History Unplugged

Most Americans know very little about the Civil War and haven’t even paid much attention to the ongoing sesquicentennial of the bloody conflict that tore our nation apart. They’ve probably heard of Gettysburg and remember the burning of Atlanta from Gone with the Wind, or at least know when the war began and ended. If you’re feeling smug now because you’re thinking about Fort Sumter and Appomattox, think again.

History books say that the first shots of the Civil War were fired in Charleston Harbor on April 12, 1861. They get the location right, but, strictly speaking, not the date. South Carolina seceded from the Union on December 20, 1860. A few weeks later, January 9 to be exact, a Union supply ship from New York, Star of the West, was heading for Fort Sumter when cannons opened fire from a battery on Morris Island. The gunmen were cadets from The Citadel, Charleston’s famous military academy. Their shots inflicted minimal damage, but Star’s Captain John McGowan retreated when he saw the approach of two steamers from Fort Moultrie with an armed schooner in tow. Had McGowan not changed course, Fort Sumter would surely have returned the cadets’ fire, and although the incident didn’t provoke war, there’s no denying these early salvos.

Okay, so maybe that’s a bemusing technicality. My challenge to the war ending with Robert E. Lee at Appomattox, on April 9, 1865, is made of sturdier stuff. The great general’s surrender involved only the 28,000 rebels under his command and left five times that many stirring up trouble across Dixie. Sure enough, the fighting continued, and a full month passed before the last land battle exploded on the Palmito Ranch in Texas. It was a Southern victory like the Star of the West encounter, but there was still more to come. At sea, the Confederate cruiser Shenandoah continued to capture Union whaling boats in the Bering Sea and didn’t  haul down the Stars and Bars until she docked in London November 6, 1865, seven months after Lee’s surrender. As the saying goes, it’s all in the details.

Make what you like of this Civil War trivia, but for me, the most fitting end to the conflict was not what transpired between Lee and Grant at Appomattox but a couple of their officers. As he accepted the surrender of soldiers under Confederate General John Brown Gordon, Union General Joshua Chamberlain ordered his troops to stand at attention and “carry arms” as a show of respect. When the  the formal stacking of arms was completed, Gordon spun his horse to face Chamberlain, touched his mount gently, and the Union officer recorded what happened next. “The animal slightly reared, and as he wheeled, his head swung down with a graceful bow, and General Gordon dropped his sword point to his toe in salutation. It was honor answering honor. On our part, not a sound of trumpet more, nor roll of drum; not a cheer, nor word nor whisper of vain-glorying, nor motion of man standing again at the order, but an awed stillness rather, and breath-holding, as if it were the passing of the dead!” After four years costing over a million casualties including 600,000 deaths, it’s somehow reassuring to know both sides displayed such gallantry at the end.

Note: The Union Siege of New Orleans plays a big role in my time travel book, Still Time.