Blessed Are The Peacemakers - Appomattox Sesquicentenniial

Yesterday, although not technically the sesquicentennial of the last day of the Civil War, is recognized as such in popular imagination and not without reason.  150 years ago April 9th was Palm Sunday.  The day started with the Army of Northern Virginia attempting to break out as it was surrounded by the convergence of the Army of the Potomac and the Army of the James.  At the end of the day, there would be no Army of Northern Virginia.  The Confederates States of America having lost the embodiment of its national spirit would not last much longer.

I didn't get quite as early a start as I had hoped.  As usual I was facing the blogger's dilemma of having to choose between writing about material I already had or getting new material to not write about.  Rather than finish the great hobby loss case I am working on for forbes.com, I wrote here about previous day's events which were capped by the Battle of Appomattox Station.

As planned yesterday, Alan Jacobs, my Appomattox battle buddy and the absolutely coolest kid I had known in my high school days, slept in.  I drove the 20 miles to the NPS site with Alan planning on taking one of the free shuttles that is running from Lynchburg for the next few days.

The short bus ride from the O'Brien Lot to the Courthouse brought up memories of another dangerous time in American history.  The fellow sitting next to me was wearing a hat indicating he was a US Navy veteran.  It turned out that he had been on the same ship as my brother during the same period of time, the early sixties when the USS Randolph patrolled the waters off Cuba intercepting Russian submarines and recovering Mercury astronauts. He was part of Helicopter Squadron 7 and my brother was part of the ship's company so they didn't know each other.  He did tell me a story of a midshipman wandering around the ship asking for something that didn't exist at the behest of the electronic technicians and it sounded like the kind of prank my brother would pull.

From the bus, it was a pretty simple matter to march to the sound of the guns.  People were along a long wooden fence next to the stagecoach road watching "the battle" in a field.  It was a not very complex affair with about fifty men on each side.  Infantry in the center of each line and cavalry on the wings. About that "men thing" - a couple of the Union Cavalry were girls who had not been left behind.  The troops were all white, an inaccuracy that would be discussed in a lecture at the end of the day.

I walked along no mans land looking for a good spot and when I came to a jog in the fence it seemed as good as it could get.  Not so much for the view of "the battle", which was actually getting a bit tedious as for the people I ran into.  Byron Jones is the epitome of a "real timer".  At Gettysburg and Chancellorsville I kept telling my covivant about real timers whose ranks I suppose I joined on the eve of Antietam, when I chatted up some fellows who were reminiscing about Bull Run and deciding exactly where they should be the next day, Park Service events be damned.

Byron retired at the age of 62 specifically to be able to be at significant places exactly 150 years after the event. He logged 18,000 miles and was at 150 different battle sites.  (If I remember rightly there were about 10,000 engagements during the whole war.  I don't know how many I could name but it is a lot less than the number Byron showed up at.)

It kept getting better.  Fritzi Pisarski was watching her husband out on the field. They are with Company H of the 119th New York Volunteers.  She lives in Levittown on Long Island and has a passion for authenticity. It is OK to have canned goods in camp, as long as you remove the labels, but you best have a period can opener.  She told me that she met Mort Kunstler once and told him that he needed to do more paintings with women in them.  The result was Moonlight and Magnolias.

The women's history discussion drew in another lady with a Seneca Falls sweatshirt. Neither one of them had heard of Margaret Fuller.  Well they have now.

But then it got ridiculously better.  General Lee (Thomas Lee Jessee) was there in his baseball cap and windbreaker.  He filled me in a little more on his background.  He is northern  by birth and southern by the grace of God.  He taught astronomy and one time gave his students a "Skies of the Civil War" lesson setting the planetarium to show the stars as you might have seen them if you were laying wounded on the battlefield at Fredericksburg or something like that.

That's tough to top, but meeting John Griffiths dressed as one of Grant's staff officers might have done it.  John is a great great grandson of Ulysses Grant.  He was on the ground floor of reenacting starting in 1956 when there were no replica weapons available, but originals were still pretty affordable.

The arthritis makes it hard for him to do the manual of arms, so he is happy being a staff officer.  Reminds me of somebody I met at Gettysburg who switched to making believe he was a civil war doctor, which involves a lot less time in the sun.

After they finally came over with the white flag I started heading over to the next event and ran into a chaplain reenactor.  Father Bruce Hennington is a retired priest from the Catholic Diocese of Madison WI. He had also served as a chaplain for the Coast Guard Reserve on the Great Lakes.

