Appalachian Trail Solo Thru-Hike Odyssey – Chapter 4

Writing from Mountain Home B&B in Front Royal, Virginia. An easygoing, somewhat quaint, vaguely progressive town, ironically where Stonewall Jackson won a significant battle in 1862.

Just exited Shenandoah National Park and only a few days from a new state (West Virginia) and historic town of Harpers Ferry, which is the headquarters of the Appalachian Trail Conference (THE governing body of the trail). I look forward to meeting those responsible for turning me into a Sisyphus and carrying me over a sea of jagged rocks. And look forward to revisiting where John Brown became a martyr, albeit a shortsighted one.

Sunset in Shenandoah

I’m at mile 972 of 2,190 miles…almost at the halfway point and nearly back “home,” in the North, where the Union won a war to end slavery and keep the states glued together. Gettysburg and Antietam are in my sights. I’ve visited these battlefield locations many times, but this time I’m marching by foot. Thank God I don’t have to trudge barefoot or eat maggot-riddled hardtack. How did those soldiers do it?

Can you tell I’m excited about these links with U.S. history? These kinds of milestones help keep me going. Later, I plan to revisit Pittsfield, Massachusetts, where the author of “Omoo” later wrote “Moby-Dick.” Also, Williams College, where my great-grandfather graduated Magna Cum Laude, and the small village of Stamford, Vermont, settled by my g-g-g-g-g-grandfather Josiah “Rock” Raymond when he camped against a boulder (damn those rocks) in the mid-18th century.

Copperhead snake. Note his cocked head and blank-looking orange eye. I stepped on his head accidentally while trudging up Apple Orchard Mountain. We were both a bit shaken.

And it will also be interesting to train into Manhattan, subway to the Upper East Side, and walk down Lexington Avenue, full backpack and greasy beard, and ring the buzzer of my uncle’s eighth-floor apartment, where he’s lived since…wait for it…1960.

The word “surreal” is an understatement.

Thanks for traveling with me…

Omoo

The new Omoo at Mountain Home hostel: clean-shaven, locks shorn, smiling with banana split on mind. And possible turntable action. Trail towns are nice.

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“How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Social Justice Fascism:” A Comedy-Drama in Four Acts

Cast of Characters:

Actress Lillian Gish
Producer/Director D.W. Griffith
Bowling Green State University administrator (“Mr. Gobsmack”)
Black Lives Matter (BLM) representative
Black Student Union (BSU) representative
Two anonymous soldiers

ACT 1
February 8, 1915: The Birth of a Nation premieres in Los Angeles, California, U.S.A.

Lillian Gish: “I don’t know, Mr. Griffith, this moving picture could cause trouble.”

D.W. Griffith: “Oh, come now, Miss Lillian. Just because it depicts the Ku Klux Klan as saviors? This is 1915 and no one cares. Who in Robert E. Lee’s name is this ‘Jim Crow’ fellow anyway? Besides, it’s not my fault…it’s the guy who wrote the book.”

Lillian Gish: “Well, despite the unusual interpretation of history, it is an awe-inspiring achievement. Critics are already calling it a motion picture landmark. It’s a shame sound hasn’t been invented yet, so people would be able to hear my voice.”

D.W. Griffith: “And Lil, you’ve done so well in Birth, I would like you to appear in my next epic project.”

Lillian Gish: “Mr. Griffith! Thank you! My friends back in Ohio will be so thrilled! What is the title?”

D.W. Griffith: “I’m calling it Intolerance.”

ACT 2
June 11, 1976: The GISH FILM THEATRE is dedicated at Bowling Green State University in northwest Ohio, U.S.A.

Bowling Green administrator: “…And in this glorious two-hundredth year since our nation’s birth, we humbly dedicate this new theatre to two of Ohio’s own, legendary actresses Lillian and Dorothy Gish, for their combined 136 years on stage and screen!”

(loud applause)

Lillian Gish: “Thank you, Mr. Gobsmack. I accept this elegant honor in honor of my late sister and myself. Dorothy was a better actress than I, and I only wish she, and mother, could be here to bask in this lovely moment.”

