What This Cruel War Was Over

by Chandra Manning

  The men and women who work at libraries and archives possess the keys to the researcher’s kingdom, and I am very grateful for the generosity with which so many shared those keys. The staff of the North Carolina Division of Archives and History, John White of the Southern Historical Collection at the University of North Carolina, Wayne Moore of the Tennessee State Library and Archives, David Keogh at Carlisle Barracks, and the staff at the Vermont Historical Society all deserve special thanks for unusual helpfulness and friendliness. Dr. Edwin Bridges not only put out the welcome mat at the Alabama Department of Archives and History, but he also provided a terrific tour of Montgomery. John Coski of the Museum of the Confederacy seemed to know the whereabouts and content of collections relating to every Confederate soldier, and he could also talk about baseball with a glee similar to my own. The one thing I do not like about archives is that they all maintain the temperature of a standard meat locker. For this reason, I especially thank Judy Johnson of the Connecticut Historical Society, who brought me a cup of hot tea one day that hit the spot.

  As I embarked on my research travels, I always carried a tent in my backpack in case I got stuck for a place to stay. Thanks to the hospitality of an almost embarrassing number of good-hearted souls, I only had to use the tent twice. More important, that hospitality gave me the opportunity, after long days spent communing with dead soldiers who never laughed at my jokes, to talk to people who were still alive. Many thanks to Janet Baker-Carr, John Belcher, Celeste Dixon (for tours of Chickamauga and Lookout Mountain, as well as a place to sleep), Mary Fleischli and Allan da Costa Pinto, Dan Hubbard, Marvin and Carla Johnson, Barb Keys and Jeff Shimeta, Tim and Liza Kirchgraber, Michelle Manning and Eli Eastman, Richard and Rita Manning, Ethelmae and Harold Mason, Jennie and the late Robert McCormick, Jennifer Mattson, Ann O’Leary, Karla, David, Zachary, and Erin Principe, Asha and Stephen Shipman, Janet Stateman, Clemmie Stringfellow, Bill and Máire Tennant, and Erika Teschke and Tim Koeppe.

  Friends and fellow travelers from graduate school contributed to this project in direct and indirect (but always invaluable) ways. I especially want to thank Andy Coopersmith, Brian Delay, Jennie Goloboy, Dan Hamilton, Isadora Helfgott, Libra Hilde, Barbara Keys, Rob MacDougall, Jon Schrag, Eva Shepard Wolf, and Julia Torrie. Christine Dee made two especially notable contributions: in the middle of the dissertation she pointed out that the manuscript flipped back and forth between two different organizational patterns and one worked better than the other (she was right), and she also provided an invaluable reading of the first draft of the Introduction. Silvana Siddali invariably reminds me of why I find working on the nineteenth century so exciting. Lisa Laskin, one of the most unfailingly sensible people I know, generously shared her inexhaustible font of advice and insight on Civil War soldiers, and on much else besides; she was also a great traveling companion and river rafting partner on a trip down the James River in Richmond. The all-time research travel companion award, though, must go to Susan Wyly, thanks to whom I have more good stories about a trip through Alabama, Tennessee, and Mississippi than any one person has a right to. How her car got home in one piece I will never fully understand (in fact, strictly speaking, I don’t think it did get home in one piece, though it did get home). Even before graduate school, my undergraduate years at Mount Holyoke College molded me in more ways than I can recount, and I want to thank every inch of that place, which opened up for me the life of the mind.

