complained of low pay, glacial promotion, and inadequate numbers.

So I think it’s fair to say that Logan’s anti-academy, anti-professional military views were a combination of bitter personal experience and political populism. In many ways, he was a 19th century expositor of a debate that had raged in the United States since before the founding: did the US need a professional military?; was a professional military a threat to self-government?

Bloody shirt politics became less and less popular after the Hayes-Tilden election, and the end of Reconstruction in 1877. Within a decade Logan was increasingly unpopular, as this print from 1885 shows:

That’s Logan getting booed off the stage. Note the blood-stained shirt hanging on his back.

As an aside, when skimming through Logan’s book I was reminded of the works of a contemporary, and another Civil War veteran, Theodore Ayrault Dodge. Dodge wrote many books on military history, including biographies of Gustavus Adolphus, Hannibal, Alexander, Napoleon, Frederick, and Caesar. In his book on Caesar, he repeatedly lauded the citizen-based Roman armies of the Republic, and compared Caesar’s professional army to them in very unfavorable terms.

Dodge was also a volunteer soldier, losing a leg at Gettysburg–ironically while in O. O. Howards XI Corps. He obviously shared Logan’s beliefs regarding the correct military for a republic, and the superiority of a popular, volunteer army over a professional one.

You can see echoes of these views in modern American politics, especially in this age of resurgent populism–and the reaction against it.

Yesterday I posted a thread on Twitter on the anniversary of one of the most fascinating battles of the Civil War, Hood’s Second Sortie AKA the Battle of Atlanta.

Hood's Second Sortie–The Battle of Atlanta–took place on 22 July 1864. The Union Army of the Tennessee turned in one of the most remarkable performances of the Civil War in fighting off the Confederate assault. pic.twitter.com/ROGcQEVjld

— streetwiseprof (@streetwiseprof) July 22, 2022

As say in the thread, and as I wrote about here in 2010, the performance of the Union Army of the Tennessee was extraordinary. It was assailed from front, flank, and rear, yet gamely hung on and repelled everything thrown at it. In my opinion, in the summer of 1864 the Army of the Tennessee was the finest fighting force of its size in the world. It was battle tried but not battle wearied. It had a core of veterans who had experienced nothing but victory, and had not suffered the debilitating casualties (especially among officers) that had made the Army of the Potomac and even the Army of Northern Virginia shadows of their 1862-1863 selves.

The last tweet in my thread was about General John “Black Jack” Logan, commander of the Army of the Tennessee’s XV Corps, who rallied the shattered center of his line and drove the Confederates back to their lines in Atlanta. (The image in the first tweet in the thread is Don Troiani’s depiction of the culmination of the counterattack, with the 66th Illinois (“Birge’s Sharpshooters”) recapturing the 20 pounder Parrot rifles of DeGress’ Battery H, 1st Illinois Light Artillery.)

James McPherson, the commander of the Army of the Tennessee, was killed during the fighting on 22 July. Logan was named as his replacement–but this was temporary. W. T. Sherman (my Twitter avi :P) distrusted Logan because he was a politician, not a West Pointer. So he named Oliver O. Howard (known to some cynics as “Uh-oh Howard”) as McPherson’s permanent replacement.

Logan was understandably bitter. He had fought with distinction with the Army of the Tennessee or its antecedents from Belmont in November, 1861 through Shiloh, the Vicksburg Campaign (playing a vital role at Champion Hill and the Siege), and the entire Atlanta Campaign. Howard, on the other hand, was a stranger, having come from the Eastern Theater only in October, 1863, and then serving in the Army of the Cumberland. Moreover, he had accumulated a record of failure in the East, seeing his XI Corps routed at Chancellorsville and Gettysburg.

But if they had had USMA class rings back then, Howard could have knocked one, and consequently he got the nod over the man who was likely the most accomplished political general of the war.

In the years after the war, Logan resumed his political career, and was a prominent Senator from Illinois and was the VP candidate on the (failed) Republican ticket in 1884.

During his Senate career, Logan was an outspoken critic of West Point (and the Naval Academy as well). As the leader of volunteers during the Civil War, and as a civilian soldier himself, he was a fervent supporter of Union veterans (being the second commander of the GAR and the moving force behind Memorial Day) and the ideal of the citizen soldier. He believed passionately that an army and navy of–and led by–motivated, patriotic, and talented civilians was far superior to one led by careerists churned out of the service academies.

