Remembering History

Why Gettysburg Matters

Two years ago, on the 150th anniversary of Fort Sumpter, I wrote a piece called Forgetting History, in which I suggested that the remembrance of history isn't all it's cracked up to be. In places like Northern Ireland, the Balkans, and the Middle East, long memories can lead to intractable, centuries-long problems.

I wasn't entirely serious, of course. I read far too many history books to mean what I said. But last year I visited the Gettysburg Battlefield for the first time, and this week, on the 150th anniversary of the battle I'm now fully prepared to recant that earlier piece. Gettysburg is the kind of place that makes me wish the English language could reclaim the original meaning of the word awesome - to inspire awe - and reminds us why remembering history is so important.  

For those who are a little hazy on what happened at Gettysburg, it is the largest battle fought in North America, the inspiration for the Gettysburg Address, and the battle that turned the tide of the Civil War.* After a string of successes by Robert E. Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia, the Union scored a decisive victory in Southeastern Pennsylvania. It would take two more years and much more bloodshed, but the cause of the Confederacy was lost at Gettysburg.

* I've yet to read Allen Guelzo's new book, "Gettysburg: The Last Invasion", but it's been highly recommended by people I trust.  For a miniature account of Gettysburg, here's Guelzo writing in National Review this week.  

How bloody was the battle? Consider this: in three days, on a field measuring roughly 5 miles by 2 miles, nearly 8,000 men were killed. To put this in perspective, in the past decade, in Iraq and Afghanistan combined, approximately 6,600 American soldiers were killed in action.

Rising Angels

The reputations of historical figures are like stocks - over long periods of time they rise and fall, sometimes in a steady pattern and sometimes sharply. Joshua Chamberlain, one of the heroes of Gettysburg, has seen a particularly interesting pattern.

On Day 2 of Gettysburg, the 20th Maine under the command of Colonel Chamberlain held the far left of the Union line, on a hill called Little Round Top. They held off numerous attacks by the 15th Alabama regiment, until they ran out of ammunition. As the 15th came up the hill one more time, Chamberlain ordered his men to fix bayonets, and with empty guns they charged down the hill, scattering the Alabamans. (For Hollywood's excellent depiction of this moment, click here.)

Chamberlain had many laurels heaped upon him during his lifetime.  He won the Medal of Honor for his actions on Little Round Top.  He was promoted to General.  He was given the great honor of commanding the Union troops during the surrender ceremony at Appomattox.  And he served four terms as the Governor of Maine.

But it's fair to say that a century after the guns fell silent, his name was little-known to most Americans, except for Civil War scholars and buffs.  Then, in 1974 Michael Shaara wrote The Killer Angels, and placed Chamberlain at the center of his best-selling Pulitzer-Prize winning novel.  In 1990, PBS broadcast Ken Burns' documentary The Civil War, and Burns followed Shaara's interpretation.  Finally, in 1993 Hollywood filmed The Killer Angels (calling it Gettysburg), and Joshua Chamberlain was a star again.

*  by 'star', I don't mean he was nearly as popular or famous as, say, the 3rd Kardashian sister or whoever the Bachelorette is dating these days.  But he's nerd-famous, anyway.  

Thanks to Shaara's book, Burns' documentary, and Jeff Daniels' performance, crowds flocked to Gettysburg, to walk the hallowed ground of Devil's Den, the Peach Orchard, and Culp's Hill.  But mostly, they wanted to see Little Round Top, where Joshua Chamberlain and the 20th Maine made their stand.

Which, over time, began to annoy the tour guides of Gettysburg.  They grew frustrated at visitors who were ignorant or uninterested in the rest of the battlefield.  They felt about Joshua Chamberlain the way I do about Derek Jeter - great, yes, but not worthy of all the damn attention he gets*.

*  We got one of those tour guides last year.  I made the mistake of mentioning Killer Angels, and he decided I was one of those Shaara worshippers who needed to be set straight.  In fact, in our tour he ostentatiously skipped over the section of Little Round Top held by the 20th Maine!

I understand where they're coming from.  These guides have studied the battle inside and out - they want you to know about the Railroad Cut and Cemetery Hill and the men who fought bravely and died.  

But this is where remembering history comes into play.  Gettyburg was a large, complex battle - 160,000 soldiers fought for 3 days over 10 square miles.  And the Civil War was an epic war - there were over a million casualties over 4 years in a nation with a population of 30 million.  That's the equivalent of 10 million casualties.

