To: "Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion" <percy-l AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: Re: [percy-l] Walker Percy on the Cil War
Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2014 11:21:48 -0400
Dear Mr Beck Its the 50th anniversary of Freedom summer Take it in! For a moment don't think Humans are messy And the good doctor knew it Better than most! Take care and remember to remember
Janet, I'm not sure we are a "shining light to the world" anymore or have been for a long time. Our credibility has been on a downhill slide since Viet Nam. I'm more apt to remember Percy's analogy of the old, rusting, roller coaster at the beginning of Love in the Ruins: "now [is]the blessing [on the U.S.A.] or the luck is over, the machinery clanks, the chain catches hold, and the cars jerk forward?" (I love that passage.)
-David
Quoting janetcantor37--- via Percy-L <percy-l AT lists.ibiblio.org>:
> How lovely to read this now. But how sad because I am beginning to > think that this is becoming obsolete thinking these days. There is > more race rancor in our conversation today than I can remember since > the 60's. It shouldn't be this way. I wish it were not so. We have a > great country. I hope we don't lose it because we are asleep at the > switch. It is a country worth saving, a shining light to the world. I > wonder what Percy would be saying about current attitudes? > Janet Cantor > > > ________________________________ > From: Jim Forest <jhforest AT gmail.com> > To: Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion > <percy-l AT lists.ibiblio.org> > Sent: Thursday, June 19, 2014 6:04 AM > Subject: [percy-l] Walker Percy on the Cil War > > > > from the March 29, 1957 issue of Commonweal > > https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/american-war > > The American War > > by Walker Percy > > WHAT ARE THE reasons for the current revival of interest in > the Civil War? That there is such a revival is undeniable. Books on the War > pour off the presses every week?some of them, incidentally, of a very high > order, such as Bruce Catton's This Hallowed Ground and Shelby Foote's Shiloh! > What is at once noticeable about the current literature is its frankly > non-political character and the absence of the old rancor. The race issue may > be still very much an issue, but Northern and Southern historians > have achieved > a common view of the War itself. When Catton from Michigan and Foote from > Mississippi write about the battle of Shiloh, it sounds like the same battle. > Catton is never more eloquent than when he is appraising Lee's generalship; > Foote is just as impressed by the fighting qualities of the Northern soldier. > Indeed, from this distance the underdog psychology probably kindles > the reader's > enthusiasm more readily than do the social issues?and perhaps this is just as > well. > > The general impression outside the South seems to be that it > is the rest of the country which has rediscovered the Civil War, that > the South > has never stopped looking back. This is mistaken, I believe, and is due to an > understandable optical illusion. The truth is, at least in my > experience, that > the Southerner never thinks about the Civil War?until he finds himself among > Northerners. Then, for some reason-perhaps because the Northerner insists on > casting him in his historical role and the Southerner is perfectly willing to > oblige, or because, lost in the great cities of the North, he feels for the > first time the need of his heritage?he breaks out the Stars and Bars. I > remember traveling from Alabama to summer camp in Wisconsin in the twenties. > The train would stop in Chicago to pick up more boys. We from Alabama > had heard > as little about the Civil War as the Boer War and cared less, but every time > the Illinois boys got on in Chicago the War started, a real brawl yet not > really bad-tempered. The same sort of thing must have happened during > the World > War I when an Alabama division suddenly found itself in a donnybrook with the > Fighting 69th at Plattsburg. > > The truth of it is, I think, that the whole country, South > included, is just beginning to see the Civil War whole and entire for > the first > time. The thing was too big and too bloody, too full of suffering and hatred, > too closely knit into the fabric of our meaning as a people, to be > held off and > looked at-until now. It is like a man walking away from a mountain. > The bigger > it is, the farther he's got to go before he can see it. Then one day he looks > back and there it is, this colossal thing lying across his past. > > A history of the shifting attitudes toward the War would be > enlightening. There would probably emerge a pattern common to such great > events, a dialectic of loss-recovery: the long period of recollection, of in > tense partisan interest which is followed by a gradual fading of the > Event into > a dusty tapestry. (Lee and Grant at Appomattox taking their place beside > Washington Crossing the Delaware.) Then under certain circumstances, there is > the recovery. Perhaps Washington will never be recovered, having been > ossified > too long in grammar school