Reply #13: A lot of truth to it ...

[RoyGBiv]

One of Lee's charges to Longstreet after the surrender was to put quick thought into writing his memoirs so that "the truth" was left for future generations. (Some crazy irony there for you, if you're familiar with the controversies later.) And, yes, there was a Virginia-centric bloc as well as the Lee Cult, which were not entirely the same thing but had some similar themes. William Jones, Jubal Early, etc. made a living off of it.

I take issue with the "getting on with their lives" phrasing, which I know is not original with you. I've seen that for a long, long time too. A lot -- most -- Southerners and Northerners tried to get on with their lives, but what their lives were determined in part whether they wrote or argued or whatever. Longstreet, for example, was drawn into it in the 1870s. Lee never published a word. Then there was Ambrose Bierce, for whom it could be said never got on with his life except that his life was to a large degree writing, so he wrote. Not surprisingly the Civil War formed a significant backdrop to some of his best writing.

The root issue with this, to borrow from Ricky Ricardo, is that the South had 'lot of 'splainin' to do. How did we, God's chosen people and bearer of the original traditions of the Revolution and the Constitution, lose this thing against the godless heathens of Yankeedom? Southerners, before the war and well into it, believed their own press, in other words. Oddly enough, a lot of Unionists did too.

One of the first histories of the war was written by the Northern journalist Swinton (first name I can't think of off the top of my head). Trying to figure out how the South lost, as opposed to why the North won, was one of his main purposes. He is among those responsible for popularizing Gettysburg as the so-called "turning point" of the war. He interviewed Union and Confederate soldiers and wrote his book, and it put Gettysburg at the center of the thing, with most explanations of the result of the war resting on the outcome of that battle.

This had started somewhat before with a Southern journalist who wrote some horribly flawed accounts of battles along with English and German observers who had their own things to say. They were by and large fascinated by the Southern army. Sir Arthur Freemantle's book was among the best, and it was wholly concerned with the South, ergo it's name _Three Months in the Southern States_. He was a witness to Gettysburg and did a lot to popularize that battle outside the US.

In any case, it's wrong to suggest that Northerners weren't doing the same things that Southerners were, but they did it in a different way. Rosecrans, Grant, Sherman, et al all published accounts of their battles, both in article and book form. Col. Chamberlain was obsessed with it. For Northern soldiers, they largely concerned themselves with controversy among themselves or with certain opponents. Chamberlain and Oates faced off against each other at Gettysburg and argued incessantly about how far the Confederate advance made it and whether Chamberlain's "wheel" move was what repulsed them, for example. Meanwhile, Southerners did that too while also trying to explain (away) their military loss.

For all of them, it became political and messed up in national and local politics. (The Chamberlain and Oates argument had a clearly political motive from both fronts.) And that's a whole 'nother can o' beans.