Surely no event in American history has commanded more attention than the Civil War. Throughout the nation, Civil War Round Table groups assemble regularly to discuss, debate, or simply remember what happened at an obscure peach orchard in Tennessee, a rural cornfield in Maryland, or a muddy creek in northern Virginia. Publishers remain unable to exhaust the national appetite for new information about the conflict or even old information presented in a new manner. “Armies” of reenactment soldiers exchange mock gunfire on historic battlefields. Collectors amass treasured hordes of Civil War literature, relics, autographs, photographs, and artwork. Each year, despite the glittering allure of modern high-tech attractions, millions of Americans make pilgrimages to historic sites with 19th-century names like Shiloh, Chickamauga, Gettysburg, Kennesaw Mountain, and Antietam.
Why does a distant conflict continue to produce such fascination? Perhaps it is because the American Civil War was unique. It was the largest war ever waged on the North American continent. It was the first modern war and the last “romantic” war. It resulted in a remarkable number of innovations: the first battle between ironclad warships, the first national income tax, the first aerial reconnaissance and the first mass-produced instant coffee. It was the only purely American war—Americans fighting Americans—and it was an event of great human drama. In the flame of battle some men became instant heroes, while others who were already prominent saw their fame wilt. It was a war of great irony—brother fighting against brother, classmates pitted in combat against each other, crucial battles that could have gone either way. It produced countless examples of exceptional courage, unpredictable cowardice, military bungling, acts of genius, terrible suffering, and selfless sacrifice.
It was also the first major war to occur in the presence of a modern communications industry. A pioneer corps of photographers recorded the men and events of the epic struggle while it raged; and when it ended, an industrialized printing industry produced an unprecedented barrage of personal narratives, regimental histories, military studies and even a massive, government-sponsored collection of key military records that charted the warfare day by day. And too, it was a tragic but extraordinary drama of epic proportions, played out on a stage of staggering size and grandeur by a cast of fascinating figures and with a history-making conclusion that shaped both our nation and the world. All than considered, why would the American Civil War not be compelling after a century and a half? Its history remains to be rediscovered by every generation, and every Civil War “buff”—historians included—has a personal story of how this remarkable era of history came to captivate him or her.
Fort Fisher, North Carolina, c. 1865 (NY Public Library)
My personal attraction to Civil War history occurred when I was a small boy. My grandfather on my mother’s side owned a home on a Civil War battlefield—Fort Fisher, in North Carolina—and I was lured into the inescapable landscape of Civil War history by an older brother and two older cousins who talked about the soldiers and commanders of that battle as if they were local neighbors. Prowling over the battlefield as a child exposed me to a few critters of minor importance—sand fleas and an occasional black snake—but mainly to a much more formidable critter: the Civil War bug—and its bite was irreversible. And even deeper, stronger tug of the heart came, however, from my grandparents on my father’s side. They lived deep in the mountains of western North Carolina—under the shadow of Grandfather Mountain—in a wonderful rural community that was known locally as The Globe. Our ancestors, I learned early, were divided about the war like many mountaineers. Some were Confederates who served in the 26th North Carolina Infantry and some were Unionists who hid out from the Home Guard on mountain ridges above Johns River.
When I was a boy in the late 1950s, the fireplace was the only source of heat in my grandparents’ farmhouse parlor. Upstairs there was no heat, and winter nights could be icy cold in North Carolina’s Blue Ridge country. Layers of quilts on the upstairs beds would eventually overcome the chill, but the inevitable shock of cold sheets was a sensation that deserved to be delayed as long as possible. Knowing that you soon would have to brave that cold upstairs bedroom made sitting around the parlor fire even more appealing. Many houses in the Globe, the mountain farming community that was our ancestral home, were still heated solely by fireplaces in the late fifties. America was plotting a space race to the moon, but most folks in my grandparents’ isolated mountain community were still without telephones, central heat, or indoor plumbing. If my grandparents felt underprivileged by the absence of such conveniences, they never complained around us grandchildren.