Michael Shaara helped us to remember Joshua Chamberlain - and focusing on a citizen soldier who fought for his country because he believed in what the United States was and could be - helps us understand who we are today, and what we could become tomorrow.

On Spielberg's LINCOLN - Part 2

[Spoiler Alert: In this post I reveal key plot points of the movie Lincoln, such as the defeat of the Confederacy, the end of slavery, and the assassination of the title charac - oops, sorry!]

As I said in Part 1, I'm less interested in doing a film review of Lincoln than I am in sharing some of my thoughts about the many choices that director Steven Spielberg and screenwriter Tony Kushner had to make.  Here are some thoughts on those choices.

Why the 13th Amendment?
Ask any student of Lincoln to nominate a storyline for a Lincoln film, I think you'd get a list like this:

• The period between the Battle of Chancellorsville (Lee's masterpiece and the high tide of the Confederacy) and the twin victories at Gettysburg and Vickburg three months later turning the tide.  The movie would end with the Gettysburg Address.

• His handling of generals from First Bull Run through his eventual appointment of Ulysses Grant.  The movie would end with the surrender at Appomattox.

• The summer of 1864, as carnage engulfed the Union army and Lincoln's cause seemed lost.  The climax would be the fall of Atlanta and Lincoln's reelection.  The movie would end with Lincoln's Second Inaugural.

• April 1865 - using Jay Winik's excellent book as a template.  The surrender at Appomattox, the passage of the 13th Amendment, and the assassination of Lincoln would be the 3 key events.

But Spielberg and Kushner chose to put the 13th Amendment in the foreground.  It's an unexpected and brilliant choice.  Remember how, in grade school, you were taught that slavery was not the cause of the Civil War, even though at 12 years old it sort of seemed obvious that it was?  Well, historiography has very much moved slavery to the front and center of Civil War studies, and a film about Lincoln that aspires to greatness must have slavery front and center.

Just as important, the trend in Lincoln studies the past couple decades has been to focus on his consummate political skill.  Honest Abe didn't just tell funny stories and give eloquent speeches - he was a shrewd and wily backroom politician, who perfectly balanced the factions of his own party throughout the war.  

The movie Lincoln zeroes in perfectly on those two twin pillars of Lincoln and Civil War history.  But still...if you wanted to make a movie about the politics of ending slavery, you could have made this movie:

• From the summer of 1862, when Lincoln first considers the Emancipation Proclamation through the Battle of Antietam in September, the victory that gives him the political cover to issue it.  The movie would end with the official release of the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863.*  

By making the film they did, they surprised this student of Lincoln, and illuminated a corner of history I didn't know particularly well.  More importantly, they found the perfect canvas to place the end of slavery as the only thing that mattered in the Civil War, and to emphasize the role Lincoln's political genius played in ending it. 

*  If you're interested in the politics of emancipation, try William Safire's underrated novel, Freedom

The Assassination Scene
As I recounted in a post a couple years ago, Ken Burns once said he'd never been to Ford's Theater, the site of Lincoln's assassination.  He couldn't bear to go there.  The only explanation I can give for this scene is that Spielberg couldn't bear to go there*.

*  I won't describe the scene if you haven't seen it, but let's just say Spielberg films around the moment without showing it.

Or perhaps, he was striking some sort of blow at John Wilkes Booth by not memorializing his infamous act.  Booth was America's first assassin (and first idiot actor activist), and believed he would be made world-famous by his dramatic act.  Spielberg kept him offscreen, the way baseball broadcasts refuse to show the imbeciles running onto the field to disrupt play.

But still...film the damn scene!  Let us, the moviegoer, experience the shock and horror.  Insult Booth by emphasizing him tripping in his dramatic moment - make him more of a cowardly klutz than a dashing avenger.

What a lost opportunity.

The Surrender at Appomattox
The surrender of the Confederacy was central to the passage of the 13th Amendment*.  But clearly, Spielberg didn't have the time to show this famous moment in all of its solemn glory**.  Nor did he want to skip it altogether.

*  although, perhaps not as central as the movie presents it.  Spielberg and Kushner take some liberties here, though as this post at Disunion shows, the story they tell is plausible 

I'm not sure what they could have done differently here, and perhaps showing Lee mounting his horse outside the Appomattox Court House is the best they could have done.  Showing Lee as clearly defeated and not as some chivalrous knight laying down his sword, has value too.

