Grapes of wrath
Let’s not brawl over markers of the Civil War
Iam disgusted with the debate over Confederate battle monuments. A handful of protesters on the extremes of the left and right have created a furor where none otherwise existed. And in their deranged, manic lust for confrontation, they have trivialized the sacrifices made during the Civil War.
Time marches on. Memories fade. Old generations die away. It is easy to forget. But we would do well to remind ourselves just how awful that war really was.
James Madison, the father of the Constitution, was also the last founding father to pass away, in 1836. At the end of his days, he saw the first portents of civil war, during the Nullification Crisis of 1832-1833 — when South Carolina nullified the Tariff of 1828 and talk of secession began in
earnest. So horrified was he at the impulse to break apart the Union that he took pen to paper to give his final “Advice to My Country”:
The advice nearest to my heart and deepest in my convictions is that the Union of the States be cherished and perpetuated. Let the open enemy to it be regarded as a Pandora with her box opened; and the disguised one, as the Serpent creeping with his deadly wiles into Paradise.
But the country did not heed his warning. Pandora’s Box was opened. The Serpent snuck into Paradise. And our forefathers paid the price.
Most everybody thought that the war would be over quickly, but after the First Battle of Bull Run, in the summer of 1861, the stark reality set in. This would be a war of attrition. The casualties added up, and up, and up. 23,000 at Shiloh. 18,000 at Second Bull Run. 22,000 at Antietam. 30,000 at Chancellorsville. 35,000 at Chickamauga. 46,000 at Gettysburg.
Military technology had outpaced military tactics, so Americans on both sides of the conflict paid with their lives and limbs. When it was all said and done, more than 600,000 people died during the war. Think about all the children they never had, and their grandchildren and greatgrandchildren. The toll is staggering. It runs into the millions.
The first line of Julia Ward Howe’s “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” released in 1862, cast the contest in an apocalyptic light. God’s divine wrath had come down upon the United States:
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.
The cause of the war? Slavery, obviously. But that was only part of its origin. In truth, decades of mutual enmity had separated the North from the South. And what Madison had once called the “violence of faction” was let loose upon the land.
Indeed, most politicians in the North, including Abraham Lincoln, had no interest in ending slavery early on in the war. They believed the battle was being fought strictly to preserve the Union. But when the death toll became so staggeringly high, Lincoln resolved that so many could not have died in vain.
Whatever your politics — whatever your views on President Donald Trump, Obamacare, tax cuts, etc. — the Civil War is too important to be part of today’s squabbles, which are quaint in comparison. The alt-right wackos praising Robert E. Lee, as well as the antifa lunatics tearing down statues, should sit down and shutup.
The Civil War — if it serves no other purpose for this generation — should be a reminder of what this country is capable of doing to itself when Americans decide that they hate each other more than they love peace.
Maybe we should have a public debate over what to do with the statutes of rebels from days long gone. But if we do, we should do it respectfully — mindful of the sacrifices of a generation that experienced a carnage that, Godwilling, will never happen again.