The main ceremony had a band and a lot of speeches by descendants, historians and politicians.  The 3rd Infantry Old Guard was there, as they had been at Antietam to present the colors, fire a 21 gun salute and play taps.  The speeches emphasized a few things.  It was really good for the rest of the world that the United States of America is, you know, United, because a balkanized America could probably not have rescued Europe from Fascism or faced down the Soviet Union.  The magnanimity of Grant's terms of surrender was a really good way to end a civil war, with the defeated general telling his boys to go home and try to be as good citizens as they had been soldiers (Confederate generals in other areas were a little less upbeat about their men, implying that they would have been better leaders if they had some decent followers.  One said that he hoped the boys would make better citizens than they had soldiers.)  And the end of slavery was a really big deal, which probably had not been adequately covered in the centennial.

It was a very moving ceremony actually with the crowd spontaneously singing the national anthem.  When the very modern major general spoke he mentioned that he had grown up in the area and was descended from a slave owner, but that now he worked in the Pentagon and his CIC was a black man and the crowd spontaneously applauded (or maybe they were all following my lead).

Alan and I finally connected after the ceremony.  It took us about five minutes talking on the cell phone to find one another.  As we headed over to the McClean house for the big event, we ran into Abraham Lincoln.  We talked a bit about his psychiatric diagnosis, which Alan and Abe had as depression, but I'm still thinking bipolar.

There were more speeches as we stood outside the house for an hour and a half.  Finally they came out around 3:00.  Lee riding away on his horse while Union soldiers lined the road and Grant and his staff officers removing their hats to show respect.

The bell ringing ceremony - one minute for every year of the war was supposed to be followed by bells ringing across the country.  Nobody I have talked to on the phone has heard them.  Love if you would comment if you did.

As noted above there were not that many black soldiers on the scene.  There were three guys floating around who are affiliated with Company H of  the 54th Mass which is based on DC.  Taking to them I got the impression that reenacting by African Americans mostly got started after the movie Glory.  The lecture I stayed on for after Alan bailed was about the USCT troops that were on the scene on the final day - 7 regiments - around 5,500 men.  A ranger had been doing research on their backgrounds and what happened to them.  In May when the Grand Review took place in Washington they were mostly down by the
Rio Grande.

The large number of African Americans that served the Union was one of those inconvenient truths that complicated the Lost Cause narrative of a war that was about something really important, but since it was all settled we don't need to consider it anymore.

All in all, it was a great day.  I just dropped Alan at Amtrak and I'm thinking I'll catch up on some writing and explore Lynchburg a bit. At breakfast I met a retired British tank officer dressed as Union private. He told me that he had a bit part in Gettysburg and also in a Bridge Too Far

 The big day is Sunday when the ANV infantry stacks arms and Joshua Chamberlain makes his grand gesture.

Peter J Reilly CPA, who hopes to become the first tax blogger to give up his day job, has established himself as something of a Sesquicentennial real timer, without being crazy about it.

419 Reasons to Like Nigeria and Nigerians - Part 3- Cherish Your Diaspora

You'll have to go back into the previous posts if you want the connection that this has to taxes fully explained.  It is a tax court decision from 1952 that sent me down this path. This is the final post in this series, unless I decide to do more.  Earlier in the series I proposed that people start making lists of 419 reasons to like Nigeria and Nigerians.  

Why 419 ? Well if you don't know you're not going to find out in this post.  As I noted in my last post, I don't know that I have anything worthwhile to offer beyond the original idea, assuming for the sake of argument that the original idea was worthwhile.   Regardless, I observed that there are, probably among other reasons, two reasons that Americans form an affection for other lands and their peoples - neighbors and American history.  I discussed neighbors in the last post and this one is dedicated to American history.  

I should mention here that I have two intellectual passions.  Title 26 of the United States Code and the history of the United States from 1830 - 1870.  Since I am a professional in the first and an amateur in the latter, I don't hold myself to exacting standards of scholarly citation.  Besides this is blogging not peer reviewed publication.  Go check out the William and Mary Quarterly or something like that if that's what you want.

Nation of Immigrants - Not Exactly

The large influx of immigrants into the United States commenced around 1830 and continued at an increasing pace until the early 20th century.  It's a complicated story.  Here are some numbers if you want that.  There are plenty more resources if you poke around.  The immigrants of course changed American culture in many ways, but I don't think it is fair to say that they transformed it.  If you read Democracy in America you see that many of the elements of American culture and governance were fully formed by then.  The Declaration of Independence was almost as old then, as I am now.  We still number our presidents in the same sequence.   Although if we were going to drop one number 7 who is on the 20 dollar bill wouldn't be a bad choice.

