monuments and memories

April 9th, 1865. The last major battle of the Civil War. Where was it fought? By whom? On that day on the eastern shore of Mobile Bay, several brigades of Union soldiers overwhelmed the Confederate defenders of Fort Blakeley. Among the people who fought were over five thousand volunteers who had been slaves until January 1st 1863. Now free they choose to fight for the freedom of others. People they would never know. 

I wonder what they would have made of the early twentieth-century Americans who erected monuments to their opponents. And the early twenty-first century Americans who insist on holding on to those monuments as their legacy. When in actuality the efforts of those soldiers of African descent, and their comrades, have passed on to us something much more precious. What have we chosen to do with their legacy?

Although this, “the last major battle of the Civil War,” largely fought on the Union side by emancipated slaves, was concluded the same day Grant accepted Lee’s surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia, I do not recall a comparable commemorative stamp in the series printed from 2011 to 2015 nor one in Black History Month collections.

Recently The New Yorker has published articles on siblings sorting through memories of their mother, and a husband and wife sorting through their extraneous possessions, the latter in lieu of leaving the task to their heirs. Instead that couple chose to make an intentional and living legacy. Seems like a good model to emulate. 

But the orderly and thoughtful disposition of their worldly goods probably grew not out of a momentary decision - inspired by Marie Kondo and “The Swedish Art of Death Cleaning” - but a lifelong development of patterns of behavior.

Monks, it is said, practice coming to terms with their death, early in their vocational careers. Perhaps, it is further said, all of us should. 

My guess is that holding on to memories, or possessions, comes harder for some than others. This in part because possessions are tied to memories, and memories to emotions. It is hard to let go of either. And it is partly practice.

• Fort Blakeley, April 9th 1865 

The 2nd Brigade, including the 47th US Colored Troops, originally the 8th Louisiana regiment of volunteers of African descent, was commanded by Col. Hiram B. Scofield, a volunteer soldier himself, who originally enlisted with the 2nd Iowa. Here is a link to his report of the battle. (http://lestweforget.hamptonu.edu/page.cfm?uuid=9FEC3609-D984-38F8-26B056ECC48B3BAF) 

SOURCE: United States War Department. THE WAR OF THE REBELLION: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1880-1901.

“The Battle of Fort Blakeley was the largest Civil War battle fought in Alabama and one of the last of the entire war. Fought on April 9, 1865 after a siege of more than a week on the very day Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered his army at Appomattox, the battle resulted in a Union victory which paved the way for the capture of the city of Mobile by Federal forces. Approximately 20,000 men fought in the combined-forces affair, including one of the largest contingents of African-American troops assembled for any battle during the Civil War.” (https://www.blakeleypark.com/About-Us)(http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/h-3718)

Napoleon and Grant

Ulysses S. Grant at Cold Harbor, June 1864

Napoleon, by Emil Ludwig (1924) Garden City, N.Y. 1926.

My dad's copy, given to him on his 19th birthday, by his grandparents.

There were several dusty volumes on my parents' bookshelves, some of them by Thomas Mann. Among them was this volume. A few weeks ago I came across one of those lists of 'the books that have influenced you the most' by some celebrity author. And I was surprised to see this old book among them. It was written in the early 1920s, almost a hundred years ago. So it is not the latest. But for a character study of its subject, what the author himself calls an 'inner history', it may still be the one to read. What it has is immediacy: it is mostly written in the present tense, so we follow the impulses, feelings, and plans of its, well, hero, as they evolve and unfold. It is a dynamic history.

Looking back at the end of the life it expresses, the book gives some assessments, and these may be in the past tense. Until that point, it is as excited and immediate as the prose it quotes, in many pages, of the letters and speeches and dispatches - and eventually memoirs - of Napoleon Bonaparte.

And then I turned the last page. And thought, what will I read now. The newspaper. The Economist. The New Yorker. And then what? I looked at the shelves, exhausted. And turned to Morning Prayer.

Later I looked again, and thought: do I want to read about FDR again? Certainly not World War Two. Do I want to read Hamilton? No. Not yet. And I do not want to read about another mythical figure. So no Cromwell, the Lord Protector. I want to read about a good man, arguably a great man. Grant.

Civil War again? The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses Grant are hard to beat; especially in concert with Sherman's. This new (2017) biography gives us things Grant himself could not; and a modern perspective on his troubles, of which he was less than frank, perhaps. So it was good to read a fuller treatment of his northwestern sojourns, at Fort Vancouver on the Columbia River, and Ft. Humboldt.

The latter particularly, a place where the state historic park gives you a sense of what the place was like before the Civil War, and what it might have been like for an ambitious (let's face it), bored young officer, with nothing to do but read books, ride, or drink. And drink he did. They all did.

Not so good for a binge alcoholic, which is the diagnosis of the author, and of the hero's friends, notably Rawlins, his aide-de-camp and would-be nanny (what they both needed was a Sponsor).

But then there are flashes of brilliance. When the man is not idle he is great. What Napoleon had was a scheme to be always up and doing, never rested. There was always something going on, something to stir up, until there wasn't any more. With Grant, he waited, for the paths of glory to open. There were idle years, for a soldier, between the Mexican-American War and the War of 1861-1865. And Grant spent those years in frustration: he was no businessman, no farmer, no seller of leather goods.

When the trumpet called the not-so-old warhorse came alive. And that began a transformation, one that I am familiar with ... through the war years. As far as the Memoirs takes me. For the remainder of Grant's career I have historians, and the interpretive ranger at Grants' Tomb ("Who's buried in Grant's Tomb?"). So the, um, rehabilitation, and reinterpretation, of a stained presidential career, will be new.

Ron Chernow was the author of Washington - and of Hamilton. So I expect great things. No musical.


https://www.nps.gov/people/ulysses-s-grant.htm