Upon the Altar of the Nation

by Harry S. Stout

  Back in both the Union and the Confederate camps, recriminations flew in all directions. Lincoln thought Rosecrans “confused and stunned like a duck hit on the head” and relieved him of command, together with two of his commanders, for leaving the field while others fought.12 Lincoln then created the Division of the Mississippi under the command of his new hero, U. S. Grant, and rewarded General Thomas with command of the Army of the Cumberland.

  In the Confederacy, the already heavily criticized Bragg underwent the humiliation of a council of war with President Davis and his generals, where every subordinate commander urged Bragg’s dismissal. Lacking any viable alternative, and still close friends with Bragg, Davis turned a blind eye to reality and refused. One obvious replacement for Bragg was General Longstreet, but in a remarkable testimony to the power of generals to negotiate their fate, Longstreet declined, preferring a different command or a return to Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia. Eventually Bragg would be relieved by General Joseph E. Johnston and reassigned to Richmond as a military adviser to Davis. But by then the damage was done, facilitated in no small measure by Davis’s inability to rise above friendships (and enmities) to make disinterested judgments.13

  As soon as the Federal soldiers garrisoned in Chattanooga were relieved of a possible Confederate siege, Grant went after Bragg’s ill-led army. General Halleck ordered General Hooker to seize control of the imposing Confederate defenses at Lookout Mountain, due south of Chattanooga. To most observers, the steep cliffs appeared impregnable. But in another of his mindless miscalculations, Bragg posted only two thousand soldiers on the mountain-top. With surprising ease, Hooker’s ten thousand men seized control of the mountain on November 24, in what later became known as the “Battle above the Clouds.”

  The next day, General Thomas’s divisions attacked remaining Confederate strength at Missionary Ridge, Tennessee, and without orders, his troops spontaneously continued on shouting “Chickamauga! Chickamauga!” until the entire ridge was theirs. This unauthorized “soldier’s battle” effectively sealed the fate of the Confederacy in Chattanooga. With the vital communications center now in Federal hands, the stage was set for Sherman’s legendary march to the sea.14

  The “miracle of Missionary Ridge” was cheered by the Yankees and a nightmare for the Confederates. The retreating rebels seemed to have lost their nerve. How else to explain the almost uncontested abandonment of a strong fortified position? Bragg was done; Johnston would soon replace him. As 1863 drew to a close, the despondency of the South could find no solace save in the heart of their downtrodden army.

  CHAPTER 28

  “IN THAT IMMORTAL FIELD”

  Though strategically inconclusive, and not the critical turning point that Antietam represented militarily and politically, Gettysburg stands in American memory as the greatest battle of the war and Pickett’s charge as the embodiment of noble sacrifice, North and South.1 Just-war questions of proportionality were not raised then, or later. Instead, American memory of Pickett’s charge as a romantic turning point would be immortally captured in William Faulkner’s oft-cited musings from his novel Intruder in the Dust: For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it’s still not yet two o’clock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with his long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand probably and his sword in the other looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to give the word and it’s all in the balance, it hasn’t happened yet, it hasn’t even begun yet, it not only hasn’t begun yet but there is still time for it not to begin against that position and those circumstances which made more men than Garnett and Kemper and Armistead and Wilcox look grave yet it’s going to begin, we all know that, we have come too far with too much at stake and that moment doesn’t need even a fourteen-year-old boy to think This time. Maybe this time with all this much to lose and all this much to gain: Pennsylvania, Maryland, the world, the golden dome of Washington itself to crown with desperate and unbelievable victory the desperate gamble, the cast made two years ago.

  1863

  The Battle of Gettysburg. Heroic prints like this one by Currier & Ives helped preserve the place of Gettysburg in American memory as the Civil War’s greatest battle.

  As heroic as Faulkner’s account is, it only described the Southern memory of Gettysburg. Something besides its romanticization emerged from Gettysburg that would become forever etched in the American imagination. A sacralization of this particular battlefield would mark it forever after as the preeminent sacred ground of the Civil War—and American wars thereafter. Such lasting reverence had less to do with the battle itself than with what happened there four months later on November 19, when President Lincoln returned to the battlefield to participate in the dedication of the national cemetery.

  Edward Everett delivered the main oration in standard Ciceronian eloquence and duration (two hours). Lincoln added a three-minute address of his own. It met with scant immediate enthusiasm and was actually belittled by his political detractors. Clergymen, put off that no ministers were asked to speak at the dedication, little realized that America’s greatest sermon had just been preached by a politician rather than a preacher.

