"Revisionism"
is a cuss word when it comes to the writing of history. The word
itself, coming from the Latin term revisere ("to look at again"), seems
harmless enough. Certainly, good historical writing should always
take a fresh look at the primary and secondary sources.
Unfortunately, revision*ism* has largely turned into a destructive ideological exercise, frequently associated with Marxism, wherein small people toss offal at great ones in the name of progress. You can see an example of bad revisionism's deformed cultural offspring in the case of Madison, Wisconsin, removing a grave monument listing the names of deceased Confederate POWs who had died at a Wisconsin POW camp.
[2020 aside: What happened in Madison was Orwellian grave desecration, made worse by this inescapable fact: Union prison camps were slaughter pens for Confederate prisoners.
There was no excuse for the far-richer Union to keep prisoners in such abominable conditions. We of the Union are largely ignorant of this bloody stain on our honor--and the repulsive bastards of Madison have helped to bury this atrocity. Long may they wither.]
But there is no reason why revisionism has to be destructive. With the right mindset, it can be a useful process, akin to removing barnacles from a frigate or carefully extracting and restoring a fossilized animal.
Prof. Christopher J. Einolf's George Thomas: Virginian for the Union is revisionism in the Latin understanding of the word. After a long stint at DePaul, Einolf is currently a sociology professor at Northern Illinois University. This background is out of left field (rimshot!) when it comes to pondering the American Civil War, but it mostly serves him and his subject well, bringing a fresh, searching eye.
Fans of George Henry Thomas are a stubborn bunch. We know he has been wronged by his near-omission from the collective national memory. Moreover, we know he was wronged by those he served and served with. And we are very, very touchy about both and more than a little paranoid about any effort which suggests Thomas was not worthy of the acclamation we demand as a matter of historical justice. I have four full biographies of the man and another book which contains an extensive study focusing on him--the sacred fire is well-kept in our libraries.
Einolf confesses right at the start that he is going to take a run at chiseling away the marble robes of Thomas the Great Captain and Flawless Martyr-Saint. So I came to this book in "Action Stations! Set Condition One throughout the ship!" mode.
But fairly soon on, I secured from General Quarters and started appreciating what Einolf was doing. Yes, he was scraping away the barnacles of admiring legend, applying a critical eye to the primary sources. But after the scraping, cleaning and chiseling are done, Einolf finds a human being who was still a great man. A man who could be appreciated both by his military-history-cult defenders and a 21st Century American sociology professor.
This is a very solid, layered biography which is convincing when it comes to his subject, if somewhat less so in its judgments of other historical figures who interacted with Thomas. Einolf does a fine job of painting a full portrait of a man whose personal papers were destroyed on his orders after he died. Thomas was a stolid, unflappable man in a crisis--the marble version of the man correctly shows this.
But Einholf also reveals a man who was convivial in good company, good with children, had a puckish sense of humor, and was something of a connoisseur of good food and drink.
With respect to the decision to stay with the Union, Einolf's argument that Thomas was more torn during that process than his defenders have long thought--is persuasive. Ultimately, Thomas could not accept the logic of secession, but it involved considerable emotional anguish.
Einolf does solid work following Thomas' military career, using the technique of Douglas Southall Freeman, the renowned biographer of Robert E. Lee. Namely, that he depicts the battles from Thomas' perspective--what he did, saw, knew or likely should have known--and not from the drone's eye view of an omniscient historian. This makes Thomas' leadership at Chickamauga all the more impressive, since he did not know exactly what had happened to 3/5ths of the Union Army, but only had a sense of foreboding which came from scattered reports and ominous silence.
Sometimes, though, the battles come across as somewhat flat or abstract in Einolf's retelling, but he makes sure you have maps.
Einolf's revisionist approach can also be seen in his willingness to critique Thomas' decision making during his career. He is on very solid ground when he argues that Thomas performed poorly at Perryville, missing the opportunity to turn a stalemated battle into a crushing Union victory. And even his great battles had their share of missteps.
Thomas' greatest flaw--and the one most convincingly demonstrated--was his refusal to see that, as Clausewitz said, "war is politics." His detestation of political gamesmanship in military matters was laudable, but at best naive and at worst hurtful to the Union cause. A commanding general in a republic--especially one in a civil war--has to accept that he must be sensitive to political considerations. And Thomas stubbornly focused on military matters to the complete exclusion of political concerns. But for the freelancing of a War Department telegraph officer, this flaw would have gotten him fired before the Battle of Nashville.
His unfortunate relationship with Grant is also explored, and Einolf correctly diagnoses the problem as an inability to communicate, which led to distrust. And Thomas bears considerable responsibility for that.
However, Einolf ultimately concludes that Thomas *was* a great general who deserves to be lauded for his military leadership. Yes, he could be slow, but his "slows" were the methodical kind, as opposed to the McClellan refusal-to-risk sort. To use a baseball metaphor: Thomas' wind-up could be a bit labored, but his fastball was a lethal blur.