Bowling Green administrator: “And tomorrow we will be presenting you with the honorary degree of Doctor of Performing Arts!”

(more loud applause)

Lillian Gish: “Dear me, you are all so very kind. I have never been a doctor before. By the way, can everyone out there hear my voice?”

ACT 3
February 2019: Black Lives Matter approaches Black Student Union at Bowling Green State University

BLM representative: “Put your smartphone down, brother. We gotta remove another intimidating and hostile name. We’ve been spendin’ time researchin’. Do you know who Lillian Gish is?”

BSU representative: “Uh…doesn’t she have a cooking show?”

BLM representative: “No! She was a white actress from Ohio! Did a bunch of silent films! She was in that film Birth of a Nation!”

BSU representative: “Huh? You mean that racist Civil War movie with Cary Grant?”

BLM representative: “No! You’re thinking Gone With the Wind, and the actor was Clark Gable! (But don’t worry, that movie is next on our agenda.) No, I’m talkin’ ’bout a 1915 film dealing with Reconstruction where the KKK is a hero!”

BSU representative: “Damn! And she acted in that shit?! Yeah, we need to wipe out another name, like Wisconsin did last year with Fredric March. I’m now intimidated by that hostility!”

BLM representative: “Good, glad you agree. Get with those university trustees and tell them to wipe that intimidating and hostile Gish name offa that theatre.”

BSU representative: “Got it covered. And I guarantee it’ll be a 7-0 vote in favor of wiping.  No American college official these days wants to risk being labelled racist. We can’t tolerate our university having a performing arts theatre named after a legendary actress from Ohio who had the intolerance to appear in a racist film 104 years ago. We will wipe!”

BLM representative: “Cool. Her sister Dorothy wasn’t in any racist films that our people can determine—yet—but she doesn’t have a voice in this. This is 2019 and no one cares that her name will also be…uh…whitewashed. Anyway, she was friends with that Griffith guy!”

ACT 4 (Epilogue)
July 3, 2063: Somewhere on a field strikingly similar to Cemetery Ridge near the town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.

First soldier: “I think this battle could be the turning point in the war.”

Second soldier: “You could be right. Finally, the end of political correctness.”

First soldier: “Yep. You don’t need to correct anything when there’s nothing left to correct.”

(fade out)

Making Sense of Monument Removals

 

It’s not often that longitudes is stumped. On issues like guns, environment, domestic terrorism, fascism, political electionism etc., this blog has no trouble clearly expressing where it stands.

But longitudes has struggled to make sense of the polarized reactions to chunks of Confederate stone being carted away recently.

Usually, there are one or two soundbites that, like little marshmallows in hot cocoa, always bob to the surface. In the case of monument removals, that soundbite is the word “history.”

“But it’s history!” some say (including my wife).  “You can’t change history!” is also heard.  But are monuments to history history?  And how is history actually being changed?

As loyal readers know, longitudes loves history. An understanding of history is good, because it often prevents us from repeating past mistakes. Frequently, longitudes appears dismayed at the indifference of many Americans to their own history. So it’s perplexing to hear so many Americans now, suddenly, expressing concern for American history. This applies to statue removers as well as statue defenders. Why this sudden obsession with history???

Alright, I’ll cut out the cuteness. This is a serious issue. But not because historical remembrance is threatened. It’s not. It’s serious because, like most everything else in America today and 152 years ago – including the hue and cry over the Confederate flag two years ago, on the heels of the murders of nine black church parishioners in Charleston, South Carolina by a white supremacist – the subject is race. And people are once again being killed over it.

Courthouse in Douglas County, Georgia (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

Now that the statue hue and cry is gradually subsiding, and the U.S. media is being diverted by other dishes at the buffet table, I’ll take my turn and weigh in on monument removals (side note: like food dishes, news stories in the U.S. have a limited lifespan. Politicians learned this a long time ago, and they merely wait until the food gets stale: perhaps one reason why the incompetent blowhard in the White House hasn’t yet been impeached).

