MORE BLATHER

It may seem incongruous, if not downright eccentric, to find the “50 Best Civil War Sites” on this web site, which is otherwise focused on natural history, and primarily birds and birding. It may also seem odd that a person who is a downright tree-hugger should be so interested in a war. I cannot really explain that dichotomy. I don’t wish to participate in any war; I don’t wish to personally engage in re-enactments of battles; nor do I wish to argue politics or history. I just deeply enjoy reading history, and visiting historical sites. I do believe that slavery was the greatest stain on American history, and that John Brown was quite right when he wrote, on the day of his execution, that “"the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood. ” I cannot imagine how slavery in the United State would have been abolished — completely, cleanly , and simply — without a catastrophic war. It has taken us a century and more to deal with integration issues, and they are not yet over. But it took this war — in retrospect, a "good war" — to wipe out slavery.

It is true enough that I am first-and-foremost a birder, but that does not mean I’m not interested in a host of other things, and these include mammals, reptiles & amphibians, dragonflies, current events, politics, movies, theatre, music, sports (esp. my San Francisco Giants & 49ers), wine, art, and history. Indeed, my college degrees are in History and Political Science. I was introduced to the Civil War by my father during the Centennial celebrations 1961-1965. When our family undertook a cross-country trip, pulling a trailer and staying in campgrounds in 1967, my dad permitting me to help pick the route and the sites to be seen. Among my high priority choices at that time -- as a 15-year-old -- were the battlefields at Shiloh, Stones River, Antietam, Gettysburg, and in the Virginia corridor between Washington, D.C. and Richmond. [Right: 15-year-old me looks into a replica of a huge howitzer at Petersburg National Battlefield; photo by my dad, B.B. Roberson.]

I had read substantial Civil War history before high school and, obviously, I studied more Civil War history while earning a degree in history. It is fair to say that I focused heavily on birding the next 20 years, but regained an interest in Civil War history in the 1990s. No doubt Ken Burns’ (1990) PBS series The Civil War was a part of this reawakening, and I have enjoyed watching it multiple times. What I found particularly fascinating was the way in which the history of this period was interpreted by the 1990s, and how different that interpretation had been in the 1960s. It seemed like “everything that I’d ever learned about the Civil War” when I was young was, in fact, wrong.

For a century after the Civil War, the South promoted the myth of the Lost Cause. It postulates that the Confederacy was doomed from the start in its struggle for independence by the superior might of the Union, yet it fought heroically for the cause of states rights. Within the myth Lee and Jackson are venerated as great generals, while Union generals and heroism is dismissed. Grant, for example, was portrayed as a drunk or a butcher. Southern generals who, after the War, supported Reconstruction, were blamed for as well (Longstreet in particular, criticized for being “slow” to follow Lee’s orders). This attempt to rewrite history was intentional and effective. There is a wonderful book of essays on this century-long effort to romanticize the South and to misrepresent the War's true origins: Gary W. Gallagher & Alan T. Nolan's (2000) The Myth of the Los Cause and Civil War History.

Overlooked entirely during the century of re-writing history was the fact that human slavery in America was the underlying cause of the War, and had been remedied by the War. Succeeded generations of Northerners were willing to go along with this Southern rewrite of history as the economic prosperity became the focus, or because of the lingering effects of racism (which still exists today), or both. But the civil rights and human rights movements of the 1960s-1970s changed historians clichéd views about the past, and new researchers delved into long-forgotten memoirs and letters. An exceptional new set of historians were writing Civil War histories and biographies in the 1980s & 1990s and into the 21st century. I find it all fascinating. Perhaps the single most important book to affect me in this transition was William Garrett Piston's (1987) Lee's Tarnished Lieutenant: James Longstreet and His Place in Southern History. If there is only one book to read on the topic of Civil War re-evaluation, read this one.

I have been building a Civil War library over the past couple decades, haunting used book stores for bargains, trading in books that don’t meet my needs, and vaguely keeping track of new literature as it is published. My Civil War interests focuses on battles and campaigns; the tactics and strategies of generals; the politics of leadership, both civilian and within the military, and how that influenced history; and the personalities of the major players on both sides. I am also interested in how geography influenced events, as well as tactics and heroics and luck, and visiting the sites of battles brings an understanding of that element as nothing read in books can do. In general, I am less interested in the lifestyles of the common soldier, nor the details of Civil War weaponry or medicine, nor the economics of mid-19th century America. I have, of course, read a fair bit on all those topics to understand the War, but I don’t collect many books on those topics.

My book collection is of battle or campaign histories; important historical overviews; or focused biographies. In choosing which books to buy or keep, I want books that are fair-minded and not tainted with the whiff of hagiography; that are well-researched and preferably based on substantial original research; and that are by professional historians or serious amateurs who are recognized in their field. In general, I find that most Civil War histories or biographies written before the late 1970s tend to be infused with “lost cause-ism” or over-simplification, and these defects annoy me. I have overlooked some degree of these deficiencies in buying and keeping some of the so-called “great works” on the Civil War [e.g., Douglas S. Freeman (1942-1946) Lee's Lieutenants: a Study in Command, 4 vols.] but mostly I prefer newer works. Many of the really good books have come out only within the last couple of decades, yet, of course, these rely heavily on original documents.

Some quick opinions on Civil War histories:

• Best single-volume history of the Civil War: James M. McPherson's (1988) Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (The Oxford History of the United States, Vol. 6). In addition, McPherson has a great book explaining why the men on both sides fought: For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War (1997)
• Best multi-volume history of the Civil War: Shelby Foote's (1974) Civil War: A Narrative, 3 vols. Honorable mention, however, to Bruce Catton's multi-volume histories on Grant (3 vols) and on the Army of Potomac (3 vols). All of the major multi-volume histories of the War are out-dated in some respects, especially those written in the 1960s-1070s, but both Foote and Catton were fine writers as well as historians.

The Civil War also inspired a century's worth of interesting art. I have long admired evocative pieces -- from this contemporary view of Union gunboats attacking Island No. 10 on 13 March 1862 (below) to the modern works of Don Troiani, Mort Künstler, or John Paul Strain. Wonderful artworks are featured in many Civil War museums [for example, ask at the Winchester visitor center's for directions to the research center whose hallways are lined with fine Civil War art] and other reproductions appear on battlefield signs. In all cases, they add dramatically to our understanding and appreciation of this period in American history.

Acknowledgements: I am indebted to my wife Rita Carratello for her company and interest in visiting these sites. Rita and Bruce Deuel read an earlier version of these pages, and suggested many helpful improvements, for which I am very grateful. Civil War historians who encouraged my amateur interest include Edwin Bearss, Chris Calkins, and William Garrett Piston.

-- Don Roberson [comments welcome]