The horrible cost of the Civil War (pictures- not graphic)

[Are_grits_groceries]

This is the National Cemetery in Florence, SC. There was a Confederate stockade near here, and this is where the Union soldiers were buried. It was declared a historical area after the war, and unfortunately it is still in use for military burials today. Hopefully, at some probably mythic point in time, it won't be needed.

When you walk up, the first thing you see are these two stately trees. They have been here since their youth guarding those that lie here. Individual graves are beneath them.



When you turn to your left, you will see two rows of headstones. The markers facing you on the left are over WWII burials. They stand sentinal over the area to the right. The markers that you see from the side are at the end of trenches that were dug to bury many soldiers. The pictures beside this view are frontal views of these markers. They list the number buried in each area.




There is one solitary grave in the middle of the trenches. It is the grave of Florena Budwin. She dressed as a man and followed her husband to war.


One of the majestic trees directly over the individual graves.


The soldiers came from everywhere. Johnny did not go marching home in a lot of cases.. They are much further from where they were raised than many who died in later wars. A lot of those soldiers were brought home from Vietnam and other conflicts and are laid to rest in familiar ground.



The two headstones in the picture below encapsulate for me the problem in fighting wars. The headstone on the left is from the Civil War. The one on the right is from Vietnam. One conflict is considered righteous and one isn't. The end result is the pain you see here. These headstones are ground zero for agonies that have to been inflicted on their loved ones and friends.

There are times when there is a war that needs to be fought. The Civil War ended the terrible legacy of slavery and kept the Union together. Calling for secession again or declaring that some states should just leave the Union now dishonors those who lie here.


I come here during the year and sit beneath the tree. It is a very quiet place, but my mind is always restless. I think about where our soldiers are losing their lives now and try to understand why they are there. In this place of all places, there is a solemnity and a stark reminder of the cost.

Jeanette Rankin, a Congresswoman from Wyoming, voted against entering WWI and WWII. She said that you could no more win a war than you could win an earthquake. I agree with her in some ways when I view the losses around me. An idea and a priciple may prevail, but winning and losing sums up the aftermath too neatly for me.

Pat Buchanan and his ilk are fools, and they romanticize a time when there was nothing but folly and pride that started this conflict. The Civil War should be remembered, but not saluted. The cost was dear beyond measure for the whole nation. The piper had to be paid once the trumpet was sounded because we should never have been nor ever should be a nation of chains.

This is probably your first visit here. I always come by at Christmas to say hey.

[ensho]

1. thank you

nt

[hlthe2b]

2. As per my sigline, I believe in preserving history and that includes

maintaining these cemeteries to our fallen military dead. TO some here, given the rancor over all things civil war, those cemeteries housing confederate soldiers ought to just be allowed to degrade. I remember from the time years ago I spent in the Atlanta area and other areas of the south (and the then frustration I had at my civil war buff Dad dragging me to battlegrounds and monuments all over), the beautiful union cemeteries and likewise many similar for the confederate soldier. I know that in Marietta, Georgia, there is a large and elegant National Cemetery that includes union soldiers and many from other wars. At the time the cemetery was developed, a local land owner offered to donate much more adjacent land for confederate soldiers as well, thinking that a way to begin the healing process. His offer was refused. But today, there is a large beautiful cemetary, separate, but not far away from the National Cemetery for confederate soldiers, that is kept up by historical volunteers from the area.

I am glad to see that both of these cemeteries are well maintained and beautiful, yet contemplative "parks." As much as the extremist and often racist views of the teabagger crowd and many others on the "right" may rankle and rightfully frighten us, I think it important that at least some level of commemoration of history be maintained--both the good and the bad. Not the whitewash of history, mind you. Not that brand that might diminish the critical importance of slavery in our combined heritage for this country. But, there are lessons to be learned there. Lessons that might very well prevent another war against ourselves--brother against brother, again. It saddens me when some here become so very rigid in their views, so black versus white and "good versus evil," that the anti-regional bigotry comes through so vocally--as though everyone living today in these deep red states must be demonized and automatically suspect. That is not who we are as progressives. Per my sigline....

[lunatica]

7. Those of us who want to see war abolished do so out of the very

reasons you have written so eloquently about in this post. There are plenty of cemeteries in this country dedicated to the fallen soldier as well as monuments erected to keep the memories of our wars alive. Every single last one of them is an attempt to heal something profoundly wounded in us. They are all reminders of the cost of war on regular people. The never ending price is death of citizens who didn't choose the wars, nor declare them, nor even contribute to the circumstances that caused them. Citizens who, if left alone to pursue their lives in the manner they saw fit would never kill another human being or even desire to do so.