But I didn't find the scene quite believable.  Perhaps the problem is that the actor chosen to play Grant looks more like Sherman!

**  The modest commercial success of Lincoln will perhaps inspire other historical recreations of the Civil War.  They could do much worse than a film based on Bruce Catton's A Stillness at Appomattox

Lincoln slaps his son, Robert
This is the moment that has historians most perplexed.  There is no historical record of it.  There is no evidence he slapped his son.  If he did slap his son, it doesn't have very much to do with the passage of the 13th Amendment.  Unnecessary.


Where's God?
We live in a secular age - and Hollywood is a devoutly secular place.  But it is simply impossible to deny the significance of Christianity in driving the abolitionist movement.  (And for that matter, the 20th century civil rights movement.  It's worth remembering that its leader was Reverend Martin Luther King, and he didn't give speeches, he preached sermons.)  The typical radical Republican, as personified by Tommy Lee Jones in the movie, was a devout, even fanatical Christian.

But this film does deny, or at least ignore, the significance.  And in the only mention of religion in the movie, it makes a startling change.  Late in the movie, Abraham and Mary are in a carriage, and Lincoln says that after his Presidency he'd like to visit Jerusalem, the "city of Solomon and David".  But in Mary Todd Lincoln's own account of the story, Lincoln said he wanted to "walk in the footsteps of the Savior".

Lincoln himself, as near as we can tell, was ambivalent about religion, and certainly a latecomer to a belief in abolition.  But true abolitionists in Lincoln's cabinet, like Salmon Chase and to a lesser extent William Seward, were devout Christians, and it drove their belief in the righteousness of abolition.

It seems Spielberg and Kushner intentionally excised Christianity from the film.  And, to paraphrase Seinfeld, this doesn't offend me as a Catholic, it offends me as an historian.

###

I really didn't intend to write such a nit-picking post.  I loved this movie, I really did.  Every moment Daniel Day-Lewis was on screen I was utterly captivated - I truly believed I was watching Abraham Lincoln.

Perhaps, my admiration for the film and gratitude to Steven Spielberg for making it mean my standards are impossibly high.  And I found myself wondering afterwards more about the lost opportunities than the great moments.

But still...the 13th Amendment was the right choice.  Appomattox couldn't have been done differently.  The slap only took a second.

I just wish they'd taken us to Ford's Theater.

On Spielberg's LINCOLN - Part 1

A Sort of Review

I have a long history of being disappointed by history movies.

My biggest disappointment was The Patriot.  Hollywood has given us many wonderful WWII movies and a few Civil War classics.  We've had great movies about WWI and even one damn good flick about The French and Indian War (starring this guy named Daniel Day-Lewis).

But for reasons I can't fathom a century of film making hasn't given us a single great movie about the Revolutionary War.  Indeed, Hollywood hasn't even tried very hard - there have been fewer movies about the American Revolution since 1900 than there have been vampire movies since 2000.  (I'm not kidding; look it up.)

So years ago, when I heard the screenwriter of Saving Private Ryan was hooking up with Braveheart himself to do a flick based on Revolutionary hero Francis Merion, my hopes soared.  Alas, while the film has its moments (the Yorktown scene is worth ten minutes of your time) its absurd demonization of British troops and the overacting of its star ruined it.

For several years now, I've been engaged in a similar experience of cinema anticipation.  When I first heard Steven Spielberg was planning a film about Abraham Lincoln, an historical obsession of mine, Liam Neeson was rumored to play the 16th President.  I couldn't quite see the rugged Irishman in the role but figured, hey, this Spielberg fellow might be better at this sort of thing than I am.

I lost track of the project until that magical day when the first press photo for the movie was released. My  reaction upon seeing that picture was - Whoa.

Another inhabitant of the Emerald Isle had the part, and the likeness was staggering.  At this point, I went into history geek fanboy overdrive.  When Tony Kushner was announced as screenwriter I wrinkled my brow - not much in his oeuvre suggested him as an obvious choice.   But who cares - look at that picture!

I tracked the casting with the sort of attention one usually reserves for their financial portfolio.  David Straitharn as Secretary of State William Seward?  Hmm, I can see that.  Kelly Leak from the Bad News Bears as Alexander Stevens?  Inspired.  The Sheriff from My Cousin Vinny as Edwin Stanton?!*

*  watching the film, I was surprised at how many actors from my favorite television shows appeared: Arnold Rothstein from Boardwalk Empire, Boyd Crowder from Justified, Sol Star from Deadwood

And then finally, last night, joined by the Rock Star, I saw the film.  I'm no movie critic, and you don't need another amateur telling you Day-Lewis is brilliant (he is) or that the period details are perfect (they are) or that the movie's surprisingly funny (it is).

