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3 Incorporating Friends and Enemies War at times has been cruel and unrelenting, and would seem unwarranted amid its devastations and inhuman slaughter of unprotected and helpless innocents, . . . [but] a new impetus has been given to the onward march and development of human civilization. . . . Not the smallest of issues that crowned the war was the emancipation of four millions of slaves in these United States of America, giving a more forcible emphasis to the couplet, ours is, “The land of the free and home of the brave.” —Rev. Enoch H. Wood, quoted by James Mauzy, Sixty-eighth Indiana Because he had to endure the violent politics of Reconstruction in North Carolina, Albion Tourgee came to regard the Union’s Civil War as a failure . The veteran had defined victory as the opportunity to reform Southern society: to substitute the relations of the market for what he described as the corrupt forced bargain between master and slave. Other Cumberland veterans were not so disillusioned because they had never tried to be Carpetbaggers. They saw the prosperity and development of Indiana, Ohio, or points west and east when they went home to resume their lives, and saw this peace and growth of the homeland as the just consequence of their conquest. In a turn-of-the-century America where Southern politics proved to be a dark and bloody ground, Cumberlanders could readily find tangible victory in “God’s Country” and in themselves as the good men who won the war. Yet, locating triumph here and here alone would not be sufficient. Something had to be said about the liberated slaves and about the Confederates who had been defeated. Said a better way, Cumberlanders had good reason to incorporate African Americans and Rebels into their master narrative. Depending on how it was done, describing the emancipated and the vanquished could solidify the army’s victory. In particular, the authors used emancipation along with anecdotes about the black charac- 74 Chapter 3 ters they had met during the invasion to demonstrate that the North’s war had been humanitarian. As noted earlier, the Union armies had become increasingly destructive during the conflict, transcending the limits established early by generals McClellan and Buell, and breaking the bonds of civilized war according to at least a few of the Cumberland authors . By contrast, emancipation restored decency and selflessness to the North’s triumph. Rather like the way Abraham Lincoln was turned into the Great Emancipator, as Kirk Savage has described, Cumberland authors absorbed liberation into the North’s war, redeeming what had been a nasty conflict by linking it to a kind of military innocence.1 Cumberlanders also tried to firm up the North’s elusive victory by using descriptions of the enemy. The authors were always quick to condemn the original Confederate cause, but they also discussed butternut soldiers and civilians in detail. They did this, in part, because Rebels in uniform had represented a formal enemy, and describing combat with them could stand as evidence that Cumberland soldiers had conducted a civilized war under trying circumstances. As the authors were quick to point out, flagbearing Confederate regiments represented a different kind of foe than did the guerilla or raider. Although the war had been destructive, descriptions of linear or fortification combat with the Confederate army could be used to demonstrate that Cumberlanders had been able to keep the conflict within bounds. Confederate soldiers and civilians could also testify to the completeness of the North’s triumph. The recorded words of butternut infantry and Rebel women could demonstrate that the Union victory had been in some sense total. In contrast to the controversy over Reconstruction and post-Reconstruction politics, testimony from former Confederates could readily be used to prove that the good Cumberland men had indeed won the war. In any case, the liberated and the vanquished were everywhere in the Cumberland master narrative because these two groups demonstrated that Confederate military surrender in 1865 had indeed ended the war. In contrast toTourgee’s quixotic effort to remake the South and the Southern people during Reconstruction, Cumberland authors located an enduring victory, finding it in the words and actions they recorded in their narratives of wartime experience.Triumph did not depend on some imperative to remake the conquered land and its people, it could be found in the former slaves and former enemies who attested in their own words to the legitimacy and potency of the North’s military power. Incorporating Friends and Enemies 75...

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