Near the end of his life, he summarized–if that’s the right word to apply to a 682 page book–his case against the professional military, and professional military education, in his The Volunteer Soldier of America. He made many criticisms of the service academies, but the gravamen of his criticism was that the appointment system (in which every aspiring cadet or midshipman had to secure an appointment from a member of Congress-as is true to this day) meant that the officer corps was selected on the basis of political considerations, rather than merit or military talent. As a result, the military was dominated by unimaginative, unimpressive people. You know, like O. O. Howard. He was also deeply offended by preferences shown to regular officers in terms of pay and retirement benefits.

When you think about it, these are rather remarkable criticisms for a career politician to make. But Logan was extremely serious about them. And his criticisms were thoughtful ones, and backed with not a little evidence. But the real foundation of Logan’s brief was his experience in the Civil War leading volunteers (and arguably the most exceptional group of volunteers 1861-1865) while under the command of West Pointers. He was obviously highly unimpressed.

And understandably outraged at the slight of being supplanted by a plodding professional after almost three years of exceptional service, most notably on 22 July, 1864.

Although deprived of the command of the Army of the Tennessee for the March to the Sea and the Carolinas Campaign, Sherman did give Logan the honor of leading the army during its triumphal procession during the Grand Review in Washington in May, 1865. There, the throng of spectators marveled at Logan’s westerners, and remarked at their height, hardy appearance, and long loping strides (in contrast to the crisp easterners of the Army of the Potomac who had marched the day before).

Logan is third from the right, on the light horse.

Here is the New York Times account:

Immediately following was Maj.-Gen. JOHN A. LOGAN, the successor of Gen. HOWARD, in the command of the Army of the Tennessee, mounted on a superbly dapple grey stallion, which careered and plunged just enough to show the General’s fine horsemanship. LOGAN, with his firm set features, deep black moustache, and military bearing was marked for the most vociferous applause from the very moment his prancing steed appeared on the avenue.

Soon comes the head of the Fifteenth Corps, led by the accomplished HAZEN, the hero of Fort McAllister, and now all eyes turn upon the bronzed veterans while move by with steady, sturdy step. The magnificent physique of the men at once elicits the admiration of all; tall, broad-shouldered, stalwart men, the peasantry of the West — the best material in the whole world for armies. The brigades move by with elastic, springing step, in excellent order, and fully equal to the marching of yesterday, save that the intervals between brigades and divisions were longer, though the regiments themselves were kept well closed up. At the head of each brigade was a battalion of black pioneers, the simon pure contraband, in the garments he wore on the plantation, with shovel and axe on the shoulder, marching with even front, sturdy step and lofty air. The badge of the Fifteenth Corps (for the Western armies have also adopted this insignia) is a cartridge-box, half encircled by the words, “forty rounds.” It is just forty rounds more than is now needed. 

(Two of my ancestors, one in the XV Corps, the other in the XIV Corps, participated in the Review.)

As one of its foes–Joseph E. Johnston–said,  “I made up my mind that there had been no such army since the days of Julius Caesar.“ And every man, and virtually all of the officers, was a volunteer. John Logan thought that it was men such as those, not drones trained on The Plain at West Point, to whom America should trust its defense.

PS. I wrote this post in response to a suggestion from my friend Ty Kelly, who said I should edit Logan’s Wikipedia page to fill out the story in my last tweet. I thought the subject deserved a fuller treatment, hence the post.

Seeing as Friday-Sunday were the 159th anniversary of the three days of the Battle of Gettysburg, I decided to watch the eponymous movie again. It’s long, so I broke up the watching in parts to match the three days, saving the Pickett-Pettigrew-Trimble charge climax for yesterday, 3 July.

I still rate the film as one of the best Civil War movies. Now admittedly, that’s a low bar. There aren’t a lot of great ones. Unlike WWII, Korea or Vietnam movies which can focus on a squad or other small group of men and build on the interpersonal dynamics of men under mortal threat, in the Civil War pretty much the smallest group was the company, which in turn was usually part of a regiment that operated as a unit. That doesn’t lend itself to the same cinematic treatment as say Sands of Iwo Jima or Band of Brothers or Saving Private Ryan. Even WWII movies that focus on big battles, like The Longest Day or A Bridge Too Far, tell the story through the actions of small groups of men.