But I'm a bit of a Lincoln buff, and am particularly interested in the ways he's depicted in fictional settings - and all history movies are essentially historical fiction.   I found myself keenly interested in the many choices the filmmakers had to make - what to show, what to skip, what to invent - and found myself alternately applauding, criticizing, and puzzling over them.

I'll save that for Part 2.  But a word before I go there:

When I'm disappointed by a history flick, it's not because I'm a stickler for the facts.  My favorite history film is Edward Zwick's Glory, which is riddled with errors, inventions, and omissions.  Historian James McPherson in a brilliant review in The New Republic points all of them out, but concludes that Glory "is the most powerful movie about that war ever made."  McPherson argues that a movie is historical fiction and has a power to present the Truth accurately, even if it must change some facts to get there.

The big invention is presenting the 54th Massachusetts as consisting of mostly former slaves while in fact it was mostly former freedman.  The filmmakers wanted to tell the larger story of black soldiers - who were mostly former slaves - fighting in the Civil War, and changed some facts about the 54th to do that.

So, Part 2 won't be a collection of gotchas or a chance to show off my Lincoln knowledge (ok, it might be a little of that).  More of an honest wondering over the difficult choices involved in packing four of history's most momentous months into a 2 hour movie.  

Go to Part 2

There Goes Robert E. Lee

An Obscure Lyric Debate, Resolved

So I went to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland recently.

There is much to quibble with about the Hall. The layout of the galleries is uninspired and doesn’t live up to the promise of I.M. Pei’s architecture. Favorite acts of mine (and I assume anyone who visits) are short-changed or ignored (Van Morrison, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Tom Petty). And unless you’re a guitar buff, once you’ve seen the first few dozen guitars, they all begin to look alike.

But there is some incredibly cool stuff. John Lennon’s Sgt. Pepper outfit, and his handwritten lyrics for “In My Life”. A letter from Pete Townsend circa 1975, talking about this new kid Eddie Van Halen (“He plays very fast, and what a grin. With a grin like that you don’t need taste”). And Mick Jagger’s tongue-in-cheek permission to Jann Wenner, allowing him to name his new magazine Rolling Stone, in return for favorable press coverage in the years to come.

Bottom line: if you’re in Cleveland, love rock & roll, and have appropriately low expectations, you’ll enjoy it.

But my purpose here is not to do a museum review. My purpose is to share with you the resolution of an incredibly arcane, but meaningful to me, lyric debate. A few years back, I wrote a blog post about how rarely and poorly rock & roll lyrics invoke history, and made a friendly swipe at The Band.

Specifically, I wrote:

Think of "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" by the Band. A great song (especially the live version) but historically inaccurate:

"Back with my wife in Tennessee,
When one day she called to me,
'Virgil, quick, come and see, there goes Robert E. Lee.'"

I thought, those silly Canadians, Robert E. Lee wasn’t in Tennessee during the Civil War.

Several readers wrote in to correct me, and I carried on a correspondence with one of them afterwards. Virgil isn’t claiming to see Robert E. Lee, they informed me, but the Robert E. Lee, a steamship that worked the Mississippi immediately after the war.

Internet research on the subject was inconclusive, with differing accounts. A close listen to the song is equally inconclusively, as Levon Helm appears to sing “there goes a Robert E. Lee”. That vowel between goes and Robert could be singer’s shorthand for the, or just a bridge sound.

Well, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio, has the answer. Robbie Robertson’s handwritten lyrics are there, and it quite plainly says:

There goes Robert E. Lee

Robbie Robertson, who wrote the song, beautifully evokes the closing days of the Civil War. And he deserves points for surely being the only rock and roller to mention Union cavalry General George Stoneman. But he wasn't talking about a boat.

His character, Virgil Caine, claimed to see Robert E. Lee, the General himself, in the state of Tennessee. And that is simply not possible.

* Hey, I did warn you this post was about an obscure dispute, didn’t I? I was with a colleague from work when I saw the lyrics, and excitedly explained the implications to him. He was smiling at me like I was a lunatic, and trying to convey to the other museum-goers he wasn't with me...

