American History Revised (65 page)

The Civil War is always seen as a war between the North and the South. This is a mistaken impression. The war was really between the North and the Confederate administration that ruled the South.

1865
Not Lee and Grant, but Johnston and Sherman.

“Ending a war,” wrote the late historian Barbara Tuchman, “is a difficult and delicate business. Each side must become convinced at the same time and with equal certainty that its war aim is either not achievable or not worth the cost. The certainty must be equal, for if one side perceives a slight advantage or disadvantage it will not offer terms acceptable to the other.” For Lee and Grant, ending the war was easy. The Army of Northern Virginia, starving for food and down to fifteen thousand muskets and sabers, was being hunted down by eighty thousand well-armed, well-fed federal troops. Lee,
although imbued with deep Southern chivalry about noble sacrifice, wasn’t about to contemplate unnecessary mass deaths. Nor was Grant, who, exhausted by victories that had cost the North so many lives he was being called “the butcher,” felt it was time to stop.

General Joseph Johnston

Lee may have been the head general of the Confederacy, but he did not have control of all his generals, especially when President Jefferson Davis wanted to launch a guerrilla war and fight it out for another twenty years. In surrendering to Grant, Lee was surrendering only the Northern Virginia army. Still out in the field were several other armies, under the leadership of Joseph Johnston, the man rated by Grant as the South’s best general.

Then came the assassination, just five days after Appomattox. Whatever peace deal was in the cards went out the window. Terrified Northern mobs rampaged through the streets screaming, “Conspiracy! Revenge!” The acting chief of the Union in the heat of emergency and near panic was not Vice President Andrew Johnson but the bellicose secretary of war, Edwin Stanton, acting as “president, secretary of war, secretary of state, commander in chief, comforter, and dictator.” To such a man, in an obviously apoplectic state of mind, anarchy loomed: the hated
Confederacy had a president who wouldn’t concede and who had at his disposal several armies ready to hole up in the mountains of Tennessee and Georgia and fight on for years. The reputation of these cavalry generals was legendary. Already Jeb Stuart, John Mosby, John Hood, and Nathan Bedford Forrest had wreaked havoc with their hit-and-run raids on the Union forces. Forrest, in particular, was so successful that William Tecumseh Sherman had ordered an expedition to flush him out “to the death, if it costs ten thousand lives and bankrupts the treasury.” And for good reason: in the summer of 1862, with a force of only 2,500 men, Forrest had pinned down a forty-thousand-man Union army, sixteen times his size. Rampaging through Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee, Forrest regularly defeated Union forces twice his size. “There will never be peace until Forrest is dead!” said an exasperated Sherman.

General William Sherman

Forget the meeting of two gentlemen generals at Appomattox, the war had now taken an ugly turn. Stanton and Grant turned to the only man who could save the situation: the ruthless William T. Sherman, the general the South hated—and feared—the most.

The man he had to deal with—his only hope for a quick resolution—was the commander of the Army of Tennessee who had beaten him at Kennesaw Mountain, General Joseph Johnston.

The two adversaries now met, the former victor representing the losing side, the former loser the winning side. They conducted private negotiations at a shabby roadside house and barn known as Bennett Place, and developed a lifelong admiration for each other. The deal they worked out was a perfect example of generals having more common sense than politicians about how to achieve peace.

Both generals had their hands tied, being under orders from their respective presidents to reject any proposals that would define civilian peace terms. But Johnston attempted an end-run around Jefferson Davis by proposing that all of the Confederate armies surrender, and Sherman attempted an end-run around Andrew Johnson by accepting this proposal and offering peace terms even more generous than Appomattox to make it stick. “The point to which I attach most importance,” he wrote to the Army chief of staff, “is that the dispersement and disbandment of these armies is done in a manner as to prevent their breaking into guerrilla bands.”

The civilian superiors on both sides went ballistic. Andrew Johnson and Edward Stanton sent an embarrassed Grant to see his friend Sherman and tell him to renege on the deal, and Jefferson Davis ordered Johnston to resume fighting. Johnston refused. Instead, he and Sherman reconvened at Bennett Place, and finally came up with a document that Sherman could get his government to sign. Ignoring Jefferson Davis, Johnston urged his own men and the other Confederate generals to “observe faithfully the terms of pacification
agreed upon; and to discharge the obligations of good and peaceful citizens….By such a course, you will best secure the comfort of your families and kindred, and restore tranquility to our country.” To Sherman he wrote, “The enlarged patriotism exhibited in your orders reconciles me to what I have previously regarded as the misfortune of my life, that of having to encounter you in the field.”
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Here at Bennett Place—not at Appomattox—is where the Civil War finally ended

Over the next thirty days the other Confederate generals all agreed to lay down their arms and the unrepentant Jefferson Davis was captured and put in prison. The war, finally, was now over.

1870
Only 30 percent of blacks could read and write. The reason for this, for some strange reason, has never been publicized. Yet it is all very obvious and simple.

Most of the Southern states during slavery had laws prohibiting anyone from teaching slaves to read and write. The results could be brutal. One of the most brilliant black scientists, Percy Julian (1899–1975), was the inventor of cortisone and other valuable drugs. Julian recalled the days of discrimination when he left the cotton fields of Alabama for De-Pauw
University, from which he graduated Phi Beta Kappa, and Harvard University, from which he graduated with top honors. As he left home to enroll at De-Pauw, “there stood his ninety-nine-year-old grandmother, who once had picked a record 350 pounds in one day; his grandfather, waving a hand from which two fingers were missing—cut off because his master discovered he had learned to write.”

1882
Every day brought William Vanderbilt, the world’s richest man, stacks of hate mail, pleas for money from strangers, and dubious business deals from acquaintances. When he graciously gave an interview at the end of a tiring afternoon, he got goaded into uttering his infamous epithet, “The public be damned!” From then on he was cast into the irons of history as the penultimate cold-blooded robber baron.

But did he really say it? Or did he get goaded by a pestering reporter into saying words that, taken out of context, look intemperate? Read the interview carefully and judge for yourself:

Many years later, another corporate tycoon got hoisted onto the Pillar of Arrogance for a similar statement. The man was Charles E. Wilson, chief executive of General Motors and author of the infamous quote “What’s good for General Motors is good for the country.”