Every issue requires historical context. Many of those who now claim to be concerned about history, however, don’t provide it. Since longitudes does value historical understanding, here’s some quick context:

1. The first slave in colonial America was African John Punch, an indentured servant (a temporary bonded laborer) who ran away from Virginia to Maryland in 1640, then was captured and sentenced to lifetime servitude.
2. Slavery flourished in America for the next 225 years, when the United States Constitution finally abolished the institution.
3. Between 1861 and 1865, a war was fought between different states in America. Although there were concerns about maintaining the union of states, about the admission of new western states, and about preserving an agrarian economy in the South, the base alloy for these issues – and the war – was human bondage.
4. The war commenced after southern states withdrew from the union and formed a new nation, the Confederate States of America (C.S.A., or Confederacy).
5. Some military leaders, including United States Military Academy graduates Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson, chose to remain loyal to their southern states, abandoned the United States nation, and committed treason by taking up arms against it as part of the new Confederate nation (which wanted to preserve human bondage).
6. The Confederate States of America lost the war to the United States of America. The southern Confederate states were then readmitted to the United States of America. The period of rebuilding the devastated Southern economy and infrastructure (without slavery) is known as Reconstruction.
7. During Reconstruction, although slavery was now illegal, Southern leaders nonetheless wanted to honor their heroes, and monuments to these people began to be erected. Unlike slavery, monument erection was still legal.
8. The first monument to a Confederate soldier, “Stonewall” Jackson, was erected in 1875 in the onetime capital of the Confederacy: Richmond, Virginia.
9. The biggest flurry of Confederate monument erections occurred between 1900 and 1920, the height of the Jim Crow era (when Southern states enforced racial segregation, also legal at the time).
10. Currently, there are an estimated 1,503 Confederate memorials (statues, flagpoles, obelisks, monuments) in public places throughout the U.S.

Lynching of Rubin Stacy in Fort Lauderdale, Florida in 1935 (AP Images)

While all of this monument activity was occurring in the American South, rural blacks were being hauled into the woods at night and strung up by their necks. Between the start of Reconstruction and 1950, nearly 4,000 blacks were lynched in the American South.

***

Based on the last paragraph, one might guess that longitudes supports the removal of monuments to people with white skin who fought to maintain bondage of people with black skin. Actually, longitudes agrees with Civil War historian David Blight. He argues that Confederate monument removal is a healthy thing for America, but it should be conducted in a thoughtful, intelligent manner, and not hastily and indiscriminately, with grandstanding and finger-pointing.

For example, there’s a palpable difference between an obelisk at Yellow Tavern, Virginia denoting where Confederate General J.E.B. Stuart was killed, and the obelisk in Andersonville, Georgia that memorializes Henry Wirz, commander of infamous Andersonville prison, who was hung for war crimes. Likewise, there’s a difference between the giant stone engraving in Atlanta of General Lee astride his warhorse, Traveller, flanked by Jackson and Confederate President Jefferson Davis, all with their hats pressed to their hearts in devotion to The Cause, and a statue of civilian Robert E. Lee at his home in Arlington, Virginia, gazing ruefully across the Potomac toward Washington… a statue which currently doesn’t exist.

Years ago, while visiting a Civil War museum with my father down South, I read a letter Lee had written to his son. I was taken aback by his words, which seemed to me to be mature, reasoned, and enlightened. Unfortunately, Lee was also shaped by his unenlightened time and place. He owned slaves, he ordered them whipped, and he led the fight in a cause to preserve slavery. He wasn’t a god, despite what many neo-Confederates would like to believe. He had feet of clay like the rest of us.

So did slaveholders George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, both honored by monuments in the nation’s capital.

But longitudes also feels that too many white Americans are unwilling to walk in the shoes of non-white Americans. By virtue of their birth, they don’t have to. So they don’t make the effort to even speculate. Perhaps if these privileged white Americans envisioned themselves as being black, and living in Richmond or Charleston, and, on their daily commute, having to pass a memorial to a cause that was committed to keeping their ancestors in shackles… they might see things a bit differently regarding removal of certain flags and monuments.