One of the strongest features of Einolf's book is its look at Thomas' attitude toward black Americans and his tenure as a Reconstruction military governor. At the Battle of Nashville, thousands of the U.S. Colored Troops under Thomas' command attacked the right side of the Confederate line to keep them from shifting their forces to parry the hammer blow coming at their left. White regiments also participated in the assault. It succeeded, but it was costly. On the day after the battle, Thomas surveyed the field, still strewn with the bodies of the fallen, black and white. And he saw that the soldiers who had gotten closest to the Confederate fortifications were the black men of the U.S.C.T. Not one of those regiments had fallen back without first being given orders to. Thomas was greatly moved, and the scales fell from the eyes of the former slaveholder.
Unfortunately, revision*ism* has largely turned into a destructive ideological exercise, frequently associated with Marxism, wherein small people toss offal at great ones in the name of progress. You can see an example of bad revisionism's deformed cultural offspring in the case of Madison, Wisconsin, removing a grave monument listing the names of deceased Confederate POWs who had died at a Wisconsin POW camp.
[2020 aside: What happened in Madison was Orwellian grave desecration, made worse by this inescapable fact: Union prison camps were slaughter pens for Confederate prisoners.
There was no excuse for the far-richer Union to keep prisoners in such abominable conditions. We of the Union are largely ignorant of this bloody stain on our honor--and the repulsive bastards of Madison have helped to bury this atrocity. Long may they wither.]
But there is no reason why revisionism has to be destructive. With the right mindset, it can be a useful process, akin to removing barnacles from a frigate or carefully extracting and restoring a fossilized animal.
Prof. Christopher J. Einolf's George Thomas: Virginian for the Union is revisionism in the Latin understanding of the word. After a long stint at DePaul, Einolf is currently a sociology professor at Northern Illinois University. This background is out of left field (rimshot!) when it comes to pondering the American Civil War, but it mostly serves him and his subject well, bringing a fresh, searching eye.
Fans of George Henry Thomas are a stubborn bunch. We know he has been wronged by his near-omission from the collective national memory. Moreover, we know he was wronged by those he served and served with. And we are very, very touchy about both and more than a little paranoid about any effort which suggests Thomas was not worthy of the acclamation we demand as a matter of historical justice. I have four full biographies of the man and another book which contains an extensive study focusing on him--the sacred fire is well-kept in our libraries.
Einolf confesses right at the start that he is going to take a run at chiseling away the marble robes of Thomas the Great Captain and Flawless Martyr-Saint. So I came to this book in "Action Stations! Set Condition One throughout the ship!" mode.
But fairly soon on, I secured from General Quarters and started appreciating what Einolf was doing. Yes, he was scraping away the barnacles of admiring legend, applying a critical eye to the primary sources. But after the scraping, cleaning and chiseling are done, Einolf finds a human being who was still a great man. A man who could be appreciated both by his military-history-cult defenders and a 21st Century American sociology professor.
This is a very solid, layered biography which is convincing when it comes to his subject, if somewhat less so in its judgments of other historical figures who interacted with Thomas. Einolf does a fine job of painting a full portrait of a man whose personal papers were destroyed on his orders after he died. Thomas was a stolid, unflappable man in a crisis--the marble version of the man correctly shows this.
But Einholf also reveals a man who was convivial in good company, good with children, had a puckish sense of humor, and was something of a connoisseur of good food and drink.
With respect to the decision to stay with the Union, Einolf's argument that Thomas was more torn during that process than his defenders have long thought--is persuasive. Ultimately, Thomas could not accept the logic of secession, but it involved considerable emotional anguish.
Einolf does solid work following Thomas' military career, using the technique of Douglas Southall Freeman, the renowned biographer of Robert E. Lee. Namely, that he depicts the battles from Thomas' perspective--what he did, saw, knew or likely should have known--and not from the drone's eye view of an omniscient historian. This makes Thomas' leadership at Chickamauga all the more impressive, since he did not know exactly what had happened to 3/5ths of the Union Army, but only had a sense of foreboding which came from scattered reports and ominous silence.
Sometimes, though, the battles come across as somewhat flat or abstract in Einolf's retelling, but he makes sure you have maps.
Einolf's revisionist approach can also be seen in his willingness to critique Thomas' decision making during his career. He is on very solid ground when he argues that Thomas performed poorly at Perryville, missing the opportunity to turn a stalemated battle into a crushing Union victory. And even his great battles had their share of missteps.
Thomas' greatest flaw--and the one most convincingly demonstrated--was his refusal to see that, as Clausewitz said, "war is politics." His detestation of political gamesmanship in military matters was laudable, but at best naive and at worst hurtful to the Union cause. A commanding general in a republic--especially one in a civil war--has to accept that he must be sensitive to political considerations. And Thomas stubbornly focused on military matters to the complete exclusion of political concerns. But for the freelancing of a War Department telegraph officer, this flaw would have gotten him fired before the Battle of Nashville.
