I, like
so many Civil war enthusiasts, grew up on the tremendous stories of the Civil
war and the individuals who fought it.
As a boy, growing up in Virginia in the 1950’s, I knew full well that
the Confederacy won the “War” and that the Yankees had distorted the truth
about it. Robert E. Lee walked on water
and U.S. Grant, “the Butcher” won because of overwhelming manpower and
resources. The “damned Yankee tariff”
and states rights caused the conflict and slavery really had nothing to do with
it. John Singleton Mosby won the war by
himself and Sherman brutally and needlessly destroyed private property. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
All too
often theses stories, which have gotten better over time, are nothing more than
that. This applies also to
interpretations of battles. I am
constantly amazed how so many people view a battle as a chess game where the
general commanding wrote an omniscient battle plan, relayed that information to
his generals and then personally manipulated the maneuvers upon the fields to
achieve his preconceived objectives.
When it failed, the obvious blame fell upon subordinates who either did
not understand the commanding general’s orders or who deliberately executed
their own plan because they did not agree with their superior’s plan. Sickles’s unauthorized advance to the
Emmitsburg Road and Longstreet’s deliberate late arrival on the southern end of
the field immediately come to mind.
What
does the evidence say? How should the
historian interpret the evidence? Who
was right? Who was wrong? What lessons can be learned from their
“mistakes”? Are the traditional, oft
told accounts of their actions accurate?
Those are tough questions, which I hope to address in future blogs.
Before
getting there, however, I think it is important to examine how I approach the
interpretation of those events.
Understand, I am speaking for myself and my methodology and no one
else’s and that I am referring to a battle-book on regimental and battalion
level and not a work about grand strategy or the battle from a particular
general’s perspective.
1.
Do not approach any project with a particular
thesis in mind other than to see the event as the participants experienced it
2.
Collect as much primary material as you can,
knowing that you will never find all of it and that in some areas, you might
discover very little.
3.
Primary sources include after-action reports,
maps, letters, diaries, reminiscences, recollections, and magazine articles
written by the veterans about the veterans.
4.
Verify the identity and service record of every
contributor, and, if at all possible, include those listed as “anonymous” or those who used pen names.
5.
In recent years, some historians have argued
that one can only use material produced during the war because post war reminiscences
are too often self-serving, riddled with inaccuracies, and too far removed from
the war to be accurate. Dismiss those
arguments off-hand. Often, it takes
years for anyone who has gone through a trauma to write or talk about the
incident. Their recollections about the event
are generally as clear as if it had just occurred.
I know this from personal experience as a boy
who had close call with death. It took
me over 20 years to write and talk about it.
I remember the veterans among whom I grew up with the “thousand yard
stare,” painfully and vividly remembering their experiences. They did not exaggerate what they saw but
they did embellish the importance of what they saw or waxed eloquent about
strategy in which they played no role.
Generally, the historian has to rely on common sense to separate the
fact from the garbage. If it sounds too
good to be true, it usually is.
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