Removing these memorials doesn’t remove or re-write history, despite what monument defenders claim. The history can’t be erased. The removals merely erase symbols that are painful to certain people, and a gruesome cause célèbre to others. If folks want to remember Confederate history, they don’t need a statue or flag to do so. They can go to the library and read a book.

And in the process they might learn some American history.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_monuments_and_memorials_of_the_Confederate_States_of_America

http://www.history.com/news/how-the-u-s-got-so-many-confederate-monuments

http://time.com/3703386/jim-crow-lynchings/

Book Review: “Blood on the Marias: The Baker Massacre”

(I just read the new book “Blood on the Marias: The Baker Massacre” and reviewed it on Amazon. It’s a tragic story, but I’m sharing my review here because, even at this late date, I think it’s important people know what happened on January 23, 1870)

***

It’s hard to fathom. But there was a time when the U.S. government actively engaged in ethnic cleansing.

And U.S. military and political leaders actually pondered the idea of genocide… on American soil.

American Indian history isn’t taught much in schools today. And it’s easy to understand why. Our treatment of the aboriginals of this country is a dark stain which may never be erased. And one of the most appalling chapters in this sad saga is the story of the Piegan Blackfeet of northwestern Montana. “Blood on the Marias” deals with that chapter.

Most Americans have heard of Little Bighorn, even if they don’t know the details. Colorful cavalryman George A. Custer had his last stand here. But few Americans know about Sand Creek, Washita, Ash Hollow, Bear River, and Wounded Knee, where innocent Cheyenne, Sioux, and Shoshone women and children were slaughtered in the name of Manifest Destiny. And only a precious few historians know of the Marias Massacre, also known as the Baker Massacre. There’s a reason why this abomination has been kept secret: as shocking as the above episodes are, the bloody encounter on the Marias River in 1870 is perhaps the most shocking of all.

Author Paul Wylie came upon this story by accident, while researching for a previous book. But he’s produced the first comprehensive analysis of the Baker Massacre, and his scholarly treatment is long overdue. It evidently took him years to pry details of this massacre from the iron vaults of the National Archives, and from army correspondence papers, personal letters, and obscure newspaper accounts. He frames his examination of the massacre – in truth, a “mass murder” – with a solid history of the Piegan Blackfeet, including their fascinating and fortuitous 1806 encounter with explorer Meriwether Lewis.

We also get the all-too-familiar perfect storm scenario that led to the attack: the inevitable broken treaties, murders (on both sides), settler and newspaper hysterics, and heinous practice of whiskey trading by unscrupulous frontier lowlifes. This all dovetailed with a U.S. Army run by commanders who were hardened by the Civil War, who had a penchant for glory-seeking, and whose brutality was informed by racism at best, and sociopathic tendencies at worst (Sheridan and Sherman receive full treatment here).

Without giving away too much, the Baker Massacre had several things which separated it from similar atrocities against Native Americans: first, the Piegan village that was attacked was, at the time, being ravaged by smallpox; second, most of the Piegan braves had gone hunting, leaving primarily women, children, and elderly; third, the attack occurred at dawn, in sub-zero temperatures, with minimal resistance from the villagers (only one soldier was killed, with a minimum 173 Indians killed, although probably many more); fourth, the commander and many of the troops were drunk; and fifth… it was the wrong village.

Wylie, a retired attorney, must have really struggled to restrain his emotions while writing this book. He slips into subjectivity only once, in his Preface, when he describes what happened to those villagers as being one of the saddest things he’s ever encountered. The rest of the book is entirely objective and buttressed by credible footnotes.

The Baker Massacre is, indeed, incredibly sad. It’s also one of the most shameful incidents in this nation’s history. It’s been kept under wraps because the army wanted it kept under wraps. If you’re a history teacher, please devote class time to the history of Plains Indians and the Baker Massacre. If you’re not a history teacher, but enjoy reading about history… strike a blow for truth and get a copy of this book.

