1861: The Civil War Awakening

There seem to be as many Civil War books as there are stars--Adam Goodheart, in the acknowledgements section of his book, 1861: The Civil War Awakening, points out that there are more Civil War books than there were soldiers who fought at Bull Run. I've read my fair share, so it is with great pleasure to read a book like this one, that tells me things I had no clue about.

Goodheart has not written a chronological battle history, as most war books do. He instead tries to capture the mood of the country as it was torn apart. The chapters of the book bounce around in time and location, from the siege at Fort Sumter to the Golden Gate in San Francisco, to the small towns of Ohio that would send so many of its sons to war. There's even a discussion of a large comet that soared through the sky at Independence Day.

The best thing about the book is that it introduces us to people who were key figures in the war, but are almost completely obscure today. Elmer Ellsworth, in 1860, formed the New York Zouaves, named and uniformed like Algerian troops. Many were New York City fireman, called "fire b'hoys." They wowed crowds and he became a household name: "Never before had any American became famous and adored not for any particular accomplishments--not for being a poet or an actor or a war hero--but simply for his charisma."

Ellsworth became a close friend of Lincoln's, and his story had a tragic second act. Leading an expedition into Alexandria, he was shot and killed trying to remove a Confederate banner from a hotel that was visible from the White House. He killed the man who shot him, and both men became heroes for their respective causes.

We also learn about Thomas Starr King, a Unitarian minister who settled in California and gave many speeches for the Union cause. Goodheart gives him a great deal of credit for keeping California a free state. And then there are politicians on both sides, like John Crittenden, pro-Union senator from Kentucky, who put forth several proposals for compromise, including an amendment to the Constitution that would keep slavery alive in perpetuity, and an amendment that would prevent that amendment from being repealed. Louis Wigfall, senator from Texas, also comes in for some scrutiny. "By the age of twenty-five, Wigfall had managed to squander his considerable inheritance, settle three affairs of honor on the dueling ground, fight in a ruthless military campaign against the Seminoles, consume a small lakeful of bourbon, win an enviable reputation in whorehouses throughout the South, and get hauled before a judge on charges of murder. Three years after that, he took the next logical step and went into Texas politics."

After secession, Wigfall turns up in the most unlikely place--Fort Sumter. Goodheart goes into great, fascinating detail on Sumter, and its commander, Robert Anderson. Most historically literate Americans know that when the South fired on Fort Sumter in April, 1861, the Civil War began, but I had nothing else to tell about it. Goodheart elucidates. For instance, Anderson's men were originally in nearby Fort Moultrie, but moved under cover of night, despite not having the okay of army brass or President Buchanan (who doesn't come off very good in this volume). Then we get a chapter on the inside of the Fort during the siege. I didn't know Abner Doubleday, the supposed inventor of baseball, was there. Their position was hopeless, since the fort was constructed to defend invaders from the ocean, not the coast of South Carolina, and they had a dwindling supply of food. The terms of the surrender were given to Anderson by, of all people, Wigfall.

There is a lot more interesting stuff. We learn about a movement called the Wide Awakes--men who marched at night, wearing dark cloaks, in support of the union. About the condition of Washington, D.C. during that year, when it was overrun by soldiers (and, consequently, prostitutes) and the ruts in the streets were so bad that you could be killed by overturning carriages. The Capitol dome was then under construction, worked on mostly by black workers; they were, of course, denied entry in the Capitol as citizens.

There's also a chapter on the "Contrabands," three slaves who escaped and turned up at Fort Monroe, in Union-held Virginia. At that time, the Union followed the Fugitive Slave Act, and routinely returned slaves back to their masters. But the commander of the fort, Benjamin Butler (who is most well known by Civil War buffs as "Butler the Beast," who ruled over New Orleans with an iron fist) decided not to give them back, calling them contraband of war. Lincoln ultimately sided with him, and fugitive slaves flocked to the fort.

In the comments section on Amazon's listing for this book, Goodheart comes in for criticism because he is unflinching in his damnation of the Confederacy, and his insistence that the war was about slavery, which some Southern apologists still refuse to accept. "Men and women at the time, on both sides of the conflict, did understand it as a war against slavery, even before it began. This is clear from what they said and wrote. An important distinction must be drawn here: a war against slavery did not necessarily mean a war for abolition, at least not in 1861, or not for everybody. It did mean, though, that many white Northerners and even some white Southerners were ready to say Enough. Enough compromise of principles; enough betrayal of people and ideals, enough cruelty; enough gradual surrender of what had been won in 1776. The war represented the overdue effort to sort out the double legacy of America's founders: the uneasy marriage of the Declaration's inspired ideals with the Constitution's ingenious expedients."

Goodheart uses heavily poems of Walt Whitman as epigraphs, and the book itself is a very literary one. At times Goodheart allows the novelist within to break out--how many history books have passages like this one: "Eastward ran the train, through thawing fields where green seedlings of winter wheat were taking early root; past the felled brown ranks of last year's corn. Farmers' wives looked up and saw it in the distance, a solitary moving speck and drifting plume." This describes the train that took Abraham Lincoln from Springfield to Washington.

I enjoyed this book a great deal, and as someone who disdains romanticizing the South and it's "peculiar institution," it was bracing to read a work of such clarity. "The Confederacy was never truly much of a cause--lost or otherwise. In fact, it might better be called an effect, a reactive stratagem tarted up with ex post facto justifications." Or, "Slaveholders and their allies burned books, banned newspapers, and terrorized ministers of the gospel. They had, in fact, made a mockery of the entire idea of American democracy, turning the phrase 'land of the free' into a sneer on European lips. And all this was over and above the crimes and outrages that Southerners perpetrated every day against four million helpless men, women, and children whom they kept in bondage, sold like cattle, and exploited for their sexual pleasure."

Even 150 years later, Goodheart can get angry. We all should.