REFLECTIONS ON A CENTENNIAL: THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR

1 0 4 Y R E F L E C T I O N S O N A C E N T E N N I A L T H E A M E R I C A N C I V I L W A R C . V A N N W O O D W A R D Vol. 50, no. 4, June 1961 It is hard to imagine any other country celebrating the centennial anniversary of a civil war in the mood with which Americans approach the four years of ceremonials that opened in 1961. One di≈culty in imagining such a thing is that there has been no comparable civil war in modern history. But even if there had been, it is hard to think of its being celebrated with the degree of historical piety, non-partisanship, almost detachment, which Americans bring to their centennial. It is not the victory we are expected to celebrate, nor is it the principles for which the war was waged. Little is heard about the three war aims of Union, Freedom , and Equality, and an awkward dispute between the celebrants still rages over the third war aim of Equality. It is none of these things that is to be commemorated, but the war itself. The last civil war of anything like the scale and importance of the American war was that of the English in the 1640’s, and nothing could have been more un-English than an American-type centennial staged in the 1740’s. One can imagine the Russians making quite a centennial stir in 2017 a.d. and the ensuing years, but presumably that will be over the Revolution, not the Civil War that followed. Revolutionary anniversaries are traditionally times 1 0 5 R of rededication for regimes that survive to celebrate them. America held appropriate ceremonies of the sort in 1876. But neither the Revolution nor any of the wars that followed, including two recent world wars, with far more living veterans than the Civil War had participants, has captured the American imagination so completely. The American attitude is all the more di≈cult to explain when we recall the deep-seated malice, the mutual spite and spleen, the self-righteousness, and the long-borne grudges of the Civil War. Even more so when the incredible casualty lists are reviewed. More Americans lost their lives in that war than in all the American wars since then, including the two world wars. American deaths from all causes in the Second World War would have to be more than six times their actual number to have been as large in proportion to the total population as the losses of the Union Army. To have reached the proportions of the Confederate losses to population , the Second World War losses would have to be some ten times as high. And all the killings and casualties of the Civil War were inflicted by Americans upon Americans. Moreover, whatever the outcome of the old debate over who or what ‘‘caused’’ the war, the blame can never be shifted (as it has in all other American wars) to some foreign devil – British, Mexican, Spanish, German, or heathen Japanese. Whoever the devils were, they were undoubtedly Americans, born and bred. Before the end of his administration, President Eisenhower urged ‘‘all Americans’’ to join for four years in the commemoration of this war. His Proclamation of December 6, 1960, amounted to a total mobilization of national commemorative resources – including ‘‘all units and agencies of government – Federal, state and local – and their o≈cials,’’ as well as all ‘‘our Nation’s schools and colleges, its libraries and museums, its churches and religious bodies, its civic, service and patriotic organizations, its learned and professional societies, its arts, sciences and industries, and its information media. . . .’’ All indications are that the response will be stupendous, and that the grand martial pageant of reenactment will roll forward for four years, from the bombardment of Fort Sumter until a second stillness descends on Appomattox in April, 1965. In the Civil War department of the historian’s guild there is a 1 0 6 W O O D W A R...