The Smart Aleck's Guide to American History

by Adam Selzer

  ROBERT E. LEE

  No general on either side of the Civil War has been more mythologized than Robert E. Lee. Lee opposed the South’s decision to secede. Most historians believe that he opposed slavery, at least in principle, but like many people of his day, he believed that slavery was God’s will and it would end when God willed it to end. He eventually freed his own slaves during the war, though.

  Lee was offered command of the Union army, but he felt too great a sense of duty to his home state of Virginia and chose instead to fight for the South, even though he largely disagreed with the cause.

  Historians do agree that Lee tried his best to be a gentleman. He didn’t drink, smoke, or gamble and refused to speak against the North after the war. His reputation as a general and a gentleman made him a hero in the South, despite the facts that his decision to invade the North, rather than stick around to defend the Mississippi Valley, had probably been a bad one, and that decisions he made at Gettysburg probably cost the South the battle—and the war.

  He also listened to Lee at the Battle of Chancellorsville, helping bring about a major Confederate victory there. But the victory came at a price. When Jackson approached some of his troops at night, one of them called out “Who goes there?” and, before he could get a response, the order to shoot was given, and Jackson was hit three times, costing the Confederacy their most famous general: Jackson died eight days later. General Lee said that he felt as though he had lost his right arm (whereas Jackson had lost his left).

  THE BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG

  In 1863, General Lee made a second attempt to invade the North. His goal was to take over Philadelphia and influence Northern politicians to give up on the war and just let the South go its own way.

  HISTORICAL MYTHS: BLACK CONFEDERATES

  For years, Confederate supporters have claimed that there were thousands of black soldiers fighting for the South. This is often held up as proof either that the Confederacy wasn’t fighting to maintain slavery or that slavery wasn’t really all that bad, and that black people were happy to fight to preserve it (beg pardon?). This story has been thrown around enough that many people—including some teachers—assume it’s true.

  The truth is that it has never been proven that any black soldiers fought for the Confederacy. Anecdotal evidence strongly suggests that there were a few with light-enough skin to “pass” who snuck into the army for one reason or another, perhaps because they heard it was better work than what they’d been doing before, but there certainly weren’t “thousands.” Any black man who tried to join would have been turned away; arming black people was about the last thing that the Confederacy, fearful of slave revolts, wanted to do.

  Toward the end of the war, when the Confederacy was on its last legs, states began to allow black soldiers to enlist in exchange for freedom, and many did (or were made to), but they were still in training when the war ended a month or so later.

  Lincoln began sending armies after him, and Lee’s army collided with a Union army led by General George Meade near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on July 1, 1863.

  By this time, with Stonewall Jackson busily decomposing, Lee had become the South’s greatest hero and their last great hope. The idea of the South “winning” the war and taking over the northern states had long been out of the question (only the really hard-core Confederates had ever planned on that to begin with). By now, the most they could hope for was that the North would give up and recognize the Confederacy as a separate country.

  JEFFERSON DAVIS

  In the 1850s, Jefferson Davis served as secretary of war under President Pierce, and once tried to start a division of the cavalry that would ride on camels instead of horses.

  Though he opposed secession in general, when states began to secede, Davis, by then a senator from Mississippi, announced his state’s secession and resigned his seat in the U.S. Senate.

  A few weeks later, he was named president of the Confederate States of America. Immediately, he ordered a peace commission to go to Washington to pay for any U.S. property on Confederate soil, hoping to work out the differences between the regions without a fight. But Lincoln refused the deal, as selling the fort would have been the same as saying, “Okay, you can go be a new country now.” So Davis authorized a raid on Ford Sumter, which started the war.

  As president, Davis was pretty unpopular. Lincoln said that the only thing that made him feel better when he read nasty things about himself in the papers was picking up Southern papers to see what they were saying about Davis.

  Modern colorization techniques made it much easier to tell blue from gray, which is a real pain in the butt sometimes in black-and-white pictures like this one. Feel free to color in the black-and-white parts yourself, but stay inside the lines. We’re trying to run a classy history book around here. Really.

  On July 1, soldiers from Lee’s army of twenty-five thousand successfully pushed twenty thousand Union soldiers back into the small town of Gettysburg. Attacking them that night didn’t seem practical, so Lee decided to attack the next day.

  Some of Lee’s other officers had told him that attacking at Gettysburg was a bad idea—Union forces there, they said, were going to be impossible to defeat. But rumors were starting to go around that Lee’s army was somehow supernaturally invincible, since they had been so successful, and Lee himself was starting to believe it.

  Lee planned to attack the Union army’s main stronghold at Cemetery Ridge. Once again, many of his men warned that it would be an impossible siege. But Lee pressed on, gambling that one more day of fighting would win him the battle and, eventually, the war.

  This was it. For both sides, this third day of fighting was crucial. By then, Lee’s army of seventy-five thousand was engaged against upwards of ninety thousand men from Grant’s army. If the Confederacy won the fight, not only did they still have a chance of surviving the war, but they might also succeed in putting the Union itself in danger. If they failed, the war would be pretty much over for them. When a Confederate general gave the order to charge, he was so overcome with emotion that he couldn’t even speak. He simply raised his hand.

