Morning Reads for November 12, 2018

A Veterans Day personal contemplation in light of all the blather: For all the Yankees who care nothing and know little or nothing about the War of Northern Aggression, on this day in history General William Tecumseh Sherman ordered the destruction of railroad and telegraph lines between Atlanta and Northwest Georgia in 1864. He was preparing to change modern warfare by attacking civilians, and to steal and destroy as he deemed fit. (Sort of a throwback to Attila the Hun). His Union troops March to the Sea introduced unknown barbarism to American soil. http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/shermans-march-sea

On Veterans Day it bears acknowledging that more soldiers died in the Union war on the Confederacy than any other war in American history. There were from 620,000 to 750,000 who gave their lives, depending on interpretation of incomplete census data and the fact that many Confederate records were destroyed. The North was fighting for their beliefs and desire to crush the South, and the South was fighting to protect their homes and families in this war that was fought on Southern soil. There were unknown numbers of civilians who were killed also.

At that point in history, there were only 34 total states. Eleven of those states seceded in February 1861 and formed the CSA, Confederate States of America. The Southern military surrendered in Virginia in April 1865, following Sherman’s path of slaughter through Georgia, then up through the Carolinas. Then Union troops occupied the Confederate states and martial law existed (so-called “Reconstruction”) until 1877, when the last of the Union troops were withdrawn and the War finally ended.

Sixteen long years of Northern aggression in which the North and West grew rich while the once-rich South became poor for a century. The national political power of the rich South disappeared. Historians are less sure about the results of the postwar Reconstruction, especially regarding the second class citizenship of the freedmen and their poverty. The war destroyed most of the wealth that had existed in the South. All accumulated investment in Confederate bonds was forfeited; most banks and railroads were bankrupt. Income per person in the South dropped to less than 40 percent of that of the North, a condition that lasted until well into the 20th century. Southern influence in the U.S. federal government, previously considerable, was greatly diminished until the latter half of the 20th century.

At least 258,000 of the deaths were Southern soldiers in those 11 states who were vastly under equipped compared to the North’s superior military might and a pool of 23 states from which to draft. The total number of deaths elevates the significance of the Civil War and makes a dramatic statement about how the war is a central moment in American history. It helps you understand what a devastating experience this was, particularly in the South which had a much smaller population. It left hundreds of thousands of widows and fatherless children. But like the Phoenix, our ancestors worked hard to dig out of that abyss and create today’s South that attracts people from all over the nation and the world.

On this day, perhaps some steel-trap minds will contemplate why Southern-born people in the aftermath of that war between then-existing 34 states honored their husbands, fathers, and brothers with memorials to their deaths, like Stone Mountain and other sites now being assailed. And why many of their descendants still honor the memory of those hundreds of thousands who paid the ultimate price for their loved ones and are integral to the history of Georgia, the South, and our nation.

(Thank you for the GaPol revamp that allows my reverie and keeps this from taking so much space on the main page.)