Blackfeet tipis, circa 1910.  Photograph by Arthur Rafton-Canning

Damned Yankees and Unreconstructed Rebels

Last week my wife and I visited our daughter in Nashville, Tennessee. She and her fiancé, Mike, had recently moved there, so we headed down from Ohio to “house-warm” their new home.

The new place needed some yardwork, so Mike and I made a trip to the nearest Home Depot to get a few things. While searching for drainage tile, we were approached by “Jimmy,” a store employee.

“Can I help y’all with anything?” Jimmy asked in a thick Southern drawl. He looked about 55 years old. He had big, sad eyes and a large belly that fully stretched his bright orange apron.

“Well, we’re looking for some piping to divert water from a downspout,” I said. “My daughter and her fiancé just bought a new house, and we need to fix a few things.”

“Where d’yall move from?” he asked.

“From Philadelphia,” Mike responded.

“Oh… a Yankee,” he said with just a trace of a smile.

(I felt something coming. Sure enough, it came).

“Know the difference ‘tween a Yankee and a damned Yankee?” Jimmy asked us.

“Uh… don’t know,” we answered.

“A Yankee comes down here then goes home. A damned Yankee stays!”

Mike and I laughed. Mike then offered an olive branch by saying his original home, Maryland, was a border state. I thought about telling Jimmy that I went to a school in Pennsylvania… near Gettysburg. Then I thought that might not be a good idea.

Jimmy then elaborated that he actually wasn’t prejudiced. He liked everybody, no matter where they hailed from. To prove it, he waylaid us for about 10 minutes while he talked about himself.

Jimmy turned out to be really nice, and very helpful. But his “damned Yankee” joke, and his insistence that he wasn’t prejudiced toward Northerners, reminded me that, yeah… attitudes are just a little different in good ole Dixie. Victorious in the war, we Yankees don’t make North-South distinctions as often as Southerners, even in jest.  I don’t think I’ve ever heard a fellow Yankee mutter the term “Damned Rebel.”

 ___________

Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant

The American Civil War ended 150 years ago this month. The Battle of Appomattox Court House occurred on April 9, 1865, where Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union General Ulysses S. Grant. Lee’s capitulation created a wave of Confederate surrenders throughout the South. The last land battle, the Battle of Palmito Ranch, occurred on May 12-13. The CSS Shenandoah held out until November, when it finally waved the white flag off Liverpool, England.

In victory, Grant was magnanimous. He forbade his troops from celebrating, and his terms of surrender were generous in the extreme.

In defeat, Lee was dignified and noble. He discussed with Grant the last time they’d met, twenty years earlier, during the Mexican-American War. Following Appomattox and for the rest of his life, Lee would not allow anything unkind to be said of Grant.

Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee

There have been a lot of changes in the last 150 years: Reconstruction, industrialization, Jim Crow laws, two World Wars, civil and voting rights, a black president elected, instant mobilization and communication… Elvis.  But despite our long, strange trip, there remains a gnawing resentment in some quarters. It stems from the fact that a long, bloody war was fought, and a collection of rebellious states was vanquished. Many of the descendants of those who lost the war cling to a forlorn hope their ancestors will one day be vindicated.

But the resentment is more complex. Today it’s bound up in, not only the Rebel flag, but passionate feelings about racial and ethnic diversity, religion, culture, tax policy, states’ rights versus federal regulation, immigration, health care access, etc.  Sure, there are many Northerners who are just as passionate about these issues.  But I don’t think it’s as visceral as down South.

A few years ago I read a great book: Confederates in the Attic by Tony Horwitz. Horwitz – a Civil War buff, a liberal, a Jew, and a Yankee – made a solo journey through the South, meeting and talking with various neo-Confederates about the war (some of whom merely had a fetish about a bygone era, but others who were full-fledged racists and xenophobes). At the end of his journey, he came to this eye-opening conclusion:

For many Southerners I’d met, remembrance of the War had become a talisman against modernity, an emotional lever for their reactionary politics…While I felt almost no ideological kinship with these unreconstructed rebels, I’d come to recognize that in one sense they were right. The issues at stake in the Civil War – race in particular – remained raw and unresolved, as did the broad question the conflict posed: Would America remain one nation?”