  That morning, the two sides fired cannons at each other in some of the heaviest fighting of the war. Soon, the battlefield was hardly visible due to all the black smoke.

  In the midafternoon, the Union army stopped firing to save ammunition. Thinking that their enemies had run out of ammo, twelve thousand Confederate soldiers formed a mile-long line and began to march toward the Union army and, they assumed, victory. This became known as Pickett’s Charge, after General George Pickett, the commander.

  The Union, having fooled them good, then opened fire, and the field was quckly littered with maimed bodies. Many soldiers broke through to their foes, though, and soon the field was full of hand-to-hand combat, guns fired at close range, and bloody men who had been stabbed with bayonets. The Confederates came fairly close to capturing their target, a small cluster of trees on top of a hill, but more Union reinforcements arrived and drove them back down. The attack had failed.

  THE NEW YORK DRAFT RIOTS

  Just after the Battle of Gettysburg, Congress ordered a draft, requiring military service for anyone called up by the government. Many citizens were furious. If they had wanted to join the army, they would have done so already.

  Many men were also racist enough to be unwilling to fight in what they saw as a war to end slavery. In New York, the worst riots in American history up to that point broke out. At least a hundred civilians—mostly black—were killed, and more than three hundred were injured. At least fifty buildings, perhaps many more, were burned to the ground. And of those men who were actually drafted, only about 6 percent actually ended up serving.

  Not all rioters were opposed to the draft for racist reasons. Some were upset that men could buy their way out of military service for three hundred dollars (somewhere from ten to thirty grand today, depending on which economist you ask). This prompted some to say “This is a rich man’s war
, and a poor man’s fight.”

  Down South, meanwhile, a similar draft had been instituted in which people could stay home if they owned twenty or more slaves. Annoyed soldiers (almost none of whom actually owned any slaves) complained that the war was a “rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight.”

  Of course, most wars are.

  Lee rode out to meet the survivors, saying that it had all been his fault, and began a slow retreat into Virginia. Union general George Meade let him go, too exhausted to chase him down. Lincoln was furious, saying that Meade had missed a “golden opportunity” to capture Lee and win the war once and for all. But this was only one of many such opportunities on both sides that were passed up due to exhaustion. They did, after all, march their butts off.

  SONGS

  Lots of memorable songs came out of the Civil War, including “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” (Glory, Glory Hallelujah), “The Bonnie Blue Flag” (a really catchy Confederate song that was about defending either liberty or property, depending on which version you were singing), and, of course, “Dixie.”

  I wish I was in the land of cotton

  Old times there are not forgotten

  Look away, look away, look away, Dixieland.

  No one is sure now who wrote “Dixie”—it’s one of those things that historians tend to argue about. Some believe it was written by an Ohio man; others say he stole it from a black man in the South, who wrote the song as a satire, not a tribute (which would explain all the “look away’s.”) In any case, it became the unofficial anthem of the Confederacy. And naturally, soldiers wrote plenty of humorous verses of their own, such as:

  Pork and cabbage in the pot

  Goes in cold and comes out hot

  Look away, look away, look away, Dixieland.

  This is the only known picture of Lincoln at Gettysburg. Can you find Lincoln, three top hats, and a floating head?

  At the end of the battle, twenty-eight thousand Confederate soldiers were dead or wounded, along with twenty-three thousand Union soldiers. It was the bloodiest battle of the war, and the bloodiest battle ever fought in America. But a few Confederate supporters are probably going to be challenging us to a bloodier one after they read this book.

  THE GETTYSBURG ADDRESS

  For days after the battle, thousands of corpses littered the fields of Gettysburg. The smell of the rotting bodies was remarkably unpleasant, and residents agreed that getting them buried as soon as possible should be made a top priority. To get things moving, a local guy rich was given the job of establishing a cemetery.

  SCORE

  “Score” means “twenty”—“four score and seven” means “eighty-seven.” Lincoln probably said “four score and seven” instead of just “eighty-seven” to echo a line of the Bible that states that a life should last “three score and ten” (seventy years), though it’s interesting that Lincoln opened a speech that was known for being short and to the point by finding just about the most complicated way possible to say “eighty-seven.” He could have said “273.17 divided by pi years ago,” we guess.

  WHAT DID HE SAY?

  We don’t know exactly what Lincoln actually said at the Gettysburg Address. There are five handwritten copies that he gave away, plus a couple of transcripts written by reporters who were present, and there are slight differences between them. Mainly, some versions include the phrase “under God,” and some don’t.

  The guy, David Wills, planned an elaborate ceremony to dedicate the field and invited a man named Edward Everett to be the main speaker. Everett was regarded as one of the finest speakers of the day. Back then, long, brainy speeches were all the rage. Using one word when you could use twenty was considered very poor speaking, and speeches were often filled with quotes from ancient Greeks and Romans that might or might not have actually had anything to do with the rest of the speech. People just liked to hear quotes from dead Romans. It made them feel really smart.