Three Major Groups in the Formation

The nation that the immigrants started coming to in droves in the mid-nineteenth century had been formed by the encounter between three major groups.  The indigenous peoples of North America, the descendentsof European settlers, predominantly English speaking Protestants, many of whom could trace their ancestors in America back over a century and descendants of Africans taken in captivity to America, most of whom were held in bondage.  The immigrants, not being idiots, figured out which group they wanted to be part of right off but the culture they were joining up with had been shaped by all three groups such that even the descendants of the Europeans were not European anymore.  That's another complicated story too big for blogging

What in the World Does That Have to do with Nigeria ?

For that I have to divert a little.  Several years ago I visited Antietam with my daughter.  Antietam is the site of the deadliest day in American history September 17, 1862.  It is a very important day because Abraham Lincoln had decided that he would only issue the Emancipation Proclamation after a victory.  The proclamation, by itself, did not free anybody, but after it went in effect on January 1, 1863 it meant that the men in blue suits brought freedom wherever they went.  One of the monuments at Antietam which I just had to see with my daughter was dedicated to the Irish Brigade.  The Irish Brigade is another long story.  Suffice it to say they were probably mostly famine refugees commanded by Thomas Francis Meagher, who barely missed being executed for his participation in an abortive uprising in Ireland.  One of the things that I noted was an acknowledgement of their courage by the Republic Ireland.  The men were soldiers in the  service of the United States of America on the bloodiest day in the country's history.  At the dedication ceremony one of the speakers said:

 "They showed by their record that they brought with them a true endowment of riches. They added a glorious new chapter to the history of the Irish soldier."

That was the Irish Ambassador to the United States, Sean O'Huiginn. This is not an isolated incident.  Here is what Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland has to say:

At my inauguration I spoke of the seventy million people worldwide who can claim Irish descent. I also committed my Presidency to cherishing them - even though at the time I was thinking of doing so in a purely symbolic way. Nevertheless the simple emblem of a light in the window, for me, and I hope for them, signifies the inextinguishable nature of our love and remembrance on this island those who leave it behind.

Over 100 years since the last of my immigrant ancestors came to America and the president of Ireland has the light on for me.  To put the seventy million in context, the current population of Ireland is just over six million roughly 75% in the Republic and the balance in Northern Ireland, part of the U.K.   Ireland had a population of about eight million in 1840.  From1845 to 1852, Ireland lost two million people, half to starvation and disease and half to emigration.  High rates of emigration afterwards prevented Ireland from ever recovering to its pre-Famine population.

My Favorite Civil War Monument

My favorite Civil War monument is not the one to the Irish Brigade at Antietam or the even more impressive one at Gettysburg.  It is in Boston.  It is called the Shaw monument in honor of Robert Gould Shaw colonel of the 54th Massachusetts.  As the inscription shows the monument is really in honor of the whole regiment. I first saw it when I was eighteen and coming at it from behind so I read the inscription before I saw the Augustus Saint-Gaudens sculpture:

THE WHITE OFFICERS
TAKING LIFE AND HONOR IN THEIR HANDS CAST IN THEIR LOT
WITH MEN OF DESPISED RACE UNPROVED IN WAR AND
RISKED DEATH AS INCITERS OF SERVILE INSURRECTION
IF TAKEN PRISONERS BESIDES ENCOUNTERING ALL THE
COMMON PERILS OF CAMP MARCH AND BATTLE.

THE BLACK RANK AND FILE
VOLUNTEERED WHEN DISASTER CLOUDED THE UNION CAUSE
SERVED WITHOUT PAY FOR EIGHTEEN MONTHS TILL GIVEN
THAT OF WHITE TROOPS FACED THREATENED ENSLAVE-
MENT IF CAPTURED WERE BRAVE IN ACTION PATIENT
UNDER HEAVY AND DANGEROUS LABORS AND CHEERFUL
AMONG HARDSHIPS AND PRIVATIONS.

TOGETHER
THEY GAVE TO THE NATION AND THE WORLD UNDYING PROOF
THAT AMERICANS OF AFRICAN DESCENT POSSESS THE
PRIDE COURAGE AND DEVOTION OF THE PATRIOT SOLDIER.
ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY THOUSAND SUCH AMERICANS
ENLISTED UNDER THE UNION FLAG IN
MDCCCLXIII MDCCCLXV.