Forgetting History

Dunker Church, Battle of Antietam, 1862

150 years ago this week, General P.G.T. Beauregard of the newly formed Confederate States of America gave orders to fire on Fort Sumpter, starting the Civil War.

I don’t consider myself a Civil War ‘buff’, but I am a student of the war. What’s the difference between a buff and a student? A student knows that the 20th Maine under the command of Colonel Joshua Chamberlain held the left flank on Little Round Top at Gettysburg.  A buff knows what weapons they carried, how many rounds they shot, what Confederate regiment they faced, and what Union regiment was on their right.

I’d add that buffs are interested mostly in the military aspects of the war. I am keenly interested in the military history of the war, particularly the major battles and commanders, but am as keenly interested in the political history.

From the debates over slavery in the Constitutional Convention through the vicious Congressional battles in the early 19th century; from the Mexican War through the Abolitionist movement; from the rise of Lincoln to the politics of Emancipation – it is the richest, most complex political story in American history. It is the story that gave birth to who we are today – the better and the darker angels of our nature - as much as the Declaration of Independence and the waves of immigration that followed the Civil War.

But I had a contrary thought this anniversary season. Maybe the remembrance of history isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

A Long Memory
Americans are often, and justly, criticized for our lack of historical knowledge. One recent survey showed that more Americans knew that Michael Jackson was the composer of “Beat It” than knew that the Bill of Rights was a set of amendments to the Constitution. More than half the respondents to that same survey thought the War of 1812 or the Civil War occurred before the American Revolution.

* when I was in college, I read one of these articles about how ignorant American high school students are about their country. I refused to believe the results and began ambushing my sister’s friends, quizzing them. In one instance, I asked “Who is Walt Whitman?” One of her friends got all excited, saying “I know this one! I know this one! He built shopping malls!” (This is funnier if you know we lived near the Walt Whitman Mall.)

Naturally, our collective national ignorance bothers me. But then I remember who is really good at remembering.

The Irish, for example, have long memories. More Irish, I'm sure, could tell you who* won the Battle of Kinsale in 1602, than Americans could tell you who won Gettysburg.

* The bloody English, that’s who!

They have long memories in the Balkans as well. The Battle of Kosovo, fought in 1389, remains on the minds of many in the Balkans. In fact, Slobodan Milosevic, future war criminal, cited it in an important speech in his rise to power.

And then there is the Middle East. Ask an Arab who the Muslim hero of the Crusades is, and he could probably give you a brief lecture on the life of Saladin. Ask an American who the Christian hero of the Crusades is, and his best guess might be Robin Hood.

And finally, there are the descendants of the Confederacy. The Confederate States of America existed as a country for all of four years. It spent the entirety of those four years fighting a war it lost, a war fought for an ignoble cause, a war that devastated their lands, their economy, and their way of life. The decision of the Southern states to secede from the Union and fight a war that caused the deaths of 600,000 of their countrymen was, by any measure, a catastrophe.

And yet, 150 years later, Confederate flags fly. Confederate leaders are revered – Lee especially, but also Stuart and Stonewall and Forrest. Taken to its comic extreme, you'll occasionally see bumper stickers in the South that say "Hell No - We Ain't Forgettin'!"

And I mutter to myself, maybe you should. Maybe some historical amnesia wouldn’t be the worst thing. In the South, in the Balkans, in Ireland, and especially in the Middle East – it might be time to let the past go and think about the future.

Recommendations: If you don't plan on flying Confederate flags, but want to read one book about the Civil War, that book is James McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom. On the internet you could do worse than spend some time at Disunion, the Civil War blog at the New York Times. Hat tip to Bamstutz.

Photo credit: The extraordinary photographs from the Battle of Antietam are usually credited to Matthew Brady, the famous Civil War photographer. They were in fact taken by Alexander Gardner, who was in Brady's employ. These photos were shocking to many Americans who were removed from the horror of war, and remain a landmark in the history of photography

The Enduring Attraction of the Civil War

I recently watched Gods and Generals, a 2003 Civil War movie based on the novel by Jeff Shaara. It attempts, in the span of 3 hours and 45 minutes, to cover the two years of fighting in Northern Virginia between April 1861 and April 1863.

It is an impossible task and the filmmakers fail. Impossible because those two years include First Bull Run, Second Bull Run, The Valley campaign, the 7 Days battle, Antietam, Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville. These are some of the largest, most important battles in American history.  And oh, by the way, these two years saw some of the most momentous political events in American history, like the election of Abraham Lincoln, secession, and the Emancipation Proclamation.