  Everett’s speech was meant to be the main event at the ceremony. Abraham Lincoln was only invited at the last minute, when Wills decided it might be nice to have the president say a few words to conclude things. Planners were shocked when Lincoln accepted the invitation.

  Everett’s speech was thirteen thousand words long and went on for two hours. When he finished, the crowd went crazy—though some historians have suggested that they were cheering mainly because it was finally over. Brave souls who try to read the speech today usually get bored and give up in a real hurry.

  WHAT WOULD YOUR LIFE HAVE BEEN LIKE?

  Well, it would have sucked. No two ways about it. In fact, this is one of few times in American history where your life would have definitely been wretched even if you were white. If you’re a guy reading this book, you’re probably old enough that you would have been in one army or the other. Officially, you had to be eighteen to join, but most recruiters weren’t that picky about it. In the Union, somewhere along the lines of a hundred thousand soldiers under the age of fifteen fought in the war.

  If you were fighting for the North, you’d have been living on a diet of coffee and hardtack biscuits not unlike firecake that were also known as “molar breakers.” On a really good day, you might get some rancid meat. If you were fighting for the Confederacy, you might not have even had that. On both sides, the food tended to consist mostly of worms, though most people reported that the worms didn’t really taste like anything. So you’d have that going for you, at least.

  No matter which side you were on, you would have spent your days marching tremendous distances on an empty stomach. At night, the soldiers often had to “spoon,” which is another word for cuddling, in order to keep from freezing to death—and the guy you were spooning probably stank to high heaven, though you wouldn’t exactly have been at your freshest yourself.

  If you got hurt (and you probably would have), you might have slowly bled to death on the battlefield, or you might have had to have a limb or two sawed off, which wouldn’t have been any less painful than it sounds. Odds are pretty good that you would have deserted (ditched the army and run away)—somewhere between a quarter and a half of all soldiers did. No one particularly blamed them.

  Girls didn’t have it much better (did they ever?). Though they weren’t expected (or allowed) to join the army, they were often in charge of sewing uniforms, nursing wounded soldiers, and other such duties, and they were just as subject to starvation and disease as the boys.

  Lincoln then stepped up to address the crowd and gave a short speech—only ten sentences—that lasted only two or three minutes. You often hear stories that he wrote it on the train on the way to give the speech, perhaps on the back of an envelope, but these stories aren’t true. He had put the speech together very carefully in Washington.

  When Lincoln finished, the photographer hadn’t even set up his camera yet. There was no cheering, only a hushed silence, followed by a short smattering of applause. This may have been because the crowd was so blown away by the speech that they couldn’t bring themselves to make a noise. But Lincoln certainly felt that it was because he had bombed. He reportedly said to Everett, “I failed. I failed: and that is about all that can be said about it.” This may have just been Lincoln being Lincoln: depressed and cynical.

  Everett, however, told Lincoln, “I should be glad if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion, in two hours, as you did in two minutes,” and asked for a handwritten copy of the speech. It’s true that getting to the point in two minutes certainly wasn’t one of Everett’s skills.

  In the years that followed, though, Lincoln’s brief remarks came to be known as one of America’s greatest speeches, possibly because it was nice and short. Lincoln said the newly buried soldiers were martyrs to a “new birth of freedom” and called on people to see their example and rededicate themselves to the war for the cause of a government “of the people, by the people, for the people.”

  THE WAR RAGES ON … AND ON … AND ON …

  The
day after the Battle of Gettysburg ended, General Grant successfully completed a siege on Vicksburg, another major blow against the Confederacy. That same day, Union forces repelled a Confederate assault and gained control of Arkansas. All in all, the first week of July 1863 was a really crappy week for the Confederate States of America.

  Throughout 1864, General Grant and his armies chased General Lee’s armies around Virginia toward Richmond, the Confederate capital. Along the way, they suffered an astounding sixty-six thousand casualties. Grant’s forces finally pinned the Confederates down around the town of Petersburg, beginning nine months of trench warfare that would result in tens of thousands of casualties.

  Meanwhile, General Sherman began a march through the South. Sherman told Grant that if he could keep Lee occupied in Virginia, he and his men would march clear to the ocean, take over the Atlantic ports, and end the war. The Confederacy couldn’t possibly survive without any ports to bring in supplies.

  General Sherman believed in “total war.” His strategy was to march through the South, burning every town he came through, destroying crops, food, and buildings, destroying the South’s ability to fight back. Even those who agree that this was the only way to finish the war for good have to admit that Sherman must have been a real downer at parties.

  ANDERSONVILLE PRISON

  Early in the war, most prisoners were just sent home. After Confederate troops (under General Nathan Forrest, who went on to start the Ku Klux Klan) murdered black Union troops who had surrendered, General Grant decided they’d start taking prisoners until such time as the Confederacy treated black and white soldiers equally. The Confederacy refused, and the Union began to hold captured Confederate soldiers in prison camps. The Confederacy, in turn, began to hold Union prisoners.