Regarding the Civil War, the interred are overwhelmingly young men who were manipulated into fighting 'the enemy' through propaganda and who were considered expendable by an impossibly small number of people who were the real warmongers. What difference to the thousands of boys who died in the Civil War if rich landowners were to be deprived of their slaves or their wealth made by the imposed sacrifice of those same slaves? The overwhelming number of young men who died in the trenches had no wealth, owned no slaves and had no interest nor understanding of what they were fighting for outside of what they were told.

So putting up monuments and setting sacred land aside to bury them serves to keep the idea of honoring them alive only for those who still live. They are dead. They didn't get to live out their lives the way those who sent them to war did. They didn't get to contribute or grow old with their grandchildren at their knee, but still we go to war and still it is the regular young citizen who is sacrificed for whatever reasons the psychopaths in government see fit to choose as a 'patriotic' duty which they themselves aren't willing to do personally.

As a progressive I think the best way to honor all the fallen soldiers on every side of wars is for leaders to put as much effort into stopping wars as they put into starting them. I think that as long as our country sacrifices young people of every single generation we will never, ever heal that deep wound.

And for those who think war is natural to humanity I say try not going to war for 50 years and test that hypothesis. See if by not going to war it's possible for leaders to settle arguments when their recourses no longer include the lives of citizens who they can send to die at their whim.

The only good thing that came of that war was the abolition of slavery, which legacy is still tragically with us due to the direct result of the vengeful doings of the very same people who caused the war in the first place. Another legacy in the sacrifices and costs of the war. There is a direct connection between the disenfranchisement of the freed slaves with the problems we face today. There are those who pine for those good old days and who fly their flag to 'honor' their deluded ideas of a great past that never existed and there are those who they send to represent them in our Capital. It is shameful.

[hlthe2b]

8. +1

Absolutely agree. Nice response. Thanks

[chrisa]

3. Amazing post.

Rec.

:kick:

[Faygo Kid]

4. K&HighlyR

Very thoughtful. Thanks for posting this. I hope all here on DU check this out.

[truedelphi]

5. Once enhardened by battle, the men who fought this war

Had their demons.

For some, the answer was (after the war's conclusion), to move out West and slaughter the Native peoples.

Like all other major wars, the war went on even after it's end.

[Are_grits_groceries]

11. Wars echo forever.

Hopefully, they will grow fainter if people will just let them.

[badgerpup]

6. Took the 'tourist tour' through Arlington when I was 13...

Even though the day was a pretty one, it was like something out of a Stephen King novel.

Soft, green undulations of the land- not enough to be hills, but not flat...and as far as you could see nothing but identical headstones in those exact straight military lines...and every one of those headstones MEANT something.
So very quiet, and so very, very sad.

[Are_grits_groceries]

9. That's what I think about too.

Every headstone represents a world that was shattered somewhere.

[Robb]

10. K&R. nt

[Withywindle]

12. Thank you for this post.

I grew up in Virginia and am used to memorials for the Confederate dead. I don't see a problem with this, at all--they were local boys, ancestors of the current residents of my home town. They fought because they believed they had to, because they were told they had to, because they wanted to defend their home, because they were too young to understand what death and killing really mean, because they had romantic dreams of glory...who knows why? We can't ask the individual men; they're dead.

I see no reason to dishonor the dead. My blinding RAGE at what the Governor of my home state tried to do is that it wasn't STUDYING AND REMEMBERING history, it was WHITEWASHING it. That dishonors everyone.

[G_j]

13. well said, & to salute the Civil War

is saluting a horrible, murderous tragedy.


How could man rejoice in victory and delight in the slaughter of men?

-Lao Tzu

[old mark]

14. Thank you for this post. I used to play in an old cemetary as a kid,

with many CW and WWI graves, even old naval cannon, which I used to sit on like a horse.
The reason we must remember this is so we are never dumb enough to do it again despite the incitement from those too old to take part. If Buchanan were liable to become a soldier, he would not be so enthusiastic...I spent a year as a patient in an army hospital, and I know I was lucky - I came home with all the parts I went in with.