tableaus. But Lincoln and Grant and McClellan and > even the legendary Lee, who after all are closer in time to > Washington than to > us, have come very much alive. Why, then, their recovery, and what > exactly has > been recovered? > > WHAT HAS been recovered, it seems clear, is not the politics > or the sociology of the War, nor even the slavery issue, but the > fight itself. > The tableau I remember from school was the Reconciliation, Grant and > Lee in the > McLean house, Lee healing the wounds at Washington College. Little was said > about the War, except that it was tragic; brother fighting against brother, > etc. Undoubtedly this was the necessary if somewhat boring emphasis for the > textbooks. Now, after ninety years of Reconciliation, we can take a > look at the > fight itself. > > What a fight it was! The South is a very big place, yet > there is hardly a district that didn't have its skirmish, its Federal gunboat > sunk in a bayou?where some old-timer won't tell you, "Yes, they came > through here." It is startling to realize that there were more casualties > in the Civil War than in all the American forces of World War II, and > more than > in all other American wars put together. Of 3,000,000 men under arms, > 2,300,000 > for the Union, 750,000 for the Con federacy, 618,222 died, with total > casualties probably going well past a million. For sheer concentrated fury, > there are few events even in modern warfare to equal that terrible > September 17 > at Antietam Creek when over 20,000 men fell?or the May-June of '64 > when, beginning > with the battle of the Wilderness, Grant lost on the average of 2,000 > men a day > for 30 days, culminating in the slaughter at Cold Harbor when over 8,000 men > fell in about ten minutes! There were murderous battles in the West which one > never heard of, like Stone's River with over 25,000 casualties. > > Yet terrible as it was, it is impossible to read of the Army > of Northern Virginia or of the Army of the Potomac without being caught up in > the tremendous drama. The armies were big enough so that the action > took place > on an epic scale, yet the War was, as much as were the Punic Wars, a personal > encounter of the opposing leaders. Lee was very much aware of this > grim beauty > when the fog rose over Fredericksburg showing Burnside's entire army facing > his, battle flags flying. "It is > well that war is so terrible,? he said; "else we should grow too fond of > it." But what gave the Civil War the tragic proportions of the Iliad > was the fact, apparent after Shiloh, that the American soldier, > Union and > Confederate, was not going to be beaten until he could literally fight no > longer or was killed. When his leader was great, he was almost > invincible; when > his leader was mediocre, he was still superb. Pickett's charge is justly > famous, but just as heartbreaking was the Union assault on > Longstreet's position in the sunken road at Fredericksburg. > The difference was that where Pickett?s men had every confidence in Lee, > Couch's men knew very well that Burnside was wrong. Yet they attacked all day > long, and only stopped when the field was piled so high with dead that they > could no longer run over them. > > AS IN ALL tragedies, a great deal seemed to de pend upon > fate. Small mischances become as important as Thetis?s oversight when she > dipped Achilles?all but his heel?into the Styx. A Confederate > courier loses some > battle orders; they are found wrapped around three cigars and > brought to McClellan; the direct result is the battle > of Antietam. One can't read of that war without playing the > fascinating game of > what-if.... What if Jackson had lived through Chancellorsville? What if > McClellan had listened to Phil Kearny (instead of the Pinkerton detectives) > during the Seven Days? What if Jeb Stuart had tended to business at > Gettysburg? > Lee was always just missing his Cannae and Lincoln's generals were > always just > short of ordinary competence?until he got Grant. > > Besides the great failures, there were the great successes, > the heroes' deeds which are always irresistible to the human spirit > and so pass > over immediately into the legend of the race. There was Chancellorsville when > Lee, facing Hooker's 85,000, divided his battered army of 43,000, > sent Jackson > to the left, leaving him in front of Hooker with 17,000 men?and attacked and > very nearly destroyed the Army of the Potomac. There was the Union's > "Pap" Thomas's assault on Missionary Ridge at Chattanooga and the > subsequent demoralization of Bragg. And there was the fateful decision at > Spotsylvania when, after taking a fearful mauling, Grant, instead of falling > back toward Washington as the army had been doing for the past three years, > retreated south, sliding around Lee's right. > > Therein lies the tragedy. If Lee had been a little more or a > little less?if he had gotten his Cannae or if he had only been just competent > and been whipped by McClellan in '62?the results would still have > been notable, > but they would not have approached the terror and piteousness of > what actually did happen. The > summer of 1864 has a Gotterdammerung quality. With