Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 29, 1990 TAG: 9004290206
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: F-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By PETER APPLEBOME THE NEW YORK TIMES
DATELINE: VICKSBURG, MISS. LENGTH: Long
The neighing troop, the flashing blade
The bugle's stirring blast,
The charge, the dreadful cannonade,
The din and shout are past.
But at the close of the 125th anniversary of the Civil War, which ended at Appomattox Courthouse in Virginia on April 9, 1865, the din and shout are not past at all.
To the amazement of many scholars and Civil War buffs, there is far more interest in the war now than there was during the centennial in the 1960s, and interest is still on the rise.
Partly because of history that still lives and partly because of painful issues that will not die, the South in particular and other regions around the nation have been awash in memories, echoes and reverberations from the war, which left 623,000 men dead and at least 471,000 others wounded.
"I've been astonished by the persistence of it, and in the last couple of years the growth in interest," said James M. McPherson, the Princeton University history professor who won a Pulitzer Prize for his 1988 Civil War history, "Battle Cry of Freedom."
Lee Millar, a Memphis computer sales manager, one of an estimated 30,000 enthusiasts who regularly take part in re-creations of Civil War battles, added: "During the 100th anniversary, there was a surge in interest which faded away until the '70s. Now there's tremendous growth, staggering. It's probably three or four times what it was with the 100th."
The interest takes different forms: a cause, a business, an object of scholarship or outrage.
For David and Robin Roth, who in 1983 founded Blue and Gray Magazine ("For Those Who Still Hear The Guns"), or Will Gorges, who operates a business in New Bern, N.C., devoted to the boom in Civil War artifacts and memorabilia, it is big business.
For people like Millar and Lucky Osborne, who works at the Old Courthouse history museum here, it is a passion that leads thousands of people to spend most of their weekends slogging through mud, living in tents, wearing ragged Confederate or Union uniforms and simulating the battles of the war.
The anniversary is over, but Osborne's next re-enactment here is scheduled for June 30.
For participants in Civil War Roundtables around the nation, rapidly growing local groups that study the history of the war, it is the most resonant period in American history.
And for many, like Charles Sullivan, a community college history teacher in Perkinston, Miss., it is still a cause.
Sullivan, the Sons of Confederate Veterans' registration officer for Confederate graves in Mississippi, spends much of his time tracking down the identity of men who died in battles that led up to the siege of Vicksburg. He then arranges for the government to provide 230-pound marble markers for their gravesides.
The war has continued to dominate American historiography. Terrence J. Winschel, historian at the 1,700-acre Vicksburg National Military Park here, the site of the 47-day siege in which the Union Army took control of the Mississippi River, said that books about the war have been produced at a rate of one a day since it ended. Now, he said, the rate is one and a half a day.
But what many find intriguing is the depth of emotion the war and its symbols continue to instill.
"I tell my students, you will eat, sleep and live with this war all the days of your life," Sullivan said. "Mississippi was the fifth-richest state when the war started, and when it was over we were 36th, and now we're 50th. We never recovered from the war, and we probably never will."
As interest in the war has peaked, there has been a rising tide of protests by blacks over the Confederate flag. In Mississippi, blacks are protesting the state flag's inclusion of the Confederate battle flag.
In Alabama, black legislators are still fighting to remove the Confederate battle flag from the top of the state Capitol. In North Carolina, black legislators in March bitterly protested the observance of Confederate Flag Day.
Mickey Michaux, a North Carolina state representative, says it is impossible to separate the Confederate flag and the renewed interest in the war from issues of race.
"The Confederate flag represents something that many of us in the black community want to forget, a period where people were treated less than human," he said. "Those who fly it are saying, `Hang on to your Confederate money - the South will rise again.' "
Others disagree. McPherson of Princeton said the centennial was something of a dud because it coincided with the civil rights movement.
If race is a subtext to some of the current Civil War revival, the issue has been defused since the 1960s, and it is now possible to view the war and its symbols in a way that is less emotional and less racially charged.
Although Civil War nostalgia is overwhelmingly dominated by whites, recent events like the film "Glory" have led to some interest by blacks.
Darryl Battle, a black who took part in his first re-enactment in 1988, says the Civil War boom is about history, not race. "Re-enactments are not about hatred," he said. "They're about history, honor, bravery."
To historians like Shelby Foote, author of a three volume history of the Civil War, the war's significance lies in what it has meant for the nation, and not just what it did to the South.
"My son is 28 now, and the Second World War, which is my war, is to him more remote than the Civil War," he said. "It resonates with so many things, and it's really no wonder, because that's what defines us. The Revolution gave us our independence, but the Civil War is what made us the nation we are."
And for all his Southern chauvinism, Sullivan says people still remember the war so intensely because it played out history's dominant theme in such a tragic, indelibly American form.
"The issue was settled like all great issues are settled in this world, with musket butts and bayonets in the belly and cannonballs," he said. "It's a terrible way to do it, but that's the only way it's settled. It might have been better if the South had won, and it might have been worse, but it doesn't matter, because whatever we are came out of that war. It was the most important event in American history, and it will always remain that."
by CNB