In 1960, I became immersed in the Civil War as the U.S. was approaching the 100th anniversary of its beginning. I was 8 years old, living on Long Island, and had already read Bruce Catton’s “A Stillness at Appomattox,” written in 1952. I read eight more of his books over the years, most of them more than once.
In those early years, as a young white boy, the Civil War was interesting and exciting to me, especially because of the brilliance of Bruce Catton, whose extensive research brought the war to life. His descriptions of people and events were very real to me. I could feel the suffering of the wounded Union soldiers who were making the torturous 17-mile journey from the Wilderness to Fredericksburg in rickety wooden ambulances.
I continued to read Catton and others after I moved to Maryland for college in 1970, and in the years to come, I traveled to many Civil War battlefields in Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Georgia. I learned a lot about the Civil War – what happened, where it happened, and how many casualties there were. I learned who won and who lost each battle.
But I never really considered why the war was fought? Why did 622,000 Union and Confederate soldiers have to die? Why did millions more have to suffer from war wounds for the rest of their lives?
As the country grapples with deep divisions along race and class, and pundits explore whether we’re headed for a second Civil War, as depicted in Alex Garland’s new dystopian film, I’ve been thinking about these questions and clarifying my understanding of the Civil War in today’s context.
I put myself in the shoes of the families who grieved the loss of their fathers, brothers and sons – North and South. And wondered, for what? For cheap labor? Why don’t we today get angry at the slander of the Confederate cause?
Simply put, the war was fought to keep enslaved black people in bondage so that southern white plantation owners could profit from their labor. Those in power in the South were willing to sacrifice a generation of their own youth to keep slavery. They felt their way of life threatened and saw their power diminished in the halls of Congress. This led them to secession and war.
The practice of slavery in the United States was under threat because enough people in the North and West recognized that it was wrong to enslave human beings for profit. The abolitionist movement officially began in 1830, but a gradual awakening among white people had begun several years earlier. In colonial times, anti-slavery societies formed by Quakers sought to abolish this heinous practice.
What was promoted and sold to kids like me in the early 1960s was a whitewashed version of the dark, ugly truth of the American Civil War. This war was not between two opposing forces that both fought for a great purpose – only one side fought for a great purpose. Despite all the lies of the last 160 years, one side fought to enslave human beings.
An organized program of misinformation began soon after Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Court House. Southern historians wrote that the war had been simply a heroic defense of the Southern way of life against the overwhelming forces of the North. Enslaved people were basically happy, and the war was not about slavery. But documents such as the Confederate Constitution and the declarations of secession in several Southern states told a different story. In these documents, Confederate leaders made it abundantly clear that they fought to preserve slavery.
All of their lies were further compounded by the emergence of a very powerful group of women in 1894 – the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC). They were largely responsible for the proliferation of statues throughout the South and even in the North that honored the “heroes” of the Confederacy. Many of these statues were erected during the Jim Crow era to reinforce white supremacy. The UDC also tried to teach these lies to the next generation by regulating the content of school textbooks in the South that whitewashed the horrors of slavery and the causes of the war.
Furthermore, streets, schools, parks, even U.S. military bases were named after Confederate generals in order to normalize their treasonous deeds. How could that be? They were all traitors — yes, even Robert E. Lee. In recent years, many of these statues have been removed as sanity and reason slowly prevail. But there are still places like Shenandoah County, Virginia, where the school board voted this month to reinstate Confederate names that had been removed from schools.
I never understood why there was no voice of reason in the South that wanted to know why their ancestors allowed these wealthy planters and politicians to send their sons to war. Thousands of people sacrificed their children so that rich people could maintain the wealth they built on the backs of enslaved people and in collusion with the white supremacist power structure. That’s what the Civil War was really about.
Stephen Milmoe ([email protected]) is a retired teacher.