the issue hardly in doubt > after Gettysburg, the fighting nevertheless increased in fury with both sides > attacking steadily, without the usual remissions between battles. > > YET WITH all the horror, or perhaps because of it, there was > always the feeling then, and even now as we read about it, that the things a > man lived through were somehow twice as real, twice as memorable as the peace > that followed. Peace is better than war, yet it is a sad fact that > some of the > heroes of the War, like Grant and Longstreet and many a lesser man, found the > peace a long descent into mediocrity. In > the ordeal the man himself seemed to become more truly himself, revealing his > character or the lack of it, than at any time before or after. If a man was > secretly cowardly or secretly brave, stupid or shrewd, that was what he was > shown to be. The War infallibly discovered his hidden weakness and his hidden > strength. Hooker the braggart was reduced to impotence simply by having Lee's > small army in front of him (and understandably, for the veterans of > the Army of > the Potomac used to say to replacements fresh from victories in the West: > "Wait till you meet Bobby Lee"). Grant the ne'er-do-well matured in > defeat and became a noble and sensitive human being by having Lee at > his mercy. > It is no wonder that there was the temptation, especially in the > ruined South, > to enshrine those four years as the four years of truth and to discount all > other times, even the future. > > Then there were the thousand and one lesser encounters, any > one of which, if it had happened at another time, would have its own > literature > and its own historians: the Confederate raiders, Farragut's capture of New > Orleans, the battle of the ironclads, Forrest's miniature Cannae at Bryce > Crossroads, James Andrews' stealing the > Confederate train, and so on. It was the last of the wars of > individuals, when > a single man's ingenuity and pluck not only counted for some thing in itself > but could conceivably a:ffect the entire issue. Forrest himself is quite > unbelievable. It is as if Launcelot had been reborn in Memphis. He > carried into > battle a cavalry saber sharpened to a razor edge and actually killed men with > it. He actually did fool a Yankee commander into surrendering by parading a > single cannon back and forth in the distance as they parleyed. He > actually did > have twenty-nine horses shot from under him. > > THERE IS an ambiguity about this new interest in the Civil > War. On the one hand it is the past recaptured, the authentic recovery of the > long agony during which this nation came to be what it is. Yet there is also > the temptation to yield to an historical illusion by which the past seems to > gain in stature and authenticity as it recedes and the present to be > discounted > because it is the here and now. We sense the illusion in the words of the > old-timer, "Yes, they came through here," in which it is somehow > implied that this place has existed in a long trivial aftermath after its one > day of glory. Perhaps the North is in for a mild case of the same romanticism > which the South recovered from over fifty years ago. > > The increased emphasis upon the fighting at the expense of > ideology is probably good. One does well, anyway, not to apply ideology too > closely to that war. James Truslow Adams can talk about the March of > Democracy > and Bruce Catton can call the Union army a truly revolutionary army > and perhaps > they are right. Perhaps the War was really and truly fought over > slavery. But the > other case can be made too. It is difficult to see the yeoman farmers who > largely made up the Army of the Tennessee and the Army of Northern > Virginia as > Southern Bourbons. The South had some reason to regard the fight as a > continuation of the American Revolution. After all it was her soil which was > being invaded and her independence which was being denied. The South > might even > have the better of the constitutional argument; yet what won out seems to > transcend all the arguments. For it is that extraordinary thing, the American > Union. > > * * * > Jim & Nancy Forest > > Kanisstraat 5 / 1811 GJ Alkmaar / The Netherlands > > Jim's books: www.jimandnancyforest.com/books/ > > Jim & Nancy web site: www.jimandnancyforest.com > > Photo albums: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jimforest/sets/ > Photo collections: www.flickr.com/photos/jimforest/collections/ > On Pilgrimage blog: http://jimandnancyonpilgrimage.blogspot.com/ > A Tale of Two Kidneys blog: http://ataleof2kidneys.blogspot.com/ > In Communion site: www.incommunion.org > Forest-Flier Editorial Services: http://forestflier.com/ > > * * * > -- > An archive of all list discussion is available at > https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/percy-l/ > > Visit The Walker Percy Project at http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy > > Contact the moderator: percy-l-owner at lists.ibiblio.org (note: add > @ sign when addressing email)
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Re: [percy-l] Walker Percy on the Cil War
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