His unfortunate relationship with Grant is also explored, and Einolf correctly diagnoses the problem as an inability to communicate, which led to distrust. And Thomas bears considerable responsibility for that.
However, Einolf ultimately concludes that Thomas *was* a great general who deserves to be lauded for his military leadership. Yes, he could be slow, but his "slows" were the methodical kind, as opposed to the McClellan refusal-to-risk sort. To use a baseball metaphor: Thomas' wind-up could be a bit labored, but his fastball was a lethal blur.
One of the strongest features of Einolf's book is its look at Thomas' attitude toward black Americans and his tenure as a Reconstruction military governor. At the Battle of Nashville, thousands of the U.S. Colored Troops under Thomas' command attacked the right side of the Confederate line to keep them from shifting their forces to parry the hammer blow coming at their left. White regiments also participated in the assault. It succeeded, but it was costly. On the day after the battle, Thomas surveyed the field, still strewn with the bodies of the fallen, black and white. And he saw that the soldiers who had gotten closest to the Confederate fortifications were the black men of the U.S.C.T. Not one of those regiments had fallen back without first being given orders to. Thomas was greatly moved, and the scales fell from the eyes of the former slaveholder.
"That proves it--Negroes will fight."
For Thomas, any man who could be a good soldier could be a good citizen. When it came time for Reconstruction and the appointment of Union commanders as military governors, Thomas was picked (after first being overlooked) to administer Tennessee and parts of Georgia, Mississippi and Alabama. Any white Southerners who had expected a Virginia slaveowner to be lax in defending freedmen were disabused of that in short order. Thomas defended the polling places and voters with soldiers, insisted upon fair labor contracts for black laborers (and abrogated those which were not), intervened in the local criminal justice system to ensure fair treatment and sent troops to battle the first iteration of the KKK.
His frustration with fellow southerners--especially fellow Unionists--grew, as did his frustration with the lack of resources given to implement Reconstruction. In 1869, he asked for another command, and was given the Department of the Pacific. Unfortunately, the post-War stresses, unhealthy habits and a rather nasty piece of newspaper backstabbing from the camp of John Schofield culminated in the stroke which took his life in March 1870.
Einolf then concludes with a look at Thomas in the historical memory--or rather why he is not present in it. Unlike other Thomas biographers, Einolf is charitable to both Sherman and Grant, whose not-always-reliable memoirs slighted Thomas and shaped the historical narrative.
[2020 update: Einolf is too charitable in Sherman's case. After further reading of the late, great Michigan Civil War historian Albert Castel, one cannot escape the judgment that Sherman's memoirs are too often those of an ungenerous, fact-challenged, self-aggrandizing jackass.]
If you are looking at building a collection of Late Unpleasantness biographies, this one is necessary. I would supplement it with one of the earlier solid bios (e.g., Freeman Cleaves), but it is the essential modern study of George Thomas.
For Thomas, any man who could be a good soldier could be a good citizen. When it came time for Reconstruction and the appointment of Union commanders as military governors, Thomas was picked (after first being overlooked) to administer Tennessee and parts of Georgia, Mississippi and Alabama. Any white Southerners who had expected a Virginia slaveowner to be lax in defending freedmen were disabused of that in short order. Thomas defended the polling places and voters with soldiers, insisted upon fair labor contracts for black laborers (and abrogated those which were not), intervened in the local criminal justice system to ensure fair treatment and sent troops to battle the first iteration of the KKK.
His frustration with fellow southerners--especially fellow Unionists--grew, as did his frustration with the lack of resources given to implement Reconstruction. In 1869, he asked for another command, and was given the Department of the Pacific. Unfortunately, the post-War stresses, unhealthy habits and a rather nasty piece of newspaper backstabbing from the camp of John Schofield culminated in the stroke which took his life in March 1870.
Einolf then concludes with a look at Thomas in the historical memory--or rather why he is not present in it. Unlike other Thomas biographers, Einolf is charitable to both Sherman and Grant, whose not-always-reliable memoirs slighted Thomas and shaped the historical narrative.
[2020 update: Einolf is too charitable in Sherman's case. After further reading of the late, great Michigan Civil War historian Albert Castel, one cannot escape the judgment that Sherman's memoirs are too often those of an ungenerous, fact-challenged, self-aggrandizing jackass.]
If you are looking at building a collection of Late Unpleasantness biographies, this one is necessary. I would supplement it with one of the earlier solid bios (e.g., Freeman Cleaves), but it is the essential modern study of George Thomas.
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Be reasonably civil. Ire alloyed with reason is fine. But slagging the host gets you the banhammer.