In the 1860s it was a regional conflict.  Today the conflict is more ideological.  I don’t think America will allow itself to become ripped apart ever again. But things seem to get uglier all the time in Washington. And I see more “Don’t Tread On Me” flags lately than I care to.

That being said, I thought Jimmy, Mike and I showed the right spirit.  Like Ulysses S. Grant, Mike and I were magnanimous in laughing at Jimmy’s Yankee joke, and patiently listening to him ramble.

And I’m confident that Jimmy – similar to Robert E. Lee – will never allow anything ugly to be said about carpetbagging Yankees like us.

A Horrible Glory: Gettysburg 150th Anniversary

The sesquicentennial of the Battle of Gettysburg is only a few days away.  It’s a very notable anniversary, for the reasons explained below.  Unfortunately, though, this date will largely go unrecognized by much of the firecracker crowd, as well as those who think history is just boring. 

Not at longitudes.  Here, we feel historical understanding is crucial to an enlightened populace.

But rather than offering a rehash of this epic battle, which can be found any number of places, I thought it would be fun to do a quiz, sort of an “Are you smarter than a 10^th grader?” challenge.  Just 10 questions, and the top scorer will be served free hardtack and stale coffee in the mizzentop.  But first, for you non-Civil War buffs, a few basics about the battle are in order:

The Battle of Gettysburg was fought over three days, July 1-3, 1863, near the town of Gettysburg in south-central Pennsylvania.  It was the most important battle of the American Civil War.  It was also the bloodiest conflict ever on the continent of North America, with over 46,000 killed, wounded, captured, or missing.  

Why was this battle so pivotal to the war?  Until Gettysburg, the southern Confederates – beyond all expectations – had been keeping pace with the northern army, which was far superior in manpower, supplies, ammunition, etc.  Behind General Robert E. Lee’s inspirational leadership, and Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson’s military genius, the rebels had won strategic victories in the South at Second Bull Run (Manassas), Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville.

Union Gen. George G. Meade

Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee

Confederate President Jefferson Davis hoped to threaten federal soil and compel President Lincoln to a truce, with recognition of a confederation of states as a separate and distinct country (and perpetuate the institution of slavery).  So Lee invaded the North, the culmination of which was the killing fields of Gettysburg.  Lee’s defeat there turned the tide for the Union and was a blow from which the South never fully recovered.

But hey, enough of my yakkin’… let’s boogie!

1.       Until the battle, the town of Gettysburg was known for what?

a.       Site of a Lutheran college

b.       Home of American Red Cross founder Clara Barton

c.       A Yuengling brewery

d.       A cartridge factory

2.       Which of these illustrious individuals fought at Gettysburg?

a.       James Naismith, credited with inventing basketball

b.       Abner Doubleday, credited with inventing baseball

c.       Lew Wallace, author of “Ben-Hur”

Billy the Kid

d.       William H. Bonney (aka “Billy the Kid”)

 3.       Which cavalry officer did Lee reprimand for arriving late at Gettysburg?

a.       John Buford, Jr.

b.       Alfred Pleasonton

c.       J.E.B. Stuart

d.       Nathan Bedford Forrest

4.       The bulk of the Union forces occupied what ground during the battle?

a.       Culp’s Hill

b.       Seminary Ridge

c.       Big Round Top

d.       Cemetery Ridge

5.       Which highly respected general was killed on the first day after yelling “Forward, men, for God’s sake, forward!”

