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Written by Jamakaya
Apr 21, 2011
The American Civil War began with the Confederate shelling of Fort Sumter 150 years ago this month. To mark the occasion, PBS reran Ken Burns’ epic documentary about the war. In the midst of Wisconsin’s divisive Supreme Court race and the polarization gripping the country, I watched the series with renewed horror and fascination.
More than 600,000 soldiers died during the war, comparable to 6 million losing their lives today. Total Civil War casualties exceed the death tolls of every American war from the Revolution through Vietnam combined. A staggering two-thirds of the deaths were due to disease rather than battlefield wounds. Over 36,000 African-American men died fighting for the Union.
More than 12,200 Wisconsin men, out of 91,400 who served, lost their lives. If you Google “Civil War Wisconsin casualties,” you can find a list of the dead. To view the complete list, you have to hit the “page down” key again and again for a very long time. It is chill-inducing.
At the war’s outset, the North had a population of more than 18 million and the South had 9 million residents – more than a third of them slaves. The North was more industrially and technologically advanced than the South, which had an agricultural economy. But the rebels, fighting for their “ideals” of slavery and states’ rights and mostly defending their home turf, fought tenaciously. Their bold commanders and skillful use of guerrilla tactics against Union flanks and supply lines turned Northern dreams of quick victory into a long, bloody four-year nightmare.
Telegraphy, newspapers and the new medium of photography conveyed reports and graphic images from the battlefields to people in the North and South. Fighting raged from Pennsylvania through Virginia and Tennessee down to Florida and across the Gulf states to the Mississippi River and Texas. There were even skirmishes in Arizona and California.
In July 1863, two hard-won Union victories began to turn the tide of the war. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant captured Vicksburg, securing Union control of the Mississippi River, and Gen. Robert E. Lee’s army was defeated at Gettysburg, blunting an invasion of the North. Fifty thousand men fell at Gettysburg.
About the surrender of Gen. Lee in April 1865, Grant said: “I felt like anything rather than rejoicing at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and valiantly, and had suffered so much for a cause, though that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least excuse.”
The Burns documentary, with eyewitness testimonies, stark photos and haunting music, is a great way to explore the war. It’s available at libraries and online.
Two books I’ve read recently are “Manhunt” by James Swanson, a pulse-racing account of the chase to capture Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth, and “This Republic of Suffering” by Drew Gilpin Faust, a profound meditation on the country’s response to mass deaths, from the development of embalming and refrigeration to the establishment of veteran cemeteries.
The New York Times is running an online series called “Disunion” from now until April 2015 with stories about how the war developed day by day over its four-year course. The juxtaposition of this series with current headlines of partisan rancor is sobering to say the least.