  Lincoln’s comments would become immortalized as the Gettysburg Address, yet most religious presses failed even to note the occasion. The speech was not issued by a minister, and thus unworthy of note. In one writer’s view: “The whole affair had well nigh been a failure from the absence of many of those large-hearted, conscientious, religious men, from whom this war receives its moral dignity.” Everett was a “true patriot ... but there is in the production little of that breadth of vision which will give it power in the future.” As for Lincoln, his address was summarized in one paragraph and “had none of the manner of an Orator,” despite the fact that “his unselfish and generous devotion to the country had given to him the hearts of the people.”2

  One exception was the Presbyter, issued out of Cincinnati, which included the text of Lincoln’s address, followed by an account of its reception by an adoring audience: “The president’s address was received with long and loud demonstrations of applause, all assenting that it was the right thing in the right place and a perfect thing in every respect.”3

  In England, where the press often showed itself hostile to the North and to Lincoln, garbled and distorted reports of the Battle of Gettysburg implied a Southern victory. As for Lincoln’s address, it was met with either silence or derision. The London Times provided a contemptuous account:The inauguration of the cemetery at Gettysburg was an imposing ceremony only rendered somewhat flat by the nature of Mr. Everett’s lecture, and ludicrous by some of the luckless sallies of that poor President Lincoln, who seems determined to play in this great American Union the part of the famous Governor of the Isle of Barataris.4

  What American memory has since elevated to the status of national scripture evoked hardly a ripple in the national consciousness of 1863. Ironically, in an earlier issue, the Banner of the Covenant identified the difficulty in perceiving historical legacies in immediate events:As the newspaper records events as they occur, all the interest of the reader is likely to be concentrated upon the events themselves, whilst their meaning and connections are liable to pass unregarded.... The newspaper, again gives its facts without selection, whilst well composed history is distinguished as much by the character of the matter it embraces, as by the elegance and truthfulness of the narrative ... it is by studying the records of the past, that we learn to read, with the highest intelligence and profit, the transactions of the present.5

  Even Lincoln was unaware of the legacy his words would imbue to later generations, both at the time he delivered the address (“The world will little note nor long remember what we say here”) and in its immediate aftermath. In a letter to Edward Everett, written the following day, Lincoln
praised Everett for his speech, in particular, “the tribute to our noble women for their angelministering to the suffering soldiers.” In response to Everett’s earlier praise (“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”) Lincoln replied, “I am pleased to know that, in your judgment, the little I did say was not entirely a failure.”6

  Never in American oratory has there been a greater understatement than this. Lincoln’s rhetoric would connect forever after with Americans seeking a common meaning for their collective experience, and that meaning was, the literary critic Edmund Wilson later recognized, “quite mystical.”7 A Christlike tolerance appeared in his meditations as he reflected on the war’s innermost meaning—not the “Union” triumphing over an evil Confederacy, but a common sacrifice that, in God’s time, would deliver a united redeemer nation. In his address, Lincoln refused to condemn his enemies, as Everett had done so ruthlessly moments before. But neither had he yet reached the all-embracing “charity for all” that would come only with victory in sight.

  Scholars have rightly praised the literary qualities of Lincoln’s brief address at Gettysburg as a new sound in American rhetoric.8 But in American memory, it became much more. It became the sacred scripture of the Civil War’s innermost spiritual meaning. Central to that meaning was the revolutionary principle, always in need of implementation, that “all men are created equal.” By linking past (“four score and seven years ago”), present (“these honored dead”), and future (“a new birth of freedom”), Lincoln presented a redemptive republic wedded to an idea (“that all men are created equal”) in timeless form. As long as the idea survived, so too could America be assured that this “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

  If the white Northern press exhibited a muted response to the dedication speech, the African Methodist Episcopal Christian Recorder proved more enthusiastic. The November 28 issue carried a complete description of the setting, a verbatim transcript of the address “amid a scene of wild and lengthened excitement,” and the prayer of dedication by the House chaplain “delivered in the most impressive manner, and ... listened to with breathless attention.” Two weeks earlier, the Recorder perceived in Gettysburg and Vicksburg the death knell of slavery and a “new life”: “with the removal of slavery ... we may reasonably anticipate the decline of sectional jealousies, until in the future we shall know no North, no South—we shall all be Americans.” 9 Tragically, while right on a common white America, they could not perceive that many African Americans would be left out of the new nation.

  While the South fasted for its autumn defeats, President Lincoln issued a national thanksgiving proclamation on October 3, 1863, for the last Thursday of November. He thus set in motion the ritual machinery that would become America’s national Thanksgiving Day, a time to reflect on the sacred destiny of America. In his proclamation, Lincoln recited the blessings of international peace and victory: “They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy ... and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility, and Union.”10

  The use of “Union” is significant here, but equally significant is the fact that it appears in the context of “healing” and not retribution, and “Divine purposes” rather than divine right. Conspicuous by their absence are references to “freedom” and emancipation, ideals more apt to divide Northern audiences and congregations than to unite them.

  Upon receiving news of the national thanksgiving, a writer for the New York Evangelist traced the long history of thanksgiving days in New England and then went on to contrast them to Lincoln’s proposed national day of thanksgiving, which “of course ... will supercede the State Thanksgivings.” The writer was confident that “the people of New England and of the older states, will be pleased to see their ancient custom thus honored, [and] will cheerfully accept the day designated by the President, and will gladly merge their usual celebrations in this more general observance.”11 Even as the national government was creating a Union that would supercede particular states, so too was the nation’s sacred identity increasingly defined and “merged” in national rather than sectional or state holy days.