Maybe – maybe – you can capture the sweep of this period with a long miniseries, a la Band of Brothers*. But it is impossible in a theatrically-released film, even one as interminably long as Gods and Generals, to cover the period without unforgivable omissions. For example, the filmmakers simply pretend that George McClellan, the most important Union general of the period, and the battles he was in, simply didn’t exist.

* The mini-series is a highly underrated art form. In fact, two of my favorite “movies” of all time, Band of Brothers and Lonesome Dove, are miniseries. Miniseries are the only way to fully present a book on screen in all its richness. Also, to be fair, the filmmakers behind Gods & Generals also made Gettysburg, a fine Civil War film.

But still…I watched the whole damn thing. Yeah, some of it was painful, particularly the scenes that had, you know, dialogue. (in fact, some of the worst dialogue is uttered by Stonewall Jackson, played by the fine actor Stephen Lang, who you probably saw as Colonel Quaritch in a little flick called Avatar.)

But the battle scenes –it’s impossible to take your eyes away from the battle scenes, particularly if you’ve ever been captivated by the Civil War. The first clash at Bull Run. The Northern waves rolling up Marye’s Heights at Fredericksburg. And most compellingly, the Confederates under Robert Rodes stealthily emerging from the woods to hit O.O. Howard’s troops at Chancellorsville, the high mark of the Confederacy.

The Civil War is the American Iliad, and seeing these scenes brought to life as realistically as it’s ever been done is extraordinary. And it’s a reminder of the enduring attraction of the Civil War.

A Dramatic Climax
Ken Burns, the brilliant documentarian who made The Civil War and many other extraordinary documentaries about America, recounted a conversation he had with Shelby Foote, the historian who became an unlikely star in Burns’ masterpiece. Burns mentioned that he had never been to Ford’s Theater, the site of Lincoln’s assassination, because he found the idea of being there too emotionally painful.

Foote exclaimed, “But Lincoln’s assassination was the best part of the Civil War!” (Or something to that effect; I’m going from memory on the quote).

Burns was shocked. He knew Foote to be a great admirer of Lincoln; in fact Foote believed Lincoln and Nathan Bedford Forrest* to be the two authentic geniuses produced by The Civil War.

* Forrest is a fascinating individual, in many ways the epitome of the best and worst of America. He was a poor man who made a fortune, but the fortune was made at least in part as a slave trader. He was a brilliant, self-taught cavalry commander; a born genius on the battlefield, he was the only individual to enlist as a private and finish the war as a lieutenant general. He was an early leader of the Ku Klux Klan, but in 1875 gave a speech that recommended what was, for the time, an enlightened and radically aggressive agenda of equality for black Americans. The curious contradictory nature of Forrest made him a touchstone for many writers, notably Faulkner. Today he is mostly known as the guy who gave Mr. Gump his first name. It must pain the ghost of N.B. Forrest, one of the most aggressive military leaders in American history, that his name is most famously associated with the expression “Run, Forrest, run!!”

But Burns slowly realized what Foote meant. Shelby Foote was a novelist by training and a historian by accident. And as a novelist the assassination of Abraham Lincoln – days after Appomattox but before the final surrender of the South – was a dramatic climax to the story of the Civil War, a perfect finish to a beautifully constructed plot. (Burns, on the other hand, is the classic sensitive artist type, hence his reluctance to enter Ford’s).

That story stayed with me, and the more I thought about it the more I realized that Americans’ enduring interest in the Civil War can be partly explained by the unusually dramatic arc of the war. In fact, it all plays out rather nicely as a 3-act play.

Act I
The first act centers on the run-up to and start of the war.

It can start in many places – as early as the first slaves arriving in Virginia, or the compromises built into the Constitution, or the end of the Mexican War, which added new states to the Union and new controversy over whether those states would be free or not.

But I’d start it on May 22, 1856, when South Carolina Senator Preston Brooks beat Massachussets Senator Charles Sumner with a wooden cane on the floor of the Senate, in response to an anti-slavery speech made Sumner three days earlier. The beating was so savage that Sumner couldn’t return to the Senate for 3 years. *

* And people get worked up about Joe Wilson – also of South Carolina - shouting “You Lie!” during President Obama’s healthcare speech, or Rahm Emmanuel's bullying. Anyone who thinks Washington DC used to be more civil should get thee to a library.