a.       Winfield Scott Hancock

b.       Benjamin F. Butler

c.       A.P. Hill

d.       John F. Reynolds

6.       The hero of the second-day’s clash at Little Round Top, Joshua Laurence Chamberlain, was what before the war?

a.       A grocery store clerk from Indiana

b.       A rhetoric professor from Maine

c.       A West Point alumnus who graduated last in his class

d.       A New York policeman

7.       What was the name given to the most famous charge during the battle?

a.       Pickett’s Charge

b.       Longstreet’s Charge

c.       The Charge of the Light Brigade

d.       Custer’s Last Stand

8.       President Lincoln delivered his famous “Gettysburg Address” when?

a.       Four days after the battle

b.       Four weeks after the battle

c.       Four months after the battle

d.       Four years after the battle

9.       Which later U.S. president established a home near the battlefield?

a.       Theodore Roosevelt

b.       Franklin D. Roosevelt

c.       Dwight D. Eisenhower

d.       Lyndon B. Johnson

10.   What did Robert E. Lee do after his defeat at Gettysburg?

a.       He took personal responsibility for the loss

b.       He blamed Jeff Davis

c.       He cried

d.       He coined the passive-tense, pass-the-buck political cliché “Mistakes were made”

e.       He sang “I wish I was in Dixie, hooray, hooray”

Col. Joshua L. Chamberlain

If you’ve got the guts of Joshua L. Chamberlain and want to fix bayonets on this quiz, just respond with your answers in the blog Comments section, on my Facebook page, or email me at pkurtz58@gmail.com.

The Battle of Gettysburg was one of the most important events in the history of the United States.  Although it’s terrible that a war had to be fought to finally end slavery, President Lincoln and the North prevailed and kept the country from becoming a “divided house.”  Even if you “don’t know much about history” (as Sam Cooke once sang), I hope you gain at least a little insight into America’s only civil war, during this 150^th anniversary of the battle at Gettysburg.

In closing, I’ll invoke a banality that I usually shy away from, but which I think is actually appropriate on this occasion: God Bless America.

USS Monitor Sailors Buried at Arlington

 

On Friday two sailors who went down with the American Civil War ironclad USS Monitor 150 years ago were buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery.  The sailors’ skeletons were found inside the vessel’s turret, which was discovered on the floor of the Atlantic in 1973 and was raised in 2002.  Descendants of those sailors who perished in the sinking attended the burial.

The Monitor is perhaps the most famous vessel of the Civil War.  A Swedish-born inventor, John Ericsson, designed it just after the war broke out in 1861.  The U.S. government wanted a steam vessel made of iron that could compete with the Confederate ironclad CSS Virginia (known as the wooden frigate USS Merrimack before the war).  The most distinguishing feature of the Monitor, aside from its iron hull, was the revolving gun turret.  This allowed the ship to fire its guns in any direction, regardless of its position.  The turret was frequently referred to as a giant “cheesebox” due to its odd cylindrical shape and eight-layered, bolted plates.  It mounted two 15-inch Dahlgren guns, each weighing 16,000 pounds (7,300 kilograms).

On March 9, 1862 at Hampton Roads, Virginia, the Monitor clashed with her nemesis the Virginia in the most famous naval conflict in U.S. history.  It was the first-ever engagement between two steam-powered iron ships and it ushered in a new era of naval warfare.  The battle itself was a draw, although the Monitor was successful in defending the federal stronghold at Hampton Roads.  She later participated in the Battle of Drewry’s Bluff on the James River.

In December 1862 the Monitor was being towed to Beaufort, North Carolina by the USS Rhode Island in preparation to an attack on Wilmington, NC.  On the 30th a gale struck about 16 nautical miles (30 kilometers) southeast of Cape Hatteras.  Sixteen of the 62-member crew drowned during the vessel’s sinking, including the two unidentified sailors in the turret. (Note: a rescue party of the Rhode Island later found shelter onboard the supply hulk USS William Badger…please click the “Blubber Book” tab for info regarding my biography of the Badger).  

The identity of the two sailors is as yet unknown.  Forensic evidence reveals that both were Caucasians, about 5-foot-7-inches tall, with one sailor in his late teens or early 20s and the other in his 30s.  DNA tests of the remains are ongoing.

Acclaimed Civil War historian James McPherson believes that Union sailors deserve to be honored as much as the soldiers who fought at Gettysburg.  Most were volunteers, and those who served on ironclads knew that, unlike wooden ships, their vessels would immediately sink once enough water broke through the hulls.  They knew that such a vessel could be “a coffin for the crew.”