CHARLES W. ELIOT.

I KNOW NOT MR. COMMANDER WHERE IN ALL HUMAN HISTORY
TO ANY GIVEN THOUSAND MEN IN ARMS THERE HAS
BEEN COMMITTED A WORK AT ONCE SO PROUD SO PRECIOUS
SO FULL OF HOPE AND GLORY AS THE WORK COMMITTED
TO YOU.

JOHN A. ANDREW, GOVERNOR

The math isn't all that hard to do.  About 30% of the persons taken in captivity from Africa were from Nigeria.  That means 70% weren't.   The African people in America were pretty intermingled so you could infer that after a generation about 51% would be partially of Nigerian descent (1- (.7 x .7)).  Run that out 8 generations and you are well into the nineties.  So let's be conservative and say that 150,000 of the Americans of African descent who wore blue suits in the mid eighteen sixties were partially of Nigerian descent.   Now since the Americans of African descent were one of the three primary groups that created the United States, I could start naming names of other heroes, but I only promised you 419 and I'm already at 150,000 and I'm just a tax blogger and have other things I need to be writing about.

Some things I have read in other places lead me to believe I may have stepped into another controversy in which I don't really belong, so I should clarify that this is something of a personal idiosyncratic viewpoint t.   The men of the 54th Mass and the less well known but earlier formed First South Carolina Volunteers, who as mostly Gullah speakers from isolated areas were more distinctively African than their cousins recruited in the North, are American heroes.  They did not think of themselves as Nigerian and their descendants probably don't either.  And maybe Nigerians don't think of them as Nigerian.  But they are American heroes, which makes them my heroes.  And they are of Nigerian descent, so they make me like Nigeria.  As I said in a previous post, I am very ignorant about Nigeria.  Maybe Goodluck Jonathan keeps a light on for them in his house, but if he doesn't it might not be such a bad idea.  He could give Mary Robinson a call.

For more on the topic of the participation Americans of African descent in the Civil War check out the African American Civil War Memorial and Museum.

Doing The Civil War Sesquicentennial In Real Time

I can't quite say for certain what moved me to visit Antietam on September 17, 2012.  It was the first time in over thirty years that I took off from work on a big due date.  (September 15 is when extended corporate tax returns are due).  Even after 9/11, September 17, 1862 remains the deadliest day in American history.  There is a passage in Strangers In The Land by John Higham which has always haunted me.  

Faugh a Ballagh! The Gaelic cry rang out through the dense fog and gunsmoke as a wave of Union troops surged up the heights behind ruined Fredericksbur.  In their midst floated a green flag bearing the golden harp of Ireland.  For fifteen minutes Confederate cannon and muskets poured down volley after volley from impregnable positions a few paces away.  At the end of the carnage two thirds of General Thomas Meagher's Irish Brigade were left crumpled on the field.

That was December 13, 1862, but the Brigade had a similar encounter as it charged Bloody Lane in Antietam on September 17, 1862.

The Battle of Antietam was the arguable victory that Abraham Lincoln needed to issue the preliminary emancipation proclamation.

At any rate I felt drawn to be at Antietam on the anniversary.  The only planning I did was to book a room in the general vicinity.  I made it to the National Park Center early Sunday afternoon on the 16th.  As I suspected there was a lot going on.  There had been a major reenactment event near the Park (The Park Service sharply limits the number of reenactors that can tromp around the Park with black powder weapons).

The thing that really surprised me though was an encounter that I had that night as I was waiting to hear a talk by James McPherson.  A couple of guys were sharing pictures they had taken a day or two before at a critical spot not too distant.  It turned out that the fellows remembered one another from Bull Run.  They were part of a small group of people that is drawn to be at the precise 150th anniversary of key events. One of them was going on that he was not going to be in the Cornfield the next day, as the real opening shot was at another point. He said they called themselves real timers.

I was in the Cornfield the next morning where I met another real timer, but you will have to wait until September 17 to read about that, since I will be putting my real time experiences up either one or two years after I had them.  You can go hunting on forbes.com if you are impatient.

My covivant has had enough of the Civil War for her lifetime and nothing is calling me in 2014.  I do intend to be at Appomatox next April and hopefully you will read about it here.  I have already posted about Chancellorsville, so you can keep an eye out for Gettysburg when the time comes.