Thanks - rec.

mark

[amborin]

15. K&R

[TuxedoKat]

16. Thanks for sharing this...

Your post reminded me of something I read in a book last year from a set of volumes published 50 years after the ending of the Civil War in 1912 (The Photographic History of The Civil War In Ten Volumes (Volume Three, The Decisive Battles, p. 61). It made such an impression on me because when I read this I realized that this was only two years before WWI started. Anyway, here is the text of what the author, James Barnes, wrote to accompany a picture of fallen soldiers:

The Ones Who Never Came Back

"These are some of the men for whom waiting women wept--the ones who never came back. They belonged to Ewell's Corps, who attacked the Federal lines so gallantly on May 18th. There may be some who will turn from this picture with a shudder of horror, but it is no morbid curiosity that will cause them to study it closely. If pictures such as this were familiar everywhere there would soon be an end of war. We can realize money by seeing it expressed in figures; we can realize distances by miles, but some things in their true meaning can only be grasped and impressions formed with the seeing eye. Visualizing only this small item of the awful cost--the cost beside which money cuts no figure--an idea can be gained of what war is. Here is a sermon in the cause of universal peace. The handsome lad lying with outstretched arms and clenched fingers is a mute plea. Death has not disfigured him--he lies in an attitude of relaxation and composure. Perhaps in some Southern home this same face is pictured in the old family album, alert and full of life and hope, and here is the end. Does there not come to the mind the insistent question, "Why?" The Federal soldiers standing in the picture are not thinking of all this, it may be true, but had they meditated in the way that some may, as they gaze at this record of death, it would be worth their while. One of the men is apparently holding a sprig of blossoms in his hand. It it a strange note here."

[Sancho]

17. You can see The Photographic History of the Civil War on line:

http://www.quinnipiac.edu/other/abl/etext/civilwar/toc.html

It takes a while to load if you don't have a fast connection.

[TuxedoKat]

21. That's great -- thank you for that resource

my copies of the books are fairly fragile so it is good to know that this is online. Here is a link to the page I quoted above:

http://www.quinnipiac.edu/other/abl/etext/civilwar/volume3p51to100.pdf

[carolinayellowdog]

18. My sentiments echo yours

A few blocks from my house in one direction is the "last capital of the Confederacy," to which Jeff Davis and company fled after the fall of Richmond. A few blocks away in the other direction is a federal cemetery with more than a thousand graves of boys from Michigan, Ohio, Vermont, and every other northern state. They died not in battle but from disease and starvation in the Confederate prisons here. Nothing to be proud of around here regarding the Civil War; only a legacy of folly and shame. That of does not dawn on of those who glorify the memory of the greatest disaster ever to befall Virginia, and those who made it inevitable. Virginia was the only state literally and permanently divided by the war, the state that experienced the greatest destruction of property and reputation. More of my Southern CW veteran ancestors fought for the Union than for the Confederacy and this is true of many millions in the Upper South. The way McDonnell "honored" the Confederacy dishonors descendants of all Virginians who were enslaved in 1860, as well as descendants of all Virginians who supported the Union, fought and died to save it.

[bertman]

19. Too late to rec, but kicked with a sad heart.

[Crabby Appleton]

20. This monument marks the graves of more than 2000

Confederate soldiers at Camp Chase Confederate Cemetary in Columbus Ohio



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Chase

[Are_grits_groceries]

22. Thanks for the picture! nt

[Kalyke]

23. K & R

And to add: While the Civil War should be remembered and not saluted, it would do the country good if certain segments of our population would understand that what was carried out 150 years ago was done by people who are no longer here and that the current generation of Southerners has, for the most part, moved past rancorous racism.

In fact, many of our Southern proclivities are directly rooted in African-American practices that all races have adopted as part of the Southern culture.

[jimmil]

24. This may be disagreeable to some...

We must not glorify war. Almost in every culture the men and women who died in war are held in reverence. Dying for your country is the greatest sacrifice one can do. I think this is wrong. We must honor those who fought but to glorify them, to declare them and the war they fought as sacred, is telling children and people that war is good. We don't need to be raising generation after generation that to fight in war is the ultimate act of selflessness. We need to be raising generations to not act with violence but with measured reactions based on facts. We need to raise children to question and reason using their natural intelligence to guide them. We must raise children that war may be necessary sometimes but only as a last option. We must stop war. We must use the energy once focused on war to the betterment of mankind. What could we accomplish? What could those people lying in the ground contributed to us all?

To better heat the flames I am sure this will create I will tell you, yes, I was in a war. I often think of those I lost as friends, I think of their families, and I think of all the great things they could have done. That is honoring them, not big fancy parades and politicians wearing flags.