  Colleagues and members of the historical profession have proven unstinting with their help and advice. Kerby Miller shared valuable sources. Drew Gilpin Faust, Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, and Reid Mitchell all read and commented on the dissertation, a herculean feat appreciable only to those who know how very long that dissertation was. Catherine Allgor and Susan O’Donovan have both served as savvy guides and firm friends who helped me make the transition from graduate student to a historian with a job; just as important, Susan continues to serve as a “virtual” marathon training partner. Colleagues in the Georgetown University Department of History, especially Alison Games, Maurice Jackson, Michael Kazin, Christine Kim, Amy Leonard, Joe McCartin, Adam Rothman, and John Tutino helped make the transition to Georgetown so smooth that I could begin a new job and finish a book in the same year, and enjoy both processes (usually). Heather Cox Richardson and Michael Vorenberg each commented on the first two chapters in ways that provided me with breakthroughs as I began to transform the dissertation into a book. William Cooper, Leonard Richards, and James McPherson read the manuscript draft with generosity and an exactitude that saved me from embarrassing errors. Fred Bailey read both the dissertation and the manuscript, and offered key advice for making explicit a theme that had first been implicit. Robert Bonner also read the manuscript draft and offered several perceptive comments that helped me clarify what I was really trying to say. Although Adam was chagrined to learn that he was “tied,” the fact remains that Adam Rothman and Aaron Sheehan-Dean tied for the most incisive reading of the manuscript. Adam’s thoughtful comments helped sharpen both argument and prose. Aaron possesses an uncanny knack for figuring out what I am trying to say and articulating it far more clearly than I have done, and he generously applied that knack to many places in the manuscript. Several of the above-mentioned labored valiantly but fruitlessly to dissuade me from certain points or to change my mind; all errors of fact or judgment that remain are mine alone.

  The historian who contributed the most to this project was surely the late William Gienapp, who saw the dissertation but none of the revisions that followed. From loaning books to listening to ideas to critiquing prose with trademark care and precision, he consistently demonstrated the most sincere dedication to teaching that I have ever seen. In my first year of graduate school he said, “There are professors who want you to think like them, and there are professors who want you to think. I am the second kind.” He proved that he meant it, even when he thought I was daft, and he served as the model for the sort of scholar and teacher I hope to be. His wife, Erica Gienapp, continues to inspire and foster the development of his students.

  Transforming a manuscript into a book is a mysterious process for a first timer, and I would like to thank the people who helped demystify it. Michael Kazin very kindly put me in touch with his agent, Sandy Dijkstra, who shepherded the project through with helpfulness and efficiency. Jane Garrett, Leslie Levine, and Emily Molanphy at Knopf always answered questions immediately and helpfully. Jane Garrett also paid me the great compliment of simply letting me work on the manuscript in my own way and time. Jenna Bagnini’s light and careful touch smoothed out rough spots while making the editing process painless.

  Several friends who have nothing to do with the historical or editorial professions proved indispensable to this project. Nobody could ask for better cheerleaders than Eileen and Les Bernal, who have seen me through all manner of life transitions. Kate Baker-Carr exemplifies grace and friendship; there were patches along the way that I simply could not have navigated without her. Erika Teschke and I have been the closest of friends since college, and I can imagine neither this book nor my life without her friendship.

  My family has been as central to this project as soldiers’ families were to their worlds. My parents, Howard and Kathy Miller, helped me purchase the laptop computer that accompanied me on many of my research travels and on which I wrote the original dissertation, but even before that, my mother made sure that no matter how many times we moved, from the age of three on, I always had a library card. My mother- and father-in-law, Richard and Rita Manning, put me up during research trips, always knew when and when not to ask about the book project, and provided silent help that kept our household going. They also provided an afternoon of babysitting that allowed me to finish proofreading. Michelle Manning and Eli Eastman also put me up, as did Erica Eastman on a later trip (though Erica had little say in the matter, since she could not yet talk). Michelle even went back to an archive for me to make another copy of a source after I lost my copy. My
grandparents deserve special mention. My grandfather, Jack Pluta, believed resolutely in the value of education and of me even—especially—when I had a hard time sharing his confidence. My grandmother, who reduced all the syllables of Virginia Mary Grace Houghney Barker Pluta down to the essentials and went by “Jean,” was fascinated by the Civil War and she taught me to read when I was two. Anything about my grandmother was bound to rub off on me, but that particular combination has turned out to shape my life.