  The November thanksgiving prompted widespread pulpit commentary on America’s mission not only to its own or their regions but to the world. In a thanksgiving address to his Baptist congregation, Henry Clay Fish looked out upon two thousand hearers and described the “Grand Issues of the War” from God’s vantage point. Emancipation clearly held a central position: “Freedom for the enslaved blacks on our own soil is one of the things involved, and a very important one.” But most important was the promise of global freedom that would only be possible if the Union persevered: “For if we fail here, and above us darkness gathers, what star of hope remains in the whole horizon? I said rightly, then, that in this struggle we stand for the world, we represent the world. For the world freedom lives or dies here and now!”12

  In Chester County, Pennsylvania, near where the Battle of Gettysburg had raged, the Reverend John M‘Leod preached at a “Union Meeting” to local Baptist and Presbyterian churches. M’Leod began by recalling the recent dedication of the Cemetery of Gettysburg, which “will be a memorial to coming ages that there were patriots in 1863, who felt they belonged to a country worth dying for.”13

  With all of the bloodshed in the past year, one principle remained unmistakably clear to M‘Leod: “We are a Nation.... The rebellion makes it clear to ourselves and to all foreign powers that we are a nation.” Throughout his address M’Leod ridiculed those European skeptics who believed democracy could not survive a massive convulsion such as civil war. Luckily for them, M’Leod continued, they were mistaken, because American success was for their good as well as for the good of the Union. Europeans needed America more than America needed Europe. In fact, the world needed America. Emancipation was important, and a black soldier “makes a good soldier,” but ultimately, the Civil War fulfilled “the mission of America.” That mission, in brief, was messianic: “God in his providence, we believe, is preparing this nation for a high service of Christian influence through the world.”14

  The common lesson to be taken from the Gettysburg Address and Lincoln’s Thanksgiving Day proclamation was the expanding scope of freedom. The same writer for the Banner of the Covenant who witnessed the Gettysburg Address came back to that theme in quoting a thanksgiving sermon whose central argument was that “[o]n Cemetery Hill, now consecrated forever to the memory of valor and sacrifice, were conquered more fears, prejudices, political obstinancies, and schemes of treason, than ever fell before in one single conflict. A dead revolution lies in that immortal field.”15

  That themes of union could prevail amid the most bitter of hostilities confirmed to many spectators that divisions would end with the war’s end. In preaching a thanksgiving discourse to St. Paul’s parish in Brookline, Francis Wharton looked to war’s end and restoration on two fronts. First, and most obviously, was restoration between the two sections—one “community” after all. But second, and hardly self-evident, was reconciliation between emancipated slaves and their white brothers and sisters. Political freedom was not enough. There must also be a moral shift that removed “that prejudice which in the North, and particularly at the North-West, refuses to receive the negro as part of the industrial energies of the land.”

  If, Wharton continued, “in view of the liberty we are giving to so large a part of the negro race, and the military debt we are accumulating to them, we do not remove this prejudice ... we shall, I think, be eternally branded as a nation dead to generous impulses, and unfaithful to the most sacred trusts.”16 Since the elimination of racial prejudice was never a war theme or a political goal, racial
prejudice would arguably grow stronger rather than weaker as a consequence of the war. There in a nutshell lay the moral critique that would dim emancipation, however noble it was, and “eternally brand” the nation.

  Another issue that never went away in the aftermath of reconciliation had to do with the essential nature of the nation itself. Would the reconstructed nation be a Christian republic or would it take the form of a Lockean-Jeffersonian secular state? Again, the issue of a godless Constitution came into play, as clergy and evangelical moralists promoted an explicitly Christian America. With victory on the horizon, the time for resolution and remembrance was at hand. For the Reverend A. Cleveland Coxe, this meant: “When peace shall come, let us not forget what was so fatally forgotten by our fathers, to inscribe the Constitution of our regenerated country with the name of Him without whom we are nothing.”17

  Union thanksgiving sermons were as notable for what they did not address as for what they did. Conspicuous by its absence was any commentary on the war itself. Generals could be praised, victories savored, and “the cause” affirmed, but of the conduct of the war, there was only silence. In a time when censorship away from the battlefields was virtually unknown, and mass media prevailed as the most widely published and read in the world, the silence had to have been self-imposed. Forgiveness of the South and emancipation of the slave were laudable goals, but questioning the means to reach them remained off limits.

  Some speakers went so far as to praise the means. In Freeport, Illinois, home to the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates, the Reverend Isaac Carey established the principle that “God is on our side,” and, therefore, destruction was a “power” working on God’s side. Because Union power resided “on the side of freedom,” and the South wielded “a power on the side of wrong and oppression,” Carey could say:I rejoice to think of a million bayonets every one of which means universal liberty—bayonets wielded by patriot soldiers, every one of whom is a freeman, and fighting for freedom. I rejoice in our iron-sided vessels of war, whose defiant look has so much of admonition and warning to despotic powers. I rejoice in the ponderous guns, that can throw their crushing missiles for a distance of five miles—I rejoice in them ... I rejoice ... because they represent the eternal right and justice and the eternal law. 18