On Bruce Catton, Angry Alliterations, Tissues of Untruths, and the Periodic Usefulness of First-Degree Mythmaking (Despite Living in a World with Jessica Simpson)

Last we met, I was curled up on my couch reading Bruce Catton’s Reflections on the Civil War, and happily grumbling about the simplistic conflations of tragedy & unfortunate circumstance, myth & lie. That’s when, quite unexpectedly, I ran across a remarkable passage about the legend of Robert E. Lee. This is written by a Northerner, mind you, and (judging by E. B. Long’s slightly defensive introduction) a man who wanted to be judged not as beloved cultural figure (the North’s Shelby Foote, say), but as a historian.

Catton observed that, while a civil war, of all wars, is the most likely to engender “irreconcilably angry feelings” and “incurable hatred,” that did not happen in the United States. There was peace after Appomattox, and there continues to be peace.

I think the chief reason for this is the legend of Robert E. Lee and the heroic Confederate soldiers. For this legend was the channel through which pent-up emotions could be discharged. The essence of the legend of Lee and the dauntless Confederate soldiers was that they suffered mightily in a great but lost cause. The point is that this very phrase accepts the cause as having been lost. There was no hint in this legend of biding one’s time and waiting for a moment when there could be revenge. This was the lost cause; something to be cherished, to be revered, to be the outlet for emotions, but not to be the center of a new outbreak of violence.

Catton suggests that a legend (or a story or a myth) surrounded Lee & His Men, that, by its very nature perhaps, it was not historically accurate, but that, by its very nature, it had a purpose. It was like a salve, protection from a pain too great to otherwise face. Of course, it didn’t just protect Lee and his losers. To an even larger extent, it protected the winners, too. Catton continues:

In that sense, I think the legend of the lost cause has served the entire country very well. The things that were done during the Civil War have not been forgotten, of course, but we now see them through a veil. We have elevated the entire conflict to a realm where it is no longer explosive. It is a part of American legend, a part of American history, a part, if you will, of American romance. It moves men mightily, to this day, but it does not move them in the direction of picking up their guns and going at it again. We have had national peace since the war ended, and we will always have it, and I think the way Lee and his soldiers conducted themselves in the hours of surrender has a great deal to do with it.

This is, I think, an amazing admission from a historian: that a legend, the facts of which are not, in fact, facts, but exist outside the historian’s purview, snubbing their nose at him even, is—gasp!—important.

Now contrast that with a new volume on offer from the University of North Carolina Press, Lee’s Last Retreat: The Flight to Appomattox by William Marvel. Say the press materials:

Few events in Civil War history have generated such deliberate mythmaking as the retreat that ended at Appomattox. As the popular imagination would have it, Robert E. Lee’s tattered, starving, but devoted troops found themselves hopelessly surrounded through no fault of their beloved commander, who surrendered them rather than sacrifice their lives. Victors and vanquished met at Appomattox in a moving surrender ceremony marked by a spirit of mutual regard.

According to William Marvel, this tale is a tissue of untruths that sprang from the imaginations of Lost Cause historians and Northern and Southern generals well practiced in the art of fabricating popular legend. Marvel offers the first history of the Appomattox campaign written primarily from contemporary source material, with a skeptical eye toward memoirs published well after the events they purport to describe.

Marvel shows that during the final week of the war in Virginia, Lee’s troops were more numerous and far less faithful to their cause than has been suggested. Lee himself made mistakes in this campaign, and defeat wrung from him an unusual display of faultfinding. Finally, Marvel proves accounts of the congenial intermingling of the armies at Appomattox to be shamelessly overblown and the renowned exchange of salutes to be apocryphal.

Notice the contempt. It finds its best expression in angry alliterations (OK, near alliterations) like “tissue of untruths.” But it’s there in “deliberate mythmaking” (I prefer first-degree, or premeditated, mythmaking myself) and the frankly condescending “popular imagination.” Marvel the “skeptical” rises above it all.
More power to him. History is not to be sniffed at. But it’s all the more amazing that Bruce Catton once had the courage to say, in such sensible & gentlemanly language, that legends have their place too. That truth comes in many guises, and historians cannot, by themselves, save the world.

IMAGE: Detail from We Still Love You, General Lee by Mort Künstler

Comments

[TJ]

Wow. I know nothing about the Civil War. This is all really interesting stuff.