From there we’d follow the story through Bleeding Kansas, the Lincoln-Douglas debates, Lincoln’s election, Secession, and the Fort Sumter crisis. We’d be introduced to characters who’d become important later – like Robert E. Lee, a colonel in the United States Army, who ends John Brown’s siege of Harper’s Ferry.

Act I ends with the bombardment of Fort Sumter and the beginning of the Civil War.

Act II
The story of Act II is the story of the underdog Confederacy. They are outnumbered, out gunned, out-allied, out-everything – and yet they win battle after battle. Robert E. Lee is the star of Act II, and a succession of bumbling Union generals provide the pathos and the comedy. But others rise too – the flamboyant Confederate cavalryman Jeb Stuart, an eloquent but unsure Abraham Lincoln learning his job, and just offstage, a stoic Union general named U.S. Grant providing foreshadowing out West.

Act II has no shortage of political drama, as Lincoln balances the demands of Radical Republicans who want abolition and Copperhead Democrats who want to let the South go. He demonstrates his political shrewdness through the timing and military justification for the Emancipation Proclamation.

Act II ends with the Southern invasion of Pennsylvania and the dramatic victory by the Union at Gettysburg, coupled with Grant’s victory at Vicksburg. With the end of the act, the tide has turned.

Act III
Here’s where Foote’s observation about Ford’s Theater comes into play. Act III would be a fairly boring act – a grinding series of battles between Lee and Grant leading to the inevitable Union victory. There is no drama and little poetry during the brutal final 9 months of the war. Then – pow! – John Wilkes Booth, who fittingly happens to be an accomplished dramatic actor*, kills Lincoln, leaps onto the stage and runs out of the theater. A despicable act, but as Foote says, from a dramatic standpoint the highlight of the war, and the one that destined Lincoln for the pantheon.

* Again...people who think actors and their political views are annoying now should recall the past...

Of course a great play requires more than just compelling characters and a well-structured plot. It needs dialogue, and boy does the CW deliver dialogue. Quotes from Lincoln alone fill books, but many other quotes from "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead" to "War is hell" derive from the War Between the States.


One can argue, certainly, that the American Revolution is a more important war. The Revolution created America, whereas the Civil War merely maintained it. And we have been, since at least 1994's Saving Private Ryan, obsessed with the Second World War.

But the Civil War endures, and I suspect it will for a long time. The walls of Troy were stormed some 3000 years ago (or maybe not; who knows?) and many of us are still familiar with the feats of Achilles, Hector, and Odysseus.

Will the same be true of the American Civil War? I suspect so, and like the Iliad, it will be in part because of its dramatic structure.

Yanks & Rebs

What do Robert E. Lee and Derek Jeter have in common?


For a couple years now I’ve been wrestling with an important question - why do Yankee fans hate Alex Rodriguez so much?

It’s not because of the steroids. He was being booed at Yankee Stadium long before the steroids story broke. And admitted steroids users like Andy Pettitte and Jason Giambi have been welcomed back with open arms.

It’s not because he hasn’t won a championship. Don Mattingly never won a championship or even led his team to the playoffs, and is far more beloved than many players who did.

It’s not because he hasn’t performed up to expectations. He wins the MVP every other year.

It’s not because he doesn’t play hard.

It’s not because he’s a really bad guy. Yeah, he has some annoying personality traits, but he doesn’t carry loaded guns to nightclubs or watch dogs kill each other for fun. Besides, arrogant image-conscious super-jocks are the norm, not the exception.

Is it because he has played poorly in the post-season? Yeah, that’s part of it, certainly. But the Yankees as a team have been so thoroughly awful in the post-season since Mariano blew the save in Game 4 of the 2004 ALCS, it wouldn’t have much mattered if he played a bit better. (The Yankees led that pivotal game 2-0 till the 5th inning, thanks to a 2-run home run by…Alex Rodriguez).

It’s tempting to say it is some combination of all the above. That would be an easy explanation and it’s mostly true. But there is a bigger picture here – and I think I know what it is.

The real reason Yankee fans hate Alex Rodriguez so much is that…well, let me tell you a story about the Civil War.

The Lost Cause

The Confederate States of America was, for a “country” that existed all of four years, quite a patriotic place. The Confederates believed in themselves. They believed in their cause. And they absolutely believed they were going to win the Civil War. It’s 150 years later and some folks in the Deep South still wave Confederate flags and put “Hell No, We Ain’t Forgettin’” bumper stickers on the back of their pick-ups. All this for a nation that spent its entire abbreviated existence fighting a war it lost.

