Originally aired on May 23, 1997 - In part 143 of our Civil War series, Virginia Tech history professor James Robertson says that some Civil War histories can be a minefield of misinformation posing as history.
#143 – An Obligation to History
For the reader who wishes to venture into the field of Civil War history, be aware that the subject is one of the most dangerous fields to enter. At last report, over 80,000 books and pamphlets exist on the all-American war. It is not merely quantity that overwhelms us; the bigger problem is quality. Separating fact from fiction is a constant and unrewarding task for historian and student alike.
This literary sickness developed in the immediate post-Civil War years when Union veterans – motivated either by the desire to “wave the bloody shirt” or to obtain pensions for alleged disabilities incurred from the war – began writing so-called memoirs of life as a prisoner of war. At least two imaginative Billy Yanks produced recollections of atrocities that took place at Andersonville months before the prison came into existence.
To illustrate further the mine field of misinformation posing as history, one has only to look at the two foremost generals from Virginia: Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson.
In 1989 a free-lance writer published a 360-page supposed biography of Jackson. The portrait on the dust jacket was not that of Jackson. Inside were neither endnotes nor bibliography. In their place were pages of manufactured conversation heavily laced with profanity. The author confessed in the preface that his work was half-fact and half-fiction. Unfortunately, he never told the reader which half was which.
Equally as bizarre was a book issued a few years ago and entitled The Unwritten Chronicles of Robert E. Lee. The contents tell us that Lee saw in Jackson a divine instrument for killing, but Lee was unable to have such feelings. Instead, the army commander’s passion was studying maps. Jackson’s passion was bloodshed. So while Lee years for a big battle with few casualties, Jackson revels with every chance to take more and more Yankees lives – all in the name of God.
Even avowed works of fiction in the Civil War field can descend to the absurd. Such a work is The Guns of the South. The books opens with the 1864 campaign in the Virginia Wilderness. Grant is heading south with the major Union army when Lee strikes him from the west on two different roads.
That is factual, but wait a minute: suddenly a platoon of South African white supremacists from the 21st Century appear in the Wilderness. It seems these men have been able to travel into the past in order to provide Lee’s Confederates with a huge supply of Russian-made AK-47 automatic assault weapons. Grant’s army is speedily routed by devastating gunfire. Within weeks, Lee is offering peace terms to Abraham Lincoln on the lawn of the White House.
Such compilations cannot be dismissed with hoots of sarcasm and derision. The demand for books on the Civil War may be insatiable. Perhaps there are people willing to buy anything regardless of its contents. Yet entertainment should not be a major impetus behind Civil War history. Education is the key to understanding, and such education requires effort, maturity, and certainly a sense of responsibility.
After all, the Civil War was this country’s most profound and meaningful single experience following independence and nationhood. The war changed the course of American history; it helped to define American character and American ideals; it gave us an imperishable and completely unforgettable body of legend.
All of this means that the acts of remembering – in books and thoughts and deeds – ought to be in harmony with the war we are remembering. To treat the war that made us a nation with flippancy and other forms of disrespect is in essence defaming the graves of 700,000 men who gave their lives that their descendants might have a nation they could call their own.