This is why some of the better Civil War movies involve guerrilla warfare, which involves smaller groups, and which can also utilize tropes from Westerns: Confederate guerrilla bands in Missouri, for example, were the proto-outlaw gangs of the post-Civil War West.

So Gettysburg spends little time focused on the enlisted men: the one main enlisted character, Buster Kilrain, is an everyman foil to the intellectual Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain. Instead, most of the film’s main characters are generals–Buford, and especially Lee and Longstreet, with Hancock, Hood, Trimble and Stuart also getting attention. The private soldiers are parts of masses of men, sweeping forward across open fields or firing volleys from behind stone walls, not individuals.

Like the book on which it is based, The Killer Angels, the movie does a pretty good job of depicting Lee’s decision making, and the tension with Longstreet. It doesn’t take a Jubal Early Longstreet is the Devil approach, nor does it condemn Lee for fighting, and fighting the way he did on those three days. Yes, I would say that a viewer will lean towards sympathizing with Longstreet and questioning Lee’s judgment, but there is considerable basis in the historical record for that interpretation so I don’t take the depiction as unfair to Lee. And it gives Lee plenty of opportunity to explain himself and his objections to Longstreet’s contrary views. Both sides are presented fairly, and it’s really up to you to decide.

The main thing that struck me upon rewatching in 2022 is that the movie could not have been made today. Not a prayer in hell. And that does not speak well of us.

For one thing, the focus is on the Confederacy. John Buford is lionized in the first 45 minutes or so, and Chamberlain of course gets a lot of play, but the emphasis is clearly on the Confederate command and Lee’s decision making: Meade barely makes a cameo. The tragic figures are mainly Confederates, especially Lewis Armistead and Richard B. Garnett. During the remarkable Pickett’s charge scene, the Confederate advance is clearly the dramatic focus.

Nowadays, of course, the Confederacy and Confederates are synonymous with evil. Lee has been knocked off his pedestal–literally. In fact he has literally been knocked off of several pedestals in Richmond and Charlottesville and elsewhere. Monuments to Confederate enlisted men are under threat all over the South. The thought of treating Confederates at all sympathetically is an anathema.

The film and Killer Angels let the characters from both sides speak about their reasons for fighting. Confederate brigadier James L. Kemper expresses the Southern justification for secession to visiting Englishman Arthur James Lyon Fremantle, who has considerable sympathy for it. No doubt you will disagree with Kemper, but the movie presents the Southern view honestly, thereby allowing you to judge it on its merits without having to deal with an ideologically twisted, tendentious presentation of it: the only hint of directorial/authorial judgment is George Pickett’s clownish summary of the Southern cause. Similarly, when Thomas Chamberlain, Lawrence’s brother, converses with a captured private, the Southerner disclaims any racial motivation for his taking up arms, and Chamberlain takes him at his word: no way that would be allowed today.

Even a Northern view, expressed by Kilrain, would be verbotten 29 years after the film was released. Kilrain expresses what at the time was a conventional view among conservatives, and which many old school liberals held as well:

Chamberlain: What do you think of Negroes?

Kilrain: Well, if you mean the race… I don’t really know. This is not a thing to be ashamed of. The thing is, you cannot judge a race. Any man who judges by the group is a pea-wit. You take men one at a time. To me, there was never any difference.

In this identitarian age, this is wrongthink that if expressed, puts one at risk of cancelation, loss of job, loss of friends, and perhaps even social death.

For in 2022 (Woke Year 7, at least), in contrast to 1993 (Clinton Year 1), judging by the group is a moral imperative. Judging individuals “one at a time” on their merits, independent of their racial/gender group is considered a sure sign of cis patriarchal white supremacism, and hence evil.

So watching the movie in 2022 made me sad. Not because watching Lewis Armistead’s torment at raising his hand against his best friend and getting shot down by his best friend’s men is sad, but because in 2022 America you are not allowed to find that sad and tragic and human, because Confederacy, and you are prohibited from sympathizing with Armistead as a man irrespective of the nature of the cause for which he perished. Because today a movie that reflects Lincoln’s Second Inaugural (“With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right”–which implicitly acknowledges that we might be wrong), as Gettysburg does, is currently outside the bounds of accepted civil discourse. Now charity is a fugitive, and malice is regnant.

And that is precisely why a second Civil War is not inconceivable today. Which is the saddest thing of all.