So you can imagine how they felt right after the war ended. They were angry and confused and needed to blame someone. One could argue that Robert E. Lee would receive some of the blame. It was Lee, after all, who advocated the strategy that lost the war.

Lee believed the South should engage the Union in massive set-piece battles. If they won enough of them, he reasoned, the North would lose their will to fight, European nations would recognize the Confederacy, and the South would win the war.

And it nearly worked. At Bull Run and Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville the South showed they could whip the Yankees (the Union army kind; not the Bronx Bombers kind). War support in the Union wavered. European diplomats watched closely. But Lee, who was so gifted at getting the measure of his opponents on the field, underestimated the lanky bearded fellow in the White House. While Lee methodically ground down Northern war support with bullets and cannon balls, Abraham Lincoln built it back up with words, words, words. Union armies stayed on the field, Europe stayed on the sideline, and the South ultimately lost.

You can make a very good case that Lee should have followed the strategy that George Washington followed in the Revolutionary War. Washington knew he was outnumbered and outgunned. But he also knew that he didn’t have to win the war – he just had to avoid losing. So GW avoided set-piece battles at all costs, nipped at British ankles when he could, kept his armies in the field with minimal losses, and finally struck at Yorktown when absolutely everything was in his favor. Checkmate.

By contrast Lee, an aggressive and pugnacious general chose to fight one battle after another. And he lost. So he should get some of the blame, right? No way. Lee was the great hero of the South, the master of those early victories

Therefore, Jefferson Davis took the fall. He became a disgraced figure in the South in the years after the war. Not a single ounce of blame could fall upon the majestic silver-maned head of Robert E. Lee.

Yankee Doodle Dandy
What does any of this have to do with the booing Alex Rodriguez is treated to at Yankee Stadium?

Let me take you back to November 4, 2001, at approximately 11:38 PM EST. Mariano Rivera took the mound in the bottom of the 9th with a 2-1 lead in hand. Three more outs and the Yankees would win their 5th title in 6 years.

It was certain the Yankees were going to win that night, and it was starting to seem as if the Yankees were always going to win. Baseball would become like tennis in the Federer era – one great champion would win nearly every title.

But Mariano blew the save, of course and the Diamondbacks won. And the Angels won the next year and the Marlins the next. Then came the awful collapse against the Red Sox (2 more Mariano blown saves), then the 3 consecutive 1st round losses, and then finally missing the playoffs entirely in 2009.

Yankee fans are not happy about this. They were supposed to win all – or at least most – okay, some of the titles. But despite signing every monster free agent available, despite the gap between them and the 2nd highest paid team growing every year, they enter their 9th straight season without a title.

Who to blame? Well, one could argue that the likely candidates would be Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera.

How has Mariano done the last 8 years? In 2001 he became the first closer in baseball history to blow a Game 7, 9th inning save, the ultimate blown save. In the catastrophic 2004 ALCS collapse he blew not one, but two saves, both series-clinchers. Has he pitched well? Yes. Has been clutch? Ah, no.

As for Jeter, he reached his peak as a player in 1999 when he hit .349 with 24 homers and 102 RBIs. Or if you prefer sabermetric numbers an OBP/SLG/OPS of .438/.532/.970. Jeter dropped off in 2000 (.339/15/73 and .416/.481/.897) and again in 01 and 02. During the Yankees 8 year title drought Jeter has had only great offensive season (2006) and never hit again the way he did in 1999.

People are always telling me that you can’t measure Derek Jeter with statistics – you can only measure him by the little things he does to help his team win. I guess he hasn’t done quite as many little things the past eight years.

What you end up with is all this Yankee fan frustration and it has to go somewhere. But none of it can fall on the heads of Jeter and Rivera, or even Posada. Very little can fall on the heads of the lesser free agents the Yankees have collected this century. Ownership is essentially off the hook – the Boss has won too many titles and is too frail now to catch any heat. Management, in the form of Torre and Cashman, took some criticism, but they too have a bunch of titles they can claim some credit to.

And so all this rage falls on the head of one person – the guy who far and away has the best single season on the team every year. Alex Rodriguez is the Jefferson Davis of the New York Yankees.

And if you think this is a lot of words to expand on such a meaningless subject, let me just say I'm a Mets fan who remembers the 2000 World Series...and Hell No, We Ain't Forgettin'.