  My son, Aidan Douglass Manning, gracefully timed his arrival to permit the timely completion of this book. He makes it easy to understand how Confederates could justify nearly anything out of love and concern for their children; because I care about the kind of world he grows up in, he also serves as a reminder of the importance of resisting that urge.

  Finally, there is Derek. When I began my research travels, he lived in a one-room apartment, but still he offered his address as a destination for the shipping of photocopies, and then built a bookcase to contain the overflow. He put up with side trips to archives on our camping trips, agreed to have some of our wedding photos taken at the Massachusetts Fifty-fourth Monument in Boston, and learned far more about the nineteenth century than he ever wanted to know. He has also, uncomplainingly, become a citizen-by-marriage of Red Sox Nation, even though he had no interest in baseball before we met (a fact he wisely hid from me until well into our courtship, which consisted of many Red Sox games). He was so sure I would finish the dissertation on time that he got tickets to Fenway Park for a Red Sox–Yankees game the night before the dissertation was due. (The Red Sox won 3–2, in a beautiful pitching duel.) Since then we have moved across the country twice, but never left the bounds of Red Sox Nation; he also got tickets to a Red Sox game in Baltimore for the week after I submitted this manuscript. He has shared his home with thousands of dead soldiers and his life with me, and even though I have had years to think up words adequate to convey my love and thanks, I still remain powerless to do so, leading me to the conclusion that words powerful enough simply do not exist.

  *1 “Lincoln and Liberty” was an 1860 campaign song set (like many nineteenth-century campaign songs) to the tune “Rosin the Bow.”

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  *2 “Richmond Is a Hard Road to Travel,” an 1863 song by John Thompson, mocked the Union Army’s failure to capture Richmond in 1861 and 1862.

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  *3 Chapter title from “Kingdom Coming,” a song writen by Henry Clay Work in 1862.

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  *4 Chapter title from “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” by Julia Ward Howe, first published in the Atlantic Monthly, February 1862.

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  *5 Chapter title from “Tenting Tonight,” a song by Walter Kittredge, 1864.

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  *6 Set to the tune of “Joshua,” an antebellum spiritual, “Slavery’s Chain Done Broke at Last” dates to the end of the war. Unlike many antebellum slave spirituals, which saw relief only in death, this song celebrated the end of slavery’s grasp on earth.

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  *7 Chapter title adapted from “When This Cruel War Is Over,” by Charles C. Sawyer, the most popular song of the Civil War. Also known as “Weeping, Sad and Lonely,” it sold over one million copies of sheet music.

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  A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Chandra Manning, a graduate of Mount Holyoke College, received a M.Phil from the National University of Ireland, Galway, and took her Ph.D. at Harvard in 2002. She has lectured in history at Harvard and taught at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington. Currently, she is Assistant Professor of History at Georgetown University, and lives in Alexandria, Virginia, with her husband and son. This is her first book.

  THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK

  PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

  Copyright © 2007 by Chandra Manning

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

  www.aaknopf.com

  Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Manning, Chandra.

  What this cruel war was over : soldiers, slavery, and the Civil War / Chandra Manning.

  p. cm.

  1. Soldiers—United States—Attitudes—History—19th century. 2. Soldiers—Confederate States of America—Attitudes—History. 3. United States—History—Civil War, 1861–1865—Causes. 4. Slavery—United States—Public opinion—History—19th century. 5. Slavery—Confederate States of America—Public opinion—History—19th century. 6. United States—Race relations—History—19th century. 7. United States—History—Civil War, 1861–1865—Social aspects. 8. United States. Army—History—Civil War, 1861–1865. 9. Confederate States of America. Army—History. 10. Public opinion—United States—History—19th century. I. Title.

  E607.M32 2007

  973.7'4—dc22 2006048733

  eISBN: 978-0-307-26743-6

  v3.0