In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

why we love the Civil war drew Gilpin Faust If war were not so terrible, robert e. lee observed as he watched the slaughter at Fredericksburg, “we should grow too fond of it.” lee’s remark, uttered in the very midst of battle’s horror and chaos, may be his most quoted—and misquoted —statement. His exact words are in some dispute, and it seems unlikely we shall ever be able to be certain of precisely what he said to James longstreet on december13, 1862. but in everyrendition of the quotation, the contradiction between war’s attraction and its horror remains at the heart. War is terrible and yet we love it; we need to witness the worst of its destruction in order not to love it even more. and both because and in spite of its terror, we must calibrate our feelings to ensure enough, but not too much, fondness. It is lee’s succinct, surprising, and almost poetic expression of a too often unacknowledged truth about war that has made this statement so quotable. lee, the romantic hero of his own time and the marble man of ages that followed, displays here acomplexity , an ambivalence, a capacity for irony that suggest cracks in the marble. His observation seems to reach beyond his era and its sensibilities into our own.1 1 E Civil War History, Vol. l no. 4 © 2004 by The Kent state University Press 1. The most-often-quoted version of this remark—“It is well that war is so terrible—we should grow too fond of it”—is from douglas southall Freeman, r.E. lee: a Biography, 4 vols. (new York: Charles scribner’s sons, 1934–35), 2:462. but Freeman seems to have altered an earlier rendition of the statement: either “It is well this is so terrible! We should grow too fond of it!” from John “We should Grow Too Fond of It” 2 drew gilpin faust esten Cooke, a life of Gen. robert E. lee (new York: d. appleton, 1871), 184, or “It is well that war is so terrible, or we would grow too fond of it,” from edward Porter alexander, Military Memoirs of a Confederate: a Critical Narrative (new York: Charles scribner’s sons, 1907), 302. Gary Gallagher carefully traces this history and notes that longstreet, to whom the remark was made, never mentioned it in his own writings. see his The Fredericksburg Campaign: Decision on the rappahannock (Chapel Hill: Univ. of north Carolina Press, 1995) xiin1. Thomas l. Connelly, The Marble Man: robert E. lee and his image in american society (new York; alfred Knopf, 1977). I am grateful to comments from many friends and colleagues who helped me think about why we love the Civil War: lynn Hunt, Charles rosenberg, Tony Horwitz, edward ayers, James McPherson, Yonatan eyal, Michael bernath, Peter Kolchin, bertram Wyatt-brown, Gabor boritt, Homi bhabha, Jeremy Knowles, and all the participants in the Huntington library’sCivilWarconference in october2003 and in the aHa Presidential session in January 2004, where I delivered versions of this paper. 2. benjamin quoted in richmond Enquirer, Mar. 8, 1861; DeBow’s review 30 (Jan. 1861): 52; Higginson quoted in George M. Fredrickson, The inner Civil war: Northern intellectuals and the Crisis of the Union (new York: Harper & row, 1965), 73. because my focus in this essay is on the love of war, I have not discussed the voices opposing it. lee was not alone among his contemporaries in articulating a fondness for war, though few had his sense of irony. Many americans north and south looked forward to battle in 1861, anticipating a stage onwhich to perform deeds appropriate to a romantic age but believing, too, that warwould be salutary for both the nation and its citizens. Judah P. benjamin, attorney general of the new Confederacy, reassured a neworleans crowd in thewinterof 1861 thatwarwas far from an “unmixed evil,” for it would “stimulate into active development the noblerimpulses and moreelevated sentimentswhichelse had remained torpid in oursouls.”DeBow’s reviewanticipated fromwar“a sublime and awful beauty—a fearful and terrible loveliness—that atones in deeds of high enterprise and acts of heroic valor for the carnage, the desolation, the slaughter.” others were not so rash in their estimates of the likely balance between glory and horror yet nevertheless found in thecoming of warwelcome opportunityforself-definition and fulfillment. In the north, Henry lee Higginson later looked back on his hopes for the conflict: “I always did long for some such war, and it...

Share