Like many of his generation, my father had left the mountains during the Great Depression to find a paying job. After a stint in the Civilian Conservation Corps and military service for the duration in World War II, he had pursued postwar success in a small town far away from the mountains and the family farm. Raised in town, I eagerly seized every opportunity to visit my mountain grandparents. Not only did I treasure time with “Granny” and “Granddaddy,” who doted on all their grandchildren, but a visit to their Appalachian community was like time travel backwards to another century. The nearest place with street lights, supermarkets, and telephones was Blowing Rock, which was almost an hour’s drive away on winding mountain roads—dirt roads.
In the summer we splashed in the creek or fished for trout. In the fall and winter we squirrel-hunted on the mountain ridges or tracked rabbits in the snow. There were jars of fruit and canned vegetables in the smokehouse, honey fresh from the hives, and warm biscuits waiting on a cast-iron wood stove. We romped with the squirrel dogs, rode bareback on the plow horse, played on the hay bales in the barn loft, and cheerfully gathered eggs and firewood. Daytime offered a variety of adventures, but our most memorable pastime occurred only at night. After the supper dishes were cleared, the grownups would pull the straight-back chairs from the table and sit in a semi-circle around the parlor fireplace, where a blaze was habitually kept alive. On every visit my older brother and I would routinely prolong the climb to that cold upstairs bedroom. We were mesmerized not only by the parlor fire, but also by the old-timers’ tales. Talk of politics, baseball, the doings in Blowing Rock or Lenoir, and local news form the surrounding farm families was always just a prelude.
Eventually, the talk would turn to “the War.” My wiry, craggy-faced grandfather had a fascinating repertoire of stories about mountain folks and the war. Talk about World War II exploits was apparently deemed too fresh, too modern, or too immodest; tales of “the War” were always about that war, the War Between the States. Blessed with the southerner’s pleasant drawl, he would verbally unfold his accounts at a mountaineer’s natural pace, slow and steady, as he methodically opened a cherry-red tin of Prince Albert smoking tobacco and constructed a roll-your-own cigarette. His captivating cadence was usually interrupted only by an appropriate chuckle or an appreciative grunt from other grownups, although my great-grandfather—in his nineties and sporting a white handlebar moustache—sometimes exercised family rank with a terse comment while leaning forward on his walking stick.
Staring trancelike into the flames, I heard tales about hard men and hard times—tales of bushwhackers and battle scars, of Southern soldiers bound to do their duty, of Unionist ancestors hiding from the Home Guard in the mountain wilds. There were also whimsical tales about Scalawags and Carpetbaggers, and serious stories that conveyed respect for Unionists and Confederates alike. I don’t remember hearing direct mention of the 26th North Carolina, but there were comments aplenty about men from that community who had served in that famous regiment. As a boy at the turn of the 20th Century, my grandfather had known many of them and their families.
Hearing such stories left me amazed at the grit of those Tar Heel soldiers—what they called “gumption” in the mountains—and eventually I came to respect all Americans who had to endure that war. Those stories made me deeply aware of the proximity of “the War”—so close that my grandfather and even my father had actually seen and touched and talked to men who had lived through it. The men and women whose stories I heard while sitting before the fire were not one-dimensional figures from the page of a book or oversimplified characters dreamed up by Hollywood. They were real people, who had lived history, and most of them had simply tried to do what they thought was right.
Those fireside stories—oral history at its best—left me forever impressed with the notion that comprehending history and writing it well—whether it’s an era, an event, a war, a battle—requires discovering the details about the real people involved. It made me realize as an American that our national history is family history. And it fostered and fueled in me a fascination with the American Civil War that, thankfully, has not ebbed to this day.
Rod Gragg is author of Covered with Glory: The 26th North Carolina Infantry at the Battle of Gettysburg and Confederate Goliath: The Battle of Fort Fisher. He is director of the Center for Military and Veterans Studies at Coastal Carolina University.
