Bruce Catton - Reflections on the Civil War

Also by Bruce Cotton

WAITING FOR THE MORNING TRAIN
PREFACES TO HISTORY
GRANT TAKES COMMAND
NEVER CALL RETREAT
TERRIBLE SWIFT SWORD
THE COMING FURY
GRANT MOVES SOUTH
THIS HALLOWED GROUND
A STILLNESS AT APPOMATTOX
GLORY ROAD
MR. LINCOLNS ARMY
GETTYSBURG: THE FINAL FURY
THE BOLD AND MAGNIFICENT DREAM

Grateful acknowledgment is made to Lou Reda and Lou Reda Productions, Inc. for their efforts in connection with the publication of this book.

Photographs of the drawings by Jim Kalett

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Carton, Bruce, 1899
Reflections on the Civil War.

1. United StatesHistoryCivil War, 18611865.
I. Leekley, John. II. Title.
E468.C295 9737
eISBN: 978-0-307-83331-0
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 796164

Text copyright 1981 by Gerald Dickler, as executor of the estate of Bruce Catton, and John Leekley
Illustrations copyright 1981 by John Leekley

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

v3.1

Contents

Editors Foreword

Reflections is a summation of the Civil War themes with which Bruce Catton was most concerned. On every page and between every line one can sense the intimate way in which Bruce understood the experience of that war. He could feel what those soldiers felt because he shared with them the same faith; faith in ourselves as Americans, in what we have done and can do, as a people, as a nation. When we read his work we learn more than the ideas; we gain the experience. In Reflections he shares his vision of what the war was all about, and at the same time, reaffirms that faith. We feel his work as much as read it. It is as close as we could come to having a conversation with Bruce Catton.

In this work, Bruce reflects on a wide range of subjects, including the cause and meaning of the Civil War; the actual experience of army life for the common soldier; and the major campaigns. This is not a detailed, formal military history, something that Bruce has already done so well. Here are the broader strokes, the motives and emotions, the moving currents in the spirits of men that caused the flood of civil war. In Reflections there flow the currents that run deeply through our national consciousness.

Much of this text is based on tape recordings Bruce made some time ago for educational distribution. I had joined him in the process of editing the transcripts of these tapes shortly before his death, at which time I assumed the role of editor. Some reworking and restructuring of the material was necessary to bring what had originated as oral history into a more orderly written presentation, but every effort has been made to preserve the sense of intimacy and warmth of tone.

I came to know Bruce Catton because of a sketchbook, battered and browned with age, drawn by a young private in the Union army, a soldier-artist named John Geyser. Geyser volunteered a few days after Fort Sumter surrendered and served throughout most of the war. He carried this sketchbook through the dark early years of defeat for the North, and in it he drew the people, the land, and the violence around him in a moving and poetic way.

John Geyser was much like other American country boys in 1861, caught up in the Civil War, moved by his ideals to enlist, and carried in a flood he only vaguely understood; a rising river of change that has come down to us today. But John Geyser did realize, along with the men he fought with, and against, that they were involved in a very great event, an Armageddon, and that they were making history; and John Geyser recorded it. With this sensitive record of a life being lived, he has shown us the very human side of history that is often missing from the dry facts of history books.

The sketchbook has survived since 1861, passing through many hands, touching many lives, and was finally acquired and preserved by my father, Richard Leekley, a rare-book dealer specializing in Americana. When he passed away in 1976, the sketchbook came into my hands.

With the slim book of drawings under my arm, I met with Bruce at his favorite haunt, the Algonquin Hotel. I showed him the drawings and we talked about the view of the war through the eyes and heart and hands of this common soldier, John Geyser. Out of that meeting came a shared vision. For almost two years, we met and we relived the drawings, with Bruce identifying and elaborating on the actual places of battle and details of army life depicted in the drawings that Geyser had made as an eyewitness. Bruce used these descriptions, together with Geysers war records, company history, and personal documents, to construct the narrative of John Geysers journey which appears here as Part Five, There Was a Young Soldier.

Bruce was as much a poet as he was a historian, his great narrative power soaring and lyrical. He brought the Civil War to life in a way no other historian has been able to do. His writing and character reflected the same qualities, both straightforward and informal, with great dignity and a faith in other men. Like the Civil War veterans he remembered from his boyhood in Michigan, he embodied the ideals that have sustained America, not only in his virtue and integrity, but in the great judgment he displayed. He was never hesitant to say that while the Civil War was over, the change that it started was not over; the work not finished. He said that we must all live up to what those who came before us have given us, like the veterans of the Civil War. This sense of responsibility as an American is one of the great qualities of Bruces life and work. With the death of Bruce Catton in the late